Modular data centers push SSD storage adoption at Microsoft

Microsoft is gradually moving away from mechanical-disk storage and toward solid-state drives, starting with high-density storage applications, such as SAN. The company has started replacing spindles with speeds of 10,000RPM or faster in its data centers with SSD arrays, with plans to gradually make a total transition to SSD-based storage.

One of the main reasons is its transition to a new container-based data center design, which Microsoft manager of global operations engineering Nic Bustamante says is not very friendly with high-density storage systems comprised of mechanical disks.

“Search is number-one on our radar,” Bustamante said about the transition to SSD. Because Microsoft is competing with Google in the search market, it is looking for any edge it can gain and using SSD-based storage to support the Bing search engine helps gain some of that edge.

Advertisement