HPE Affordable SSDs for Servers to Replace HDDs

By Erik Grigson, WW senior product manager, mainstream compute shared server options, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Get SSD performance at 10,000rpm HDD price points thanks to new HPE SATA Very Read Optimized (VRO) SSDs., now qualified for HPE ProLiant, HPE Apollo, and HPE Synergy platforms.

HPE SATA Very Read Optimized (VRO) SSD

When SSD performance meets 10,000rpm HDD price points, you get the best of both worlds. And for years, that’s what HPE has been working toward: enabling to experience the performance, reliability, and energy efficiency of SSDs on HPE ProLiant, HPE Apollo, and HPE Synergy platforms – at the closest possible price to the HDDs. Now available to replace HDDs in popular workloads, that’s exactly what we deliver.

HPE SATA VRO SSDs deliver up to 175x faster performance, 5x lower latencies, and 3x better energy efficiency than the fastest HPE HDDs – and all at a similar price point to 10,000 HDDs.^[1] Engineered for the very read-optimized (VRO) workloads that have lived on HDDs till now, the new HPE SATA VRO SSDs with QLC NAND deliver the future of affordable performance.

Here’s an overview of the SATA VRO SSD storage option that’s now qualified for ProLiant, Apollo and Synergy platforms, along with an overview of the workloads they’re designed for and the ways you can benefit.

Value of VRO
Top workloads of today and the future are very read intensive, meaning they typically read more than they write (≥90% reads vs. writes) which is why HPE has defined the new category of VRO. HDDs are typically the bottleneck that has prevented companies from getting the most out of their ProLiant, Apollo and Synergy platforms.

SATA VRO SSDs are for the many performance- and capacity-sensitive workloads that are driving the future, yet unable to keep pace on HDDs. If you’ve been doing any of the following workloads on ProLiant, Apollo or Synergy platforms and been using 10,000rpm or 7.200rpm HDDs for storage (1-8TB capacities have been the most common), you’ll benefit from SATA VRO SSDs, which offer endurance that exceeds VRO target workload needs, typically by up to 2x.

Six target VRO workloads

1. SQL databases (business intelligence and analytics, BI/DSS, TPC-H)

2. NoSQL databases (Cassandra, MongoDB)

3. Hadoop and big data analytics

4. Object stores

5. Content delivery and media streaming (CDN)

6. AI and ML where data lakes are used in model training and development

With VRO, you get speed of SSDs fused with affordability of HDDs
What unites all of the above VRO workloads is they’ve historically lived on HDDs and they revolve around a mix of ≥90% random reads and ≤10% sequential writes. The random read load is particularly difficult for HDDs, yet ideal for SATA VRO SSDs, which are built on the QLC storage technology. Based on HPE testing, you can get 70,000 read IO/s on an SATA VRO SSD compared to 400 IO/s on the fastest HPE 10,000rpm HDD.

Upgrade that typically pays for itself
For st a few pennies more per gigabyte than a 10,000rpm HDD, you can get affordable HPE enterprise SSDs that are up to 3x more energy efficient. These upfront efficiency gains enable you to save annually on power and cooling, while also getting 10x more reliability than 10,000rpm HDDs and 100x more than 7.200rpm HDDs.^[2]

Reliable replacement for 1-8TB HDDs
Optimized for HPE servers that have used 10,000rpm and 7.200rpm HDDs for years, the new SATA VRO SSDs are available in the same interface and form factor as HDDs for platform continuity and include all the HPE enterprise SATA SSD features that you’ve expected for years: end-to-end data path protection, power loss protection, adaptive thermal monitoring, and more.

Easiest and most affordable way to experience all-flash HPE server benefits
Customers have been asking for a drive that delivers the benefits of SSDs at 10,000rpm HDD price points. Keep using the same HPE platforms you’ve been using for years, just swap out your HDDs for SATA VRO SSDs and experience the difference. Here’s a look at the HPE workload research and how you can benefit on each and every VRO workload.

• SQL databases: 10x faster SQL analytics at lower TCO

• NoSQL databases: 7x faster NoSQL on ProLiant DL380 at lower TCO

• Hadoop and big data: 2 hours faster sorts on Apollo 4200 at lower TCO

• Object stores: 6x faster object stores at lower TCO

• CDN: serve 200x more CDN users at lower TCO

• AI and ML: 25% faster AI/ML training at lower TCO

Future of affordable workload performance here
For years, HPE customers have been asking for a drive that delivers the benefits of SSDs at 10,000rpm HDD price points. Keep using the same HPE platforms, just swap out your HDDs for SATA VRO SSDs and experience the difference.

Resource:
HPE server options.

^[1} Based on datasheet comparisons of the HPE SATA VRO SSD (1.92TB) and HPE 10,000rpm HDDs (2.4TB). Actual performance varies by capacity and may vary slightly in your configuration.
^[2] Based on SATA VRO SSDs and HPE 10,000rpm and HPE 7.200rpm HDD datasheet comparisons of unrecoverable bit error rates (UBER values). UBER values quantify the rate at which data stored on a device is lost, making UBER values an important reliability metrics.