In
2023,
every
Australian
business
will
be
looking
for
ways
to
more
efficiently
manage
ever-increasing amounts
of
data
while
at
the
same
time
seeking
to
increase
efficiency
in
the
face
of
a
tightening
economy.
Couple
those
imperatives
with
the
emerging
challenge
of
reducing
carbon
emissions
(particularly
in
the
eyes
of
regulators
warning
about
greenwashing)
and
many
businesses
must
be
asking
themselves,
what
actions
can
we
take?
One
area
which
organisations
can
focus
on
for
economic
efficiency
and
sustainability
improvements
is
in
the
data
centre.
To
understand
why,
we
need
to
review
the
significant
changes
which
have
occurred
in
data
centres
in
recent
years.
In
fact,
it
started
back
in
2011,
when
Pure
Storage
released
the
first
all-flash
storage
array
that
was
robust
and
economical
enough
for
mission-critical
data
centres.
Ever
since
then,
Pure
has
been
on
a
mission
to
make
all-flash
data
centre
a
reality
and
today,
this
vision
is
closer
than
ever
to
becoming
a
reality.
But
how
is
flash
making
a
difference
to
data
centres?
Firstly,
there
has
been
no
question
of
the
advantages
of
flash
over
legacy
storage
medium
such
as
disk
or
tape.
But
the
main
holdback
has
been
cost.
In
fact,
the
disk/flash
TCO
(total
cost
of
ownership)
cutover
is
closer
than
many
people
may
realise.
In
this
article,
we
look
at
the
elements
that
will
render
hard
drives
the
less
cost-effective
option
in
the
near
future.
It’s
important
to
note
up
front
that
flash
has
already
been
the
obvious
choice
for
any
performance-
or
latency-sensitive
workload
for
some
time
now.
Since
flash
memory’s
entrance
into
the
enterprise
storage
arena,
it
has
been
knocking
down
hard
disk
tiers
one
by
one,
from
top
to
bottom,
until
now,
there’s
really
only
one
tier
left
where
disk
drives
maintain
a
market
share
advantage:
nearline,
capacity-focused
drives.
This
is
the
lowest
tier
of
online
data
storage,
but
it
also
represents
a
huge
portion
of
bytes
being
stored,
as
well
as
the
growing
majority
(more
than
70%)
of
hard
drive
capacity
shipped
each
year.
That’s
the
tier
that
flash
will
penetrate
next.
The
price-per-bit
for
NAND
flash
is
declining
at
a
rate
much
faster
than
nearline
hard
drives.
This,
combined
with
the
power,
space,
and
cooling
savings,
higher
performance,
and
better
reliability
of
flash,
will
soon
result
in
hard
drives
becoming
the
less
cost-effective
option.
Let’s
go
into
a
detailed
look
at
some
of
these
components.
Media
Cost
The
first-order
cost
is
always
going
to
be
the
media
itself.
While
today
the
cost-per-bit
of
a
hard
drive
is
still
lower
than
the
densest
flash,
there
are
several
key
trends
to
pay
attention
to
in
2023.
First,
all
the
major
tier
1
flash
manufacturers
are
demonstrating
significant
density
increases
this
year,
with
over
200
layers
of
stacked
3D
NAND
in
some
cases.
This
increase
in
density
will
translate
into
better
cost
efficiency,
as
well
as
further
improve
power
and
space
savings.
Second,
if
analyst
predictions
hold,
NAND
prices
overall
are
expected
to
decline
through
most
of
2023,
continuing
a
trend
that
began
in
late
2022.
Energy
Cost
Data
centre
infrastructure
represents
over
1%
of
global
energy
consumption,
and
this
share
is
growing.
As
a
result
of
rising
energy
costs,
energy
consumption
by
information
technology
has
become
not
just
a
concern
from
an
environmental
standpoint
but
now
also
a
significant
economic
one.
When
looking
at
the
total
cost
of
ownership,
energy
consumption
will
play
an
even
more
outsized
role
in
2023
and
beyond,
and
infrastructure
that
is
more
power
efficient
will
have
an
even
greater
economic
advantage
over
the
competition.
As
flash
density
continues
to
increase,
power
efficiency
will
surpass
hard
drives
and
thus
contribute
to
a
lower
effective
cost.
In
2022,
Pure
Storage
published
our
first
ESG
report,
which
compared
our
systems
to
competitive
all-flash
alternatives,
where
we
showed
that
our
systems
can
use
up
to
84%
less
energy.
Pure’s
energy
efficiency
will
be
a
leading
factor
in
enabling
Pure
Storage
products
to
achieve
a
lower
TCO
than
disk
in
the
future.
Higher
Performance
In
two
key
ways,
the
flash
performance
advantage
over
disk
can
translate
into
cost
advantages.
First,
because
disk
performance
is
still
so
low,
even
in
workloads
with
modest
performance
requirements,
you
will
often
end
up
with
stranded
capacity.
While
spinning
drives
may
hold
20TB,
if
the
performance
of
the
system
taps
out
at
16TB,
you
will
not
derive
as
effective
a
cost-per-bit.
Flash
doesn’t
have
this
issue
because
read
performance
stays
predictable
even
as
drives
fill
up,
unlike
hard
drives.
Second,
any
storage
environment
that
focuses
on
resiliency
will
have
a
redundancy
strategy
which
may
involve
storing
multiple
copies
of
data,
for
example,
in
addition
to
keeping
spare
capacity
around
in
the
case
of
a
failure.
This
means
that
the
performance
of
any
one
device
is
a
variable
in
the
equation
used
to
determine
how
much
redundancy
you
need
to
build
into
your
system.
Many
years
ago,
hard
drives
had
gotten
large
enough
that
after
a
drive
failed,
rebuilds
would
take
so
long
that
you
needed
to
adopt
dual
parity
strategies
to
ensure
business
resiliency.
Today
that
can
be
triple
parity
or
more.
With
flash
devices,
faster
rebuild
times
mean
less
bits
need
to
be
dedicated
to
resiliency
structures,
which
equates
to
better
effective
cost
efficiency.
Some
flash
vendors,
like
Pure
Storage,
offer
robust,
automatic
resiliency
tuning
that
takes
all
these
aspects
into
consideration
without
requiring
users
to
determine
what
RAID
level
they
need
to
set.
Better
Reliability
Pure’s
data
shows
that
the
annualised
failure
rates
(AFR)
of
our
systems
are
significantly
lower
than
the
industry
benchmarks
for
spinning
disks,
as
well
as
lower
than
industry
SSD
averages.
If
drives
are
more
reliable,
this
goes
into
the
same
resiliency
considerations
as
above.
But
beyond
that,
it
also
means
that
more
reliable
devices
need
fewer
replacements
and,
therefore,
lower
costs.
While
most
customers
with
support
contracts
don’t
feel
the
cost
directly,
the
cost
of
this
unreliability
is
baked
into
the
cost
of
those
very
support
contracts.
This
is
one
reason
why
traditional
storage
vendors’
support
costs
would
skyrocket
in
years
4,
5,
and
beyond.
This
reliability
means
Pure’s
customers
don’t
have
to
undergo
disruptive
forklift
upgrades
every
4
to
5
years.
97%
of
Pure
Storage
arrays
purchased
six
years
ago
with
an
Evergreen
subscription
are
still
in
service
today
and
are
completely
up
to
date
from
a
technology
point
of
view.
Flash
Is
Just
Better
The
simple
truth
is
that
no
one
today
continues
to
buy
spinning
drives
because
they’re
better,
but
only
because
they’re
cheaper.
In
almost
every
way,
flash
memory
is
superior
to
spinning
magnetic
storage,
and
where
flash
is
already
better,
those
advantages
are
increasing.
Where
flash
is
still
behind
disk
is
cost,
and
the
road
to
the
disk/flash
crossover
point
is
getting
shorter
and
shorter.
The
dream
of
an
all-flash
data
centre
will
soon
become
accessible
for
most
organisations.
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