Forecasted Server Storage Technology Trends in 2011

A storage server is valuable for a workgroup environment where there are multiple users requiring shared data across a server network. Since the storage is centralized, it facilitates backup of data. Today, when it comes to the agility, ease of use, integration, and performance of server storage technology there are a number of forecasted trends for 2011.
Increased Demand for Faster Storage I/O in Multi-core Processors: In order to eliminate barriers that could impact productivity, fast servers need fast I/O and storage. For instance, high-density servers require fast interconnects. Eliminating slow server response is essential. One solution is adding SSD drives because these drives can achieve about 2400 IOPS per drive. This helps to keep up with increased workload.
Smaller Drives: The use of smaller drives is becoming more prevalent in servers as they provide higher capacity and higher performance. The trend in the IT industry seems to be the concept that smaller is better. For instance, Mini-SATA is now available as it can support transfer rates up to 3.0 Gb/s on a business card size platter. It is forecasted that this will become the norm in servers
Convergence of Servers and Storage: To improve performance, it is forecasted that there will be an increase in the convergence of servers and storage. As well, it is easy to use, low cost, supports acceleration of guest networking and advanced Virtual OS features, supports diverse optional hardware and accelerations, and it is at effective driving consolidation.
Optimized Servers for Diverse Application Workloads: A key trend is increased media flexibility. With the increased availability of SAS, SATA, and SSD, it will be easier to optimized servers for more diverse application workloads. Benefits include: improved virtualization server consolidation ratios, dynamically allocate resources within each virtual machine, and prevent performance degradation by eliminating resource conflicts.
Increased Adoption of Hybrid Drives: There is an increase it the use of hybrid drives (a hard drive is packaged in the same proprietary drive module as an SSD.) That is, combining hard drives such Flash and Ram in one sealed integrated drive.
It eliminates the need for special server/host controllers to move data around.
To create and run an always-on infrastructure that supports key business fundamentals, companies require a server that will support the way they and their customers do business. These 2011 server storage technology trends are providing more flexibility in designing servers for multiple workloads that meet changing business performance and reliability demands.