Hard disks will be replaced by SSDs as primary storage in the mid-term, predicts Jan de Wit, CEO, Dynamic Drive Pool

Bandwidth requirements increase due to more collaboration and 4K/8K. Also, there is less time and knowledge to manage complex infrastructures and workflows. These changes have a large impact on our storage industry.

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Jan de Wit, CEO, Dynamic Drive Pool

However, the biggest impact comes from flash memory, e.g. SSDs.

Why? Well, 3,5 inch hard disks of 15 TB are coming, but 15 TB SSD are announced as well.

SSDs are small, low power, lightweight, no rotating parts, are highly reliable and very fast. Most desktops already use SSDs in some way and users are experiencing their advantages.

Certainly between now and some time you want to start using SSDs in the shared storage solution.

To make such a transition you need to be aware of how the market will look like within, for example, eight years from now.

It sounds like a long time, but time flies!

I predict that 24/7 hard disks will be replaced by SSDs as primary storage. So how can the transition be smooth?

The magic words are hybrid shared storage solutions with SSD caching and adding storage on the fly with automated data redistribution without administrative changes in a web interface.

At any point in time one should be able to add plain storage and or complete shared storage systems – again with no administrative changes.

And in addition it would be good if it scales linearly both in capacity and bandwidth, plus full redundancy and mirrored ingest, copying and recording capabilities.

It would also be nice if such system can be removed, used standalone elsewhere, and after finishing the job added again with immediate availability of the media. 

There is no urgency to switch off the original one. It may even get a new life for mirroring the data.

This scenario takes place without having to make changes to your folder volume structure (one name space) or to users, groups and access rights or to application settings running on top of this.

It takes place without the users noticing.

This content was first published at IBC2016

The views expressed are those of the author.