In many industries, the development of promising technologies in recent years, in particular 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), has been met with great excitement. Such an ebullient reaction is primarily due to the enormous potential of these technologies, because they can radically change the approach to storing and using information and data, making them more understandable and increasing their level of security, productivity as well as the quality of analytics. However, the widespread introduction of these technologies will also lead to a significant increase in the volume of generated data, for which storage systems must be upgraded just as quickly and with an emphasis on reducing latency and increasing capacity.
While predicting the future is challenging, one thing can be said with a great deal of certainty: the volume of data generated will continue to grow exponentially over the next ten years. Humanity will create, store, copy and process 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data in the current year alone, according to a recent IDC forecast. The explosive growth in the volume of information unfolding before our eyes poses the same question to companies from all industries — how to prepare and optimize our storage systems?
Data explosion on an industrial scale
In many industries, companies have accumulated vast amounts of valuable, but raw, very raw data. This data can be run through powerful modern analytics tools extracting useful insights that will help the company improve its operating performance and discover new market opportunities. Those market participants who learn how to effectively operate these tools will significantly increase the market value of their product and will thus be able to stand out from the competitive crowd, while the other will gradually lose their market shares.
The financial sector is a good example of a vertically aligned industry. It is constantly flooded with huge volumes of a variety of data: from information about banking transactions to project analytics and stock prices. It is worth mentioning that the manufacturing sector, in which automation is greatly affected by the Internet of Things, analytics and technological development, all of which allow you to increase the efficiency of production systems and scale them accordingly, increasing output from hundreds of units per hour to thousands or even millions.
As companies across all industries face continued growth in data volumes, they will need to rethink the way they collect, store, transform, and redefine access to data. Whether it’s high-performance AI, hyperscale systems available 24/7, or just gaming at home, many legacy SDHs fail to cope seamlessly with the new challenges of fast data — their performance and quality of service are deteriorating, and their latency is increasing.
New NVMe ™ solution for big data
To overcome these challenges, many companies are opting for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drives, the only protocol suitable for demanding, computing-intensive enterprise ecosystems that rely on cloud computing and edge processing. NVMe implements a number of advanced features that enable companies to not only improve their business performance, but also make better use of their data. Below are some of the core characteristics.
1. Increased productivity
The first flash SSD signified a return to its former glory for the outdated SATA / SAS physical interfaces and associated protocols and form factors, but none of these interfaces and protocols were designed for high-speed storage. The next logical interface for storage was PCI Express (PCIe), but early versions of PCIe SSDs were tied to proprietary software and hardware, which made it very difficult to scale the system. NVMe emerged as a solution to these problems because it offers much higher performance and lower latency than the older SAS and SATA protocols.
2. Easy to install
The implementation of SDH with NVMe drives as a connection standard does not require a specialized network infrastructure. A simple Ethernet or Fiber Channel connection is sufficient. This is critical because companies do not have to make changes to the application.
3. Economic benefits
Accessing data for applications over common protocols consumes many CPU cycles, and these wasted compute cycles cost companies real money. IT budgets are not growing at the same rate as data volumes, so companies are under tremendous pressure — their infrastructure is required to maximize return, both in terms of capacity and computing power. Because NVMe can handle heavy application workloads even with limited infrastructure, organizations can lower the total cost of ownership and accelerate gross revenue growth.
And this is only the very tip of the iceberg of the data revolution. As the Internet of Things and Machine Learning continue to evolve and new applications emerge, the value of data will also evolve, and companies need to conceptually change their approach to organizing storage to leverage new technologies. With NVMe, a company can deliver never-before-seen functionality, discovering a whole new paradigm for designing and building applications with more efficiency, lower latency, and for much less money. Moving to NVMe will be a vital step for any company looking to embrace the decades-long big data revolution.
For a smoother transition to NVMe technology, Western Digital offers the Ultrastar® NVMe ™ range of drives, featuring low latency and maximum throughput for high transaction workloads. Following Western Digital’s 2019 Ultrastar DC SN640 server drive, in June 2020, the company launched another groundbreaking data center solution that combines three key technology innovations: the new OpenFlex ™ Data24 NVMe-oF ™ platform and it includes the new Ultrastar DC SN840 NVMe SSD and RapidFlex ™ controllers.
With the advent of NVMe, data center storage has dramatically increased over SATA and SAS SSDs, and now with RapidFlex’s high-speed connectivity to OpenFlex storage, NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) technology allows you to create disaggregated NVMe storage on top of your network with performance comparable to local storage.
Forecast statement:
This article may contain forecasts, including statements about anticipated Western Digital NVMe storage products, the market for those products, and the future performance of those products and technologies used in them. The actual results could differ materially from those expressed in these forecasts because those statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the development difficulties and delays, supply chain or logistical problems, changes in market conditions, demand, global economic conditions, and as well you should see the other risks and uncertainties identified in Western Digital Corporation’s latest quarterly and annual reports submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, all of which should be noted. Readers are cautioned against relying entirely on forecasts such as these, and we have no intention of updating these statements to reflect later events or circumstances.
With the help of our online configurator, you can custom build your server with hardware such as large NVMe drives or choose from a range of other components that will facilitate fast work with large amounts of data.
