{"id":337208,"date":"2020-02-15T12:58:06","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T10:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=337208"},"modified":"2020-02-15T12:59:39","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T10:59:39","slug":"south-african-data-centres-are-moving-to-ssds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cloud-hosting\/337208-south-african-data-centres-are-moving-to-ssds.html","title":{"rendered":"South African data centres are moving to SSDs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Solid-state drives have become increasingly prevalent due to their reduced form factor, increased speeds, and improved reliability.<\/p>\n

Ghassan Azzi, Sales Director of Western Digital, told MyBroadband that solid-state drives (SSDs) could start dominating the global storage industry in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Western Digital has noted a significant increase in the sale of portable SSDs, particularly in Europe, where quarter-on-quarter sales doubled in Q4 of 2019.<\/p>\n

Azzi believes that SSDs will chip away at mechanical drive market share in the coming years, but that this will be a gradual process.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the total SSD market value was just under $35 billion, said Azzi, with this number expected to increase to over $80 billion by 2025.<\/p>\n

SSDs in data centres<\/h3>\n

One area where SSDs offer great value is within data centres.<\/p>\n

Many data centres are in the process of transitioning to this technology, as it offers significant performance improvements over legacy HDD technology.<\/p>\n

However, given the requirement of transferring data onto the new SSDs, as well as the additional cost and work required in doing so, the process of transitioning a data centre onto SSDs cannot take place overnight.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband asked local data centres whether they are currently using SSDs, and what their plans are regarding the technology.<\/p>\n

\n

Xneelo<\/h3>\n

Xneelo told MyBroadband that its data centres do use SSDs, but said this varies according to server use cases and customer requirements.<\/p>\n

“We have made significant progress in transitioning to SSDs. All-new Web Hosting packages, Managed or Self Managed servers are provisioned with SSDs by default, at no additional cost,” said Xneelo.<\/p>\n

“Should an existing customer with an older server wish to upgrade their server specs to accommodate SSDs, we do so on request and charge a once-off setup fee.”<\/p>\n

Xneelo said that the upgrade process to SSDs for older servers is part of its routine maintenance.<\/p>\n

“Systems which will benefit from the transition to SSDs, due to increased workload for example, are upgraded without delay.”<\/p>\n

“That said, from time to time, SSD global supply backlogs have forced us to extend our timelines.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Africa Data Centres<\/h3>\n

Angus Hay, general manager for Africa Data Centres in South Africa,\u00a0said that while Africa Data Centres provides the data centre environment, customers run their own equipment within it.<\/p>\n

“Africa Data Centres is a colocation provider, offering controlled high availability environments for cloud, computing and networking equipment. The equipment within these environments is owned and operated by Africa Data Centres’ customers,” said Hay.<\/p>\n

“These customers certainly use SSDs increasingly to improve speed and reliability, and to reduce power consumption in their storage systems,” said Hay.<\/p>\n

He highlighted that the power consumption element is not a particular concern for its customers, however – despite concerns many have over load-shedding.<\/p>\n

“In Africa Data Centres environments, [customers] can always be certain of power availability,” said Hay.<\/p>\n

“Africa Data Centres standard operations include the ability to run for extended periods on generators, and to maintain these systems concurrently and continually at full availability\u00a0in this configuration. ”<\/p>\n

\"Africa<\/a><\/p>\n

Now read: New AMD chipsets coming this year \u2013 Report<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MyBroadband asked local data centres whether they are currently using SSDs, and what their plans are regarding the technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341039,"featured_media":193070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[48635,35,793,60101],"class_list":["post-337208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting","tag-africa-data-centres","tag-headline","tag-ssd","tag-xneelo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}