Morphlabs and Dell are making an all-SSD-based cloud architecture available for companies needing the fastest storage performance for their private clouds.
Solid-state drives increase storage I/O performance while cutting power consumption compared to spinning disk and other traditional storage. That means faster launching of applications and faster access to data, but SSD technology has been seen as too expensive for broad use. That is starting to change, however, and even some cloud providers offer at least some SSD options. SSD storage underlies Amazon Web Services’ DynamoDB database, and CloudSigma added SSDs to its public cloud offering last fall.
Although it’s on-premise, Morphlabs said its new mCloud service will be priced on par with Amazon Web Services, but will bring with it the security of a private cloud to service providers and other companies that require it. Many companies still aren’t ready for the public cloud because of data security and other concerns about shared infrastructure. That’s the crowd Morphlabs is targeting with the new mCloud, which sits upon a Dell converged infrastructure unit featuring the company’s cloud-inspired PowerEdge C servers.
The appeal of a private cloud — or at least a hybrid cloud that lets companies keep some applications and data under their purview — is one reason Amazon partnered with Eucalyptus, which will makes it easier for companies to link Eucalyptus-based private clouds with public AWS cloud services. Amazon has announced several other services, including a storage gateway and workflow services, all geared to ease interaction between its public cloud and customer data centers.
As with any hot new technology, SSDs started out as a premium option. But as costs come down, expect to see them replace spinning disks more and more both in the cloud and on-premises.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user theaucitron.
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