- Cost:Governments throughout the world are facing budget constraints. In the U.S., the Pentagon has already agreed to reduce its budget by $450 billion over the next decade and faces an additional $500 billion in automatic cuts if Congress fails to put together a plan that addresses the nation’s growing deficit. As the money supply tightens, OEMs and integrators will be expected to cut costs while still meeting operational needs. A storage system built with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and standardized architectures, such as the one outlined above, costs about one-third those built with proprietary components and designs.
- Speed of Deployment:Using commercially available components slashes the time from design to deployment.
- Greater Flexibility:The section above describes the use of Intel 520 drives, but any 7mm drives could be used, including ones from Axiom, Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, Micron, OCZ, Samsung, Western Digital and others. This gives OEMs and their customers greater flexibility in deploying storage solutions with the exact speed and capacity they need. And by simply swapping out the power supplies or network connections, the same basic unit can be deployed in a wide array of locations.
- Future Proofing:With SSDs, storage capacity keeps increasing while prices plummet. Using a standard architecture, customers can buy and swap out SSDs with higher speed or capacity drives as they become available.
- Field Servicing:With the above design, the SSDs are hot-swappable at the front of the box. The fans are also designed for quick replacement in the field. Spare components can be kept on hand and exchanged as needed by minimally trained operators, rather than having to send the unit into the shop for repair.
