Migrating server storage to SSDs: Analysis of tradeoffs

Recently, flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) have become standard options for laptop and desktop storage, but their im-pact on enterprise server storage has not been studied. Provi-sioning server storage is challenging. It requires optimizing for the performance, capacity, power and reliability needs of the expected workload, all while minimizing financial costs. In this paper we analyze a number of workload traces from servers in both large and small data centers, to de-cide whether and how SSDs should be used to support each. We analyze both complete replacement of disks by SSDs, as well as use of SSDs as an intermediate tier between disks and DRAM. We describe an automated tool that, given de-vice models and a block-level trace of a workload, deter-mines the least-cost storage configuration that will suppor