SSDs and the end of seek time

[Carl Kyonka]

Solid State Disks seem to be maturing to a point that they are showing up in PC level products. Articles are claiming major advantages for SSDs over round, brown and spinning. Advantages include little (no?) seek time, low power, vibration tolerance, temperature tolerance and maybe others. One thing not included is price.

I have two questions:
- Are these claims for SSDs the whole picture?
- Is SSD ready for enterprise apps?

Carl

[Carl Kyonka]

I did a little homework on this and found two things. Flash is not the only technology for SSDs. RAM disk products are available for really high I/O rates. Also, there is a very concise article by Dr. Pat Artis called "The Dawn of a New Storage Paradigm: Understanding the Impact of Flash Devices on z/OS" which is available from the Performance Associates web site. You have to enter contact info to download the article. It answered my questions and more.

[John Baker]

Hi Carl, I just started looking at these boards and noticed this topic. Dr Gilbert Houtekamer (who co-wrote the MVS I/O Subsystems book with Pat) presented a paper and case study at CMG last week on SSD's. I assume you can get the paper off of the CMG site but let me know if not and I'll send you a copy.

john.baker@intellimagic.net