SSDs Speed Up Exchange Operations for Law Firm

125-person firm deploys Nimble Storage's SSD to speed up Microsoft Exchange email operations, including disaster recovery. 

The notion of using solid state hard drives (SSDs) to speed up storage operations isn't very new. There are more than a dozen vendors that offer some kind of SSD storage, or combine solid-state electronics with traditional rotating media, for both dedicated storage and storage area networks. But last month we saw a case study posted online about how one 125-person law firm deployed Nimble Storage's SSD to help speed up its Microsoft Exchange email operations, including disaster recovery. It is worth reviewing to see the process by which the firm made the migration to using this technology.

We all know that the amount of data that is stored digitally is growing at an astounding rate. This infographic from NetApp shows a remarkable rise in storage recently.  The cited research says digital data will grow to 2.75 zettabytes in 2012 and rocket toward nearly 8 zettabytes by 2015.

Research from IDC and others shows how much data we are all generating these days from various blogs, Web pages and other digital sources.

To help manage this data explosion, many storage vendors have been offering some form of tiered storage array where they move data from rotating media to SSDs. And it seems as if this past month has seen numerous announcements of upgraded products in this area. For example, Drobo announced in April its automated tiering technology for its B1200i array that sorts out where data should land on particular kinds of storage. Customers simply insert SSDs into their array to realize the performance acceleration from the SSDs. The company claims there is literally no other configuration necessary to realize this performance benefit. The array starts at $18,000.

Tegile has some new hybrid storage arrays called Zebi. They claim to be up to five times faster and can automatically include deduping technology to require less storage capacity and are also much less expensive than all SSD-based arrays.

Whiptail also announced in May a new generation of its Invicta silicon storage array that provides highly scalable IOPS, extreme bandwidth, and ultra low latency at groundbreaking price/performance. And Pure Storage has a new version of its flagship product, the Pure Storage FlashArray with expanded features, including High Availability and enhanced Data Fabric resiliency, and always-on full array encryption. It also offers a completely SSD-based storage array.

Then there is Nimble, which uses a SSD cache acceleration fronting high-capacity disk drives.

All of the hybrid arrays have some kind of management software that moves frequently used data to the SSD storage area. But depending on your own situation, this may or may not be satisfactory because of the amount of data that needs to be on the SSDs or the amount of time that operator intervention is required to manage the process. Some of the newer products have better or more automated tools to handle the drive management.

David Strom is one of the leading experts on network and Internet technologies. He has written and spoken extensively on topics such as VOIP, convergence, email, network management, Internet applications, wireless and Web services for more than 25 years.

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