The input/output performance of enterprise storage is important for many enterprises, but for online auction site eBay it's a critical business driver. So, when eBay's business units needed more virtual machine deployments the company decided to ditch its hard disk drive-based arrays in favor of solid-state drive storage.

After replacing 100TB of SSD storage, the move began to pay huge dividends: A five-fold boost in I/O performance, according to an article in Computerworld. The SSDs also allowed eBay to cut rack space in half and power consumption by almost 80 percent.

"One rack [of SSD storage] is equal to eight or nine racks of something else," Michael Craft, eBay's manager of QA Systems Administration told Computerworld.

Moving from HDD-based arrays to SSD storage was a "pure play in our virtualization stack," said Craft, but with such strong results eBay is considering using the technology elsewhere in the enterprise.

"We're looking to expand that as it fits other people's needs," Craft said. "We were having challenges...keeping our space in check by not taking up half the data center with [hard drive] spindles. With the SSD, literally, I've been able to eliminate racks of gear."

Before jumping on the SDD bandwagon, it's worth noting that cost is a major consideration. SSDs are typically exponentially more expensive than HDDs. However, even storage solutions makers have noted that the performance boost afforded by an SSD leaves alternative upgrade options for HDDs pretty much in the dust.

For more:
- read the Computerworld article 

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