As data centers become increasingly reliant on solid-state drives (SSDs), ordering the right SSDs can have a significant impact on the performance, cost, and lifespan of your servers. With so many options on the market, buyers need to ask several questions to ensure they are outfitting their servers with SSDs designed for their company’s needs. While there are many specifics that may dictate buyers’ approaches to replacing hard drives with SSDs or expanding existing storage, answering these fundamental questions can help prevent them from investing in the wrong kind of SSD:
Capacity - How Much for Now and Later?
Most searches for SSDs begin with capacity in mind. It’s obvious that more capacity is a good thing, but as with most features, the added expense may not translate to improved performance in every situation. Buyers should consider a floor for capacity based on the type of data, duration of storage, and amount of input anticipated for the system. Depending on the allotted budget and usage projections for the near future, buyers should increase their target capacity in the interest of futureproofing.
Getting this right is critical: selecting an SSD with excessive capacity may be more costly with little immediate benefit, but SSDs with insufficient capacities can lead to performance degradation, data loss, and downtime, causing frustration for users, disruption to business operations, and potentially leading to data breaches, loss of critical information, and increased costs. Balancing the freedom that additional capacity provides against the cost of expanded storage is a key step in choosing an SSD.
