Flash vs more spindles

Ardvrknash — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:25:36 GMT

Probably an over asked question... but where is the break point (or IS there a specific point) when more spinning disks will work just fine as opposed to shifting to flash?

Re: Flash vs more spindles

jodey — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 01:35:29 GMT

This typically will come down to a latency and cost analysis.

Consider the following from a raw IOPS/disk perspective:

7.2k SATA = 80 IOPS

10k SAS = 160 IOPS

15k SAS = 180 IOPS

SSD = 8000 IOPS

The break point would be at the point where available capacity required meets available performance required at a particular latency number.

If I need hundreds of TB of capacity and reasonable latency numbers (sub 10ms) then havin many SAS spindles will accomodate.

If my required capacity is not extremely high but I need sub ms latecy then a handful of SSD's will do the trick.

In hybrid systems you get the balance of both -- I get the desired capacity of SAS or SATA with a performance enhancement of caching hot data within an SSD cache.

So what is the breaking point? Whatever it is that you need that meets the capacity and latency requirements.

Hoe this helps,

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Flash vs more spindles

Re: Flash vs more spindles