Analysis

posted on 30 May 2008 09:52

The Emulex financial analyst day presentations yesterday included IDC figures on solid state drive (SSD) penetration of the disk drive market, which showed Fibre Channel drive shipments rising in 2012 after SSD use grew from 2009 to 2011.

The IDC chart (Blue for capacity drives, white for SSD, red for performance drives. Units in 1,000s) shows comparatively low SSD penetration and certainly not anything resembling an SSD wipeout at all.

EMC has not used analysts' charts to show SSD penetration, neither Gartner, nor IDC, nor any other analyst firm. We have learnt that EMC's ideas on SSD progress was "based on our direct insights (as one of the world's largest consumers) into the storage and silicon supply chains".

EMC has quoted IDC figures comprehensively with regard to the data explosion we are facing. EMC sponsored the IDC digital universe report in 2007 and again in 2008.

The IDC SSD penetration chart supports the general Gartner view that SSD penetration will be modest; slow and limited, at least intitially. It does not support a view of rapid SSD incursion into the Fibre Channel drive space.

The use of SSDs will impact data centres and they will be seen as a very fast tier zero of storage layered on top of Fibre Channel drives but the SSDs will not wipe out Fibre Channel drive use, at least through to 2012 according to the IDC chart.

Instead, after a modest fall in unit shipped numbers from 2009 to 2011 Fibre Channel drive shipments will rise in 2012.

The IDC chart shows the largest rise in drive shipments taking place in the SATA, capacity-centric, drive area.

The Emulex team at the analysts' day also said they were developing SATA to Fibre Channel bridge technology to enable SATA interface SSDs to connect to a Fibre Channel infrastructure inside drive arrays. This will help SSD suppliers who, unlike STEC, do not have Fibre Channel interface SSDs and are therefore barred from participating in the tier zero SSD layer of storage market for Fibre Channel arrays.

Emulex says 'multiple top tier customers are working/testing SSDs behind our bridges today.' Top tier? That could mean companies like IBM, HDS, HP, Sun, NetApp, 3PAR, Pillar Data, etc.

So far we have not seen the emergence of a tier zero SSD layer for SAS arrays but it may come, particularly with the 6Gbit/s SAS II interface.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}