Flash storage, on everything from large, high speed servers to laptops, is a major technology disrupter that will replace high-speed SAS disk systems on servers and disk drives in laptops and desktop PCs. It is already making inroads in those markets, with large Cloud service companies and medium-sized businesses alike moving to Fusion-io NAND Flash in their servers to solve quality-of-service issues caused by the slow access and lock/unlock speeds of  disk-based database systems.

In his article [http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/2011_Flash_Memory_Summit_Enterprise_Roundup 2011 Flash Memory Summit Enterprise Roundup] Wikibon CTO and Flash expert David Floyer discusses the present state of the fast-growing flash market and why this is becoming a major disruptor in the storage industry, for software as well as hardware. Critically, he organizes the industry into segments based on the different approaches each takes to applying flash technology to server storage, from the simple replacement of disk with flash in arrays up to the complete restructuring of storage by treating flash as non-volatile memory in the server itself. Understanding these very different technologies, all built around NAND Flash, is critical to making informed decisions on storage acquisitions for your business..

Floyer identifies five “courses” of flash technology:

1. Traditional SSD in an array,
2. Flash-cache,
3. Flash-only arrays,
4. Data in server flash memory,
5. Flash as an extension of main memory.

He discusses the technology, advantages and limitations, major players and market potential for each of these in detail. For instance he identifies the major technical limitations of the first “course” and why it is going to be superseded by the later courses. He then looks at what the overall market will be like in five years, and why flash will replace high-performance SAS drives for highly active data while inexpensive SATA drives will continue to eat into the market for lower-performance storage and data archiving, possibly replacing tape for virtually all backup applications.

As the flash presence grows in the market overall, this article can become a basic reference for CIOs facing critical decisions on their company strategy for migrating from the present three-tier storage architecture of SAS and SATA drives and tape to the new, higher performance flash/SATA architecture. This Wikibon Professional Alert can stave you from costly mistakes, including the mistake of waiting too long to move off spinning rust.