Sun Microsystems to Implement SSDs in Its Server Lineup

Sun Microsystems, a leading manufacturer of server systems, is going to integrate SSDs in several series of its machines. Apparently, the manufacturer is trying to lower the power consumption of its machines and reduce the total cost of ownership, while boosting the overall performance of the servers.

"Flash SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy efficiency. This technology will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is designed and deployed in enterprise data centers", said John Fowler, executive vice president of system group at Sun Microsystems.

According to the company, the SSD storage technology is going to make its way into the server business faster than anyone thought possible. The flash-based technology improves the performance of server systems and will most probably replace the current Fiber Channel hard disk drives. One of the reason why Sun believes that SSDs are the way of the future is that Fiber Channel hard disk drives have had only a 40% year-over-year price decline in the last decade, while the price per gigabyte of SSDs continues to fall between 50% and 70% annually.

As part of its support for the SSD technology, the company is already offering its customers the Solaris ZFS software, which is optimized for SSD technologies within the OpenSolaris community. Also, Sun Microsystems is the first major system manufacturer to add an end-to-end SSD product line to its portfolio.

Still, it is a known fact that flash-based disks can only be used for a limited period, or, to put it otherwise, every bit of flash memory can only be recorded for a limited amount of times. Unfortunately the server vendor hasn't mentioned any plans in tackling this issue.