Solid State Disk - VM Applications for the Enterprise

[RSSD]

I am working on a project to determine new markets/applications to support

enterprise level, Solid State Disk (SSD) devices. It appears virtualized

servers supporting I/O intensive applications can experience performance degradation

caused by the storage system. Would a SSD solution that delivers very

high IOPS (400,000 +) be a viable solution for larger VMware installations,

possible in Data Centers? This solution would provide another option than

purchasing a storage upgrade or more likely a new storage server. If

"yes" how influential would VMware users be in the evaluation and

purchase process of such a device?

a) Somewhat influential

b) Influential

c) Very influential

While SA, DBA, etc. are typically involved in this process, understanding the

user's involvement would also help in determining if sales and marketing programs to VMware

customers makes sense. If there are other communities you could recommend

for feedback, please let me know.

Thanks,

Randy

[AndreTheGiant]

The Enterprise Storage is made by several part, like for example:

• type of disk

• type of RAID

• storage cache

• type of storage processor failover and type of MPIO

• SAN bandwidth

• SAN topology and switches type

• type of HBA

For this reason the disk type itself could (IMHO) only be "Somewhat influential".

Only without any bottleneck (but you probably need a FC 8Gbs SAN with good storage and switches) could be "Very influential".

Andre

[AsherN]

At this point I would place SSD as my main Enterprise storage as 'Detrimental'. They simply lack the wide use and long term analysis is performance and real world MTBF.

Would I like to try them on less critical systems? absolutely.

They are also very hard to justify on a ROI perspective. I'd hate to be the one standing in front of the CEO to tell him that I'll be spending more for less storage of an unproven technology.

[RSSD]

Andre,

Thank you for the response.

Randy

[RSSD]

Asher,

Thank you for the feedback. Excluding the technical aspects of the

device that may not meet your requirements, my inquiry was to better understand

the VMware user from a sales/marketing perspective. For example, what

influence does VMware user have if his VM supporting an OLTP application does

not meet the SLA? Does the decision to recommend/purchase another performance solution rely solely on the SA, DBA or other?

We can assume there are environments in which the end user(s) are the

decision makers.

The end goal is to better understand the target audience and what messaging is

most appropriate for this type of solution to VMware users.

Thanks,

Randy

Message was edited by: Ken.Cline to remove extraneous formatting

[Ken_Cline · Accepted solution]

RSSD,

The VMware administrator is going to have about as much influence as any other systems administrator. In other words, that's not who you want to be marketing to. You need to identify the business owner who is responsible for delivering the business value to the bottom line, and that's who you need to be marketing to (or at least to their technical advisors).

SSD technology can be compelling - in the right situations. I don't think you're going to see a demand for it outside of a good sized datacenter, simply because most smaller companies don't have a need for the number of IOPS that SSD can deliver (and that's what justifies the cost of SSD, isn't it?). Most environments are going to already have "enterprise class" storage solutions and might be interested in enhancing what they have with some tiered SSD capabilities. This could meet the IOPS need and free up a lot of the spindles that were purchased just to meet the throughput demand (rather than the capacity demand).

In short, you're hawking enterprise class technology. You need to be selling to the right person, and that person is likely not spending their days in a datacenter (or managing day to day operations in a datacenter).

Ken Cline

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blogging at: http://KensVirtualReality.wordpress.com/

[RSSD]

Ken,

Thank you for the response. Your feedback is on right on the mark for the type of information I am requesting.

Enjoy the weekend...

Randy