I am constantly inspired by the technologies that come into the marketplace. Although most new products are mediocre, there are some that are really deserving of praise.

Occasionally a disruptive product shakes the world. Oh how I look forward to those times… However, there are products that make specific use of multiple technologies to leverage the strengths and weaknesses to compliment each other for a common goal.

Each technology may not be a great technology, but when combined it is amazing. Take for example the hybrid car. When the gasoline shortage of the 70s happened it was a shock to most people that gas can actually run out. That prompted the development of an alternative fuel for cars. While most people thought of a 1 to 1 fuel replacement, a combination of fuels for a single vehicle was radical. Gas prices stayed low after that and the gas shortage scare was a distant memory.

The concept of an alternative fuel car was put on low priority. I have seen some attempts of a natural gas car, the electric car and even the vegetable oil car (usually collected from restaurants left over from cooking).

All valiant efforts worthy of merit, but the hybrid car was the one that made it into production. The hybrid car makes use of electric for low-speed, stop and go local driving while making use of the gasoline engine for high speed driving. The use of each the technology were used where they are most efficient. The end product; a car capable of 90+ miles per gallon.

The same thing has now been done for SSD drives. There are 2 kinds of SSD drives, the MLC and the SLC drive. The MLC is the cheaper, consumer grade SSD that has a lower MTBF (mean time before failure) than the SLC drive. It is not a write optimized drive but does a good job at reads and affordable. The SLC is a more expensive, enterprise grade drive, but write optimized. the SLC has a higher MTBF. With these attributes and limited IT budgets it was only a question of time before an SSD hybrid SAN would be available.

Dell Compellent was one of the first to take the hybrid concept to use multiple RAID levels and multiple drive speeds to uniquely offer the most efficiency in SAN storage on the market. The SSD hybrid SAN is the next generation of storage virtualization and tiering bringing affordable, ultra-fast performance at a relatively reasonable cost.

We have to give credit where credit is due, we owe shrinking IT budgets and stormy economic conditions for the birth of innovations such as these.

It is the rainy days that make the sunny days so much more enjoyable.