Why Faster Storage May NOT Fix It

With all the myriad of possible hardware solutions to storage I/O performance issues, the question that people are starting to ask is something like: "If I just buy newer, faster Storage, won’t that fix my application performance problem?"

In this article, we take a 10,000-foot view of just three issues that affect I/O performance to shine some technical light on the question and hopefully give you a more satisfying answer (or maybe more questions) as you look to discover IT truth.

These three issues by themselves can create I/O bottlenecks causing degradation to your applications of 30-50% or more.

The big picture is we have been focused on Storage Performance for a very long time and at all layers.  We’ve seen lots of hardware solutions that were going to fix Storage slowness.  And we’ve seen that about the time a new generation comes along, there will be reasons it will still not fix the problem.  Maybe it does today, but tomorrow you’ll overtax that solution as well.  As computing gets faster and storage gets denser, your needs/desires to use it will grow even faster.  We are constantly looking into the crystal ball knowing the future presents new challenges.  We know by looking into the rear-view mirror, the future doesn’t solve the problem, it just means the problems are different.

So yes, go ahead and buy that shiny new toy.  It will help, and your users will see improvements for a time.  But we’ll be there filling in those gaps and your users will get even greater improvements.