Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
2022 Trends to Watch in Hardware Storage
By Odie
Killen, VP of Server and Storage Engineering, Viking Enterprise Solutions
The modern
approach to tiered storage is proving itself to be a resilient one that stands
the test of time. That said, there are many variables at play in the storage
industry as we move into the new year. Current supply chain constraints,
increasing bandwidth requirements and a continued focus on efficiency, cost and
performance will all drive key developments moving forward. Key trends to watch
include:
- Adoption
of SAS-4 storage protocols will occur faster than initially expected. The
use of SAS-4 (Serial attached SCSCI) chips will leapfrog current SAS-3 solutions
due to increased availability of SAS-4 chipsets in the supply chain. Along with
fewer available SAS-3 chips, vendors are being pushed to make tough decisions
in terms of allocating production to specific parts due to the overall chip
shortage and a demand-supply imbalance. While SAS-4 chipsets offer new
functionality that doubles bandwidth and enables faster access to data, the
product can downshift to support today's current SAS-3 infrastructures on the
front end.
- 3.5 inch
spinning discs will continue to remain dominant. SAS 3.5 inch spinning
discs play a major role in the storage tiers and won't be displaced by new
Flash form factors for the foreseeable future, as the SAS-3 infrastructure
carries forward. For SSDs to completely replace spinning media, there will need
to be a fundamental breakthrough in device physics that doesn't exist today. A
new approach is needed by silicon manufacturers to balance the
cost-per-gigabyte and cost-per-IOP parody between rotating media and Flash.
- Increased
uptake in E1 and E3 drive form factors. E1 and E3 are form factors for a
family of Flash-based SSDs that replace traditional U.2 2.5 inch SSD form factors
in servers and storage systems. These devices are based on the NVMe interface,
and provide improved performance and lower latency over traditional SAS-based
SSDs. The overall physical design of these
products also enables better management of airflow, increasing thermal
efficiency.
There
will be a bifurcation in uptake of these SSD designs, based on different
environments and situations. The E1 form factor and its single-port design lends
itself well to hyperscalers and companies that have more node based, erasure-coding
protection schemes and architectures, where entire nodes can fail and go
offline without degrading access to data. The newer E3 form factor, which
includes a dual port design, ensures high availability and will be the winner
for NVME Gen5 SSDs in the traditional enterprise storage market. The E3 design will
eventually replace U.2 and U.3 products.
- Gradual transition
to PCIe 5 standards. As cloud-based workloads and new data intensive applications
like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) continue to grow,
the new PCIe 5 (peripheral component interconnect express) standard aims to double
data transfer rates from the current PCIe 4 specification. The physical
interface of E1 and E3 drives are ideally suited for the layout and signal
integrity requirements associated with this faster standard.
However, the transition to PCIe 5 won't be
easy and certainly won't happen overnight. The physical layer implementation
challenges of doubling data rates could potentially delay adoption. Initial use
of PCIe 5 will most likely be focused on I/O (input/output) communication, with
the first systems containing PCIe 4 SSDs with the option to include host-side
add in cards that support PCIe 5 connections.
2022 will certainly be an interesting year
for data storage, as we continue to see the technology evolve and provide
benefits for better latency, performance, and value.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Odie Killen is the VP of Server and Storage Engineering
at Viking Enterprise Solutions, a division of Sanmina, where he leads a multi-disciplined
engineering team developing enterprise server and storage products. He formerly
held engineering leadership roles at Western Digital and Seagate.