Dell added eMLC drives from SanDisk (with technology acquired from Pliant Technology) in its EqualLogic PS6100 storage arrays launched this month.

The 5.1 firmware handles tiering and load balancing that can help manage SSDs by moving data based on access patterns, Vigil said. Although EqualLogic has been offering single-level cell (SLC) SSDs in the PS6000 line since 2009, Vigil said less than 10% of EqualLogic systems ship with SSDs. “We’re seeing that our customers don’t need a lot of SSDs, but SSDs gives a nice performance boost for those who do need them,” he said.

Does it make sense to use “not so reliable” MLC SSD for enterprise storage? Well, it really depends on your situation. Hitachi is the first vendor launching eMLC SSD, I am sure others will follow this trend. MLC costs a lot less than SLC (at least 50%) and SSD is known for its huge READ IOPS performance, so it may be a good alternative for your database, exchange type of appilcations.

Of course, for those who can afford, FusionIO is your only choice currently, think about the IOPS coming from a 5TB SSD (also based on MLC), it’s just unbelievably fast and expensive as well!

Finally, I enjoyed reading this article related to Equallogic and SSD: “Are costly SSDs worth the money?”

He bought three SSDs to serve as top-tier storage for business intelligence (BI) applications on his SAN. The flash storage outperformed 60 15,000rpm Fibre Channel disk drives when it came to small-block reads.

However, when Marbes used the SSDs for large-block random reads and any writes, “the 60 15K spindles crushed the SSDs,” he said, demonstrating that flash deployments should be strategically targeted at specific applications.