AOL installed a new 50TB RAID5 SSD SAN Array.

 

The solid-state array cost AOL about $20 per gigabyte, which adds up to about $1 million with 50TB of capacity.

 

Fibre Channel arrays often only use about 10% of the capacity in their top-tier drives because storage admins often short-stroke the drives, using only the outer sectors of drives to increase I/O response times. That can eat as much as 20 kilowatts of power per array, he said.

 

In comparison, the flash array only uses 2 kilowatts and 90% of its capacity is utilized.

 

 

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9191079/AOL_installs_50TB_of_SSD_boosts_DB_performance_by_4X

That's some interesting tidbit of information!

Wow. AOL is still around?

 

Haha, that was my first thought too.  However, I know first hand - my aunt still has an @aol.com email address.  I've tried so many times to get her to switch to gmail, but some people just get stuck in their ways.

 

Anyway, back on topic, the SSD Array is interesting.  There's been a few other impressive SSD arrays as well.  For example, the

(I hope that link is correct, since I can't actually see youtube from work).

I still have some aol email accounts that I set up back in the day and have not bothered to switch over.  They are currently being used and switching them to gmail would be to much a pain in the arse.

^^Ditto that.  However I always feel like a total douche whenever I give someone my e-mail and it's @aol.com

I don't know what more surprising, whether AOL is still in existence, or the fact that they have obtained a 50TB RAID5 SSD SAN Array? . I've be interested to know how much heat a full SSD array would dispatched, and whether their would be a larger power saving as well.

It's also interesting to hear also that SSD's are making it into the HA area of server grade hardware so soon. I heard HP were getting into it, but the cost of implementing a full SSD enclosure was laughable in comparison to traditional mechanical disks, and that SSD's we're still ripe and only had made it available to the consumer market, and the initial bugs which they presented too.

SSD in the Enterprise are usually SLC and not MLC devices.  Big difference, and hence the big price difference as well, where a 200GB SSD for an EMC or HDS array will be list for like $20k.

 

Yes, some applications may warrant a full on SSD array, but when companies offer block level tiering now (EMC Fast v2, HDS HDT, 3PAR, Netapp) the overall amount of disk spindles goes down while space goes up.  Your grouping SSD, FC, and SATA disks into one large pool where the array controller if able to detect and move blocks of data between the tiers.  Better performance, more disk space, less physical space, cheaper cost.