Over the past decade, enterprise-grade non-volatile “flash” storage has gone mainstream. While not exactly inexpensive, enterprise flash prices have finally dropped to the point that talk of the “all-flash data center” no longer generates quite as much eye-rolling as it once did. Spinning disk capacity is still relatively low-cost, but the technical barriers to greater HDD density and performance are mounting. The vast majority of data centers will house a mix of flash and spinning disk for some time, as organizations deploy both technologies according to their requirements.
