Trends in Server Market - Smaller Drivers Way into Servers

Smaller drivers way into servers

SAS 2.5 inch drives are finding their way into servers for both high performance as well as higher capacity. The Seagate Constellation is one example of a small form factor that offers 1 Tb of space. "Despite declarations that the hard disk drive is dead, what is alive is the industry's evolving movement towards small form factor 2.5 inch fast SAS as well as high-capacity SAS drives complimented by some SSD," said Schulz. Mini-SATA, or mSATA, too, has arrived on the marketplace. Currently, it supports transfer rates up to 3.0 Gb/s on a platter around the size of a business card. It will not be long before these begin to be used in servers.

Convergence of Storage Connectivity for Flexibility and Workload Optimization

Daley said server storage is moving to 6 Gb/sec SAS for performance, which provides a high-speed, low-latency connection for internal storage, as well as external expansion to very large configurations. It is also becoming the standard for the internal drive connection in dedicated storage systems. "Connectivity to external shared storage is also changing, and many HP servers now ship with converged network adapters capitalizing on the shift over time toward IP-based networks," he said. "These trends are providing more flexibility in designing servers for multiple workloads. It is easy to optimize the number and type of internal drives for direct attached applications or those that require shared storage."

Reduced Format

With data center floor space and rack space at a premium, it's time for server hardware manufacturers to respond. For reduced format server systems, don't think 2U, 1U or blades; think MacBook Air. That doesn't mean you should put Macbook Air units into your data centers, but rather that this type of "paper thin" format