Recently I stumbled upon a 2011 product presentation from a large IT vendor. Let’s call the vendor DLB. In the presentation DLB makes the case for NAND Flash for storage. The first few slides talk about what everyone talks about… We’re creating more data, HDD performance hasn’t kept up with CPU performance, we’ve moved from a point-in-time to a real-time world.

Then we get to something interesting. The presentation compares the cost of Flash to performance-optimized Hard Disk Drives. This section is illuminating and possibly the most important in the entire presentation. Frankly I was surprised to see these three slides. It made me wonder, if storage customers really understood what it costs to support performance-demanding applications what would they say to their traditional storage vendors? Would it be a courtroom showdown like the one in the movie A Few Good Men?

Storage Vendor: You want answers?
IT Customer: I think I’m entitled to them.
Storage Vendor: You want answers?
IT Customer: I want the truth!
Storage Vendor: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has demands. And those demands have to be met by men with Hard Disk Drives. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Mr. IT Customer? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You want to increase application performance and you curse what I charge. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that while short stroking drives is tragic, it probably improved your application performance, marginally. And my existence, while requiring you to purchase additional HDDs for performance is grotesque and under-utilizing them by up to 90% is incomprehensible to you, it maintains application performance, marginally … You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about in meetings, you want me in the data center. You need me in the data center.

We use words like short stroking, under-utilization, spindles. We use these words as the backbone to a life spent tuning HDDs. You use ‘em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a customer whose applications read and write upon the cylinders of the very HDDs I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide them! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up an HDD and optimize it. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!

IT Customer: Did you try NAND Flash?
Storage Vendor: (quietly) I did the job you asked me to do.
IT Customer: Did you try NAND Flash?
Storage Vendor: You’re goddamn right I did!!

What did the storage vendor discover when he compared NAND Flash to performance-optimized HDD? The vendor uncovered that performance-optimized HDD are intentionally underutilized up to 90%, and underutilization can effectively drive the cost per GB above $50/GB. More interestingly in the presentation, DLB points out that NAND Flash is nearly $20 per GB less at $36/GB. That’s right, NAND Flash costs less than performance optimized HDDs.

Cost per GB is not the only measurement compared in the presentation. Transaction power costs are also discussed. Power is a major issue for companies globally. To quote a recent Harvard Business Review article, “If the cloud were itself a country, it would rank fifth in the world on energy demand behind the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.”

Here, DLB points out that NAND Flash consumes less power than HDD. The power cost per transaction is 1.4 mWatt/IOPS for NAND Flash and as high as 133.4 mWatt/IOPS for HDDs. Additionally DLB makes it clear that customers are required to purchase and optimize more and more HDDs as business transactions increase.

When HDDs are optimized for performance, a high number are purchased relative to the capacity required. This is because capacity utilization is sacrificed to eke as much performance as possible per application. Eking out as much performance as possible is important to note. Performance-demanding applications are usually separated from one another to avoid contention with the drives. So the number of performance HDDs quickly multiply as application transaction demand increases. As the HDDs increase so does power consumption, cooling, floor space and the management of the inflated number of devices.

Are you ready for the truth? Even legacy storage vendors agree that the only way to drive up application performance while reducing OpEX and CapEx is to consolidate the high transaction demanding applications on to NAND Flash storage. When it’s a matter of performance, you need a few good flash drives.