For the last 5 years server and hardware configurations have been pretty much the same.
Even with the rise of edge computing, most edge networks mirror existing
hardware configurations using SATA or SAS SSDs.
Only in rare instances, have we seen dramatic changes in hardware configurations.
When we do, redundancy and uptime are key.
That’s why many data centers are switching to enterprise-grade NVME SSDs.
This begs the question: If more data centers are moving to NVMe, should I upgrade my servers?
So that question is a little bit complex. I think it depends on the environment that you currently have,
your current infrastructure.
You know, definitely, if your applications are are storage bound today meaning you know you're not getting enough I/O
out of your storage subsystems this is definitely a time to look to move to NVMe.
NVMe provides an interface and a protocol
that enables performance far above what we can get from the traditional hard drive interfaces.
Upgrading a simple 1U server or 10U rack is limited by the availability of connections.
Most systems that implement SATA or SAS SSDs connect to one another using hardware-based RAID controllers.
But NVMe utilizes the PCI-Express ports for faster transfer speeds, and it leverages software-defined RAID profiles.
So, hardware-wise, to make the switch to NVMe your platforms have to change quite a bit.
We're no longer connecting via hard drive interfaces of SATA and SAS we're now connecting to to
NVMe so it's a completely different data path structure.
We're probably managing the storage now with software instead of hardware based controllers.
So a lot of things need to be taken into consideration to make that switch to NVMe
but the tier one cloud providers, you know, they're very nimble, they're able to make that
type of a change within their organizations quite easily and they've been enjoying the performance
benefits of NVMe for a couple of years now.
Simply put, if it’s working and providing the amount of performance needed for today’s operations,
is there a need to switch?
If so, here are a few questions to consider in the next build:
How will the change impact your redundancy practices?
Switching to software-defined redundancy practices can present a barrier to moving forward.
Certain applications may require changes down to the kernel level, and managing multiple applications
across a network could result in a lot of rewrites.
Furthermore, not all software-defined storage platforms will support traditional RAID profiles such as RAID 5, 6 or 10.
What are the existing pain points to your architecture and will NVMe solve for it?
Some issues may not be a data transfer issue, but really a read/write profile or simply not using enterprise-grade drives.
Many drives today have high-performance specifications on their data sheets
but don’t address long-term consistency or predictability of performance.
So it's important for companies to not only look at data sheet and website specifications
but to use an SSD in an application and evaluate its performance.
Specifically companies should be looking at I/O consistency and latency delivery of the SSD that they're choosing.
What prevents you from switching to NVMe today?
Because SATA and SAS and NVMe hardware is pretty much at price parity today the big thing companies need to look out for is
how they're going to manage these devices moving forward.
They're no longer going to be connecting drives to hardware-based controllers.
They're going to be connecting them to software to manage these devices.
So companies need to go out and look for software- defined storage platforms that they are going to use
to accomplish redundancy practices data replication data backup and so forth.
Are you replacing or supplementing your existing storage?
When you have specific SLAs there's a real need to switch to deliver consistent performance.
However, for SAS providers that deliver tiered application support it might be worthwhile creating entirely new systems
that are based on NVMe.
In reality workloads haven't changed but even with new customers services can be tiered by high performance and availability.
For the content driven data center you can now host services and applications you couldn't in the past,
but are now made possible with NVMe deployments
If you're a cloud provider or a hosting company your storage performance is critical for your ability to deliver on your SLAs.
So in terms of form factor in the data center U.2 has taken the lead in popularity.
Today tier one server OEMs and whitebox system manufacturers are offering a broad range of high bay count NVMe servers.
Am I chasing a trend or have customers driven demand?
It's always nice to have the new and shiny upgrades to our servers.
It could be a competitive advantage. But chasing a trend could just open more doors
if you're not really ready.
Form factor is going to be a big hindrance until new servers are available.
We're seeing a lot of interest in being able to replace an NVMe drive in a front loading server.
Regardless of the answers to these questions
Kingston continues to provide the most consistent enterprise-grade NVMe and SATA SSDs to support the needs of data centers.
So remember whatever your SSD needs are, Kingston is with you.