Enterprise IT shops now choose SSD storage
Read the article titled, “Enterprise IT shops now choose SSD storage“[PDF attached]
Write a four (4) page paper in which you:
1. Examine the major benefits for an organization to use SSDs.
2. Analyze the major disadvantages and possible hazards that an organization should consider before adopting SSDs.
3. Recommend whether or not Delaware Health and Social Services and the Disabled American Veterans should seriously consider SSDs for their organizations. Provide a rationale for your response.
4. Determine whether SSDs are more or less difficult for computer forensics personnel to examine. Suggest whether or not an organization, such as Health and Social Services and the Disabled American Veterans, should consider the difficulty of computer forensic examinations when considering the purchase of SSDs. Provide a rationale for your response.
5. Use at least five quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.
Enterprise IT shops now choose SSD storage
Recently, organizations are adopting various ways to improve enterprise storage, which are reliable and quality, for instance, the solid-state storage(SSD). The SSD plays a vital role in storage of important data electronically, where the technology is developed from silicon microchips (Hallak, Levy, Goren, and Horev, 2019). Solid-state storage is available in three forms: solid-state drives, the solid-state modules and solid-state cards. Although, the nature of solid-state storage is changing, organizations are urged to consider services from different vendors. The paper seeks to discuss solid-state storage in Enterprise IT shops.
The solid-state storage is incomparable to other storage drives, especially the drive’s performance. The SSD uses power for data storage and does not have mechanical or moving parts, hence enhancing the fast movement of data and bandwidth. Compared to the traditional hard disk drives, the SSD has a higher read and write speed of 500MB/s read, and 475MB/s write enabling organizations to send emails (Hallak, Levy, Goren, and Horev, 2019). Additionally, the SSD lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO), where the SSD saves up on various storage services, such as space and footprint.
The SSD requires less power to operate and, as compared to magnetic disks hence does not require climate control and other investments (Ahmadian, Taheri, and, Asadi, 2019). The storage technology produces less heat because, during the process, the storage device builds up less heat. More so, the SSD is highly durable because the technology has no mechanical parts which can be damaged easily, especially through vibrations and wear and tear compared to the hard drives. The SSD maintains data integrity since the technology has controlled intelligence to prevent leakage of data, has an error-correcting code, and caches for reading and writing and garbage collection service (Hallak, Levy, Goren, and Horev, 2019). The SSD promotes data integrity, which is the most important in the current world of cybercrime. Since the SSD is light and easier to carry, the storage device can be carried anywhere and used at any time.
Despite the advantages of solid-state storage, technology has various disadvantages, which should be considered before investing in one. The SSD has a complex data extraction process, which is difficult and consumes time. Compared with other storage devices, such as the HDD, the SSD data extraction may be costly, especially when needed urgently in an organization. In the case of a cyber-attack, the recovery process may take long, affecting business continuity hence affecting business operations. Purchasing an SSD is very expensive compared to HDD, which is a disadvantage to most organizations and personal users.
SSD has limited writing cycles; hence it can lead to data loss, especially during the rewriting of new data after erasing blocks. The technology cannot overwrite the available blocks. The limited write cycles may affect the organization’s data integrity, especially when data cannot be recovered or may be completely lost. Due to short write cycles, the SSD is unable to archive data making it challenging for organizations to access archived data (Ahmadian, Taheri, and, Asadi, 2019). Most organizations secure data in archives for monetization, analysis and accessibility of data. Additionally, the device memory cache and controller chip are highly suspensible to damages, therefore, leading to data loss. The SSD has more disadvantages than advantages, but organizations may decide to take a risk and enjoy the underlying benefits.
Cost and capacity are the major challenges organizations go through when choosing and investing in storage. Organizations such as, healthcare industry, engineering, research institute and education institutes are some organizations that embrace the use of SSD to save on time and enhance productivity (Kesavan, et, al., 2020). The Delaware health and social services and the American veteran should not use solid-state storage technology because of security and data integrity issues. The technology may be saved on time and resources, but as data grows, especially in the Delaware health date, the organization may be at risk of leakages or data loss. Health data should be secured and maintained with high integrity, especially the patient’s diagnosis and treatment. The fact that SSD technology has a unique structure for filling, extracting, and recovering data can be complex and eventually lead to data loss (Shahidi,et,al.,2016). Additionally, since technology can leak information or lead to vulnerability, the organization may spend more money in recovery.
The disabled American Veteran organization might choose the solid-based storage technology because it uses the storage on a small scale. The fact that American veteran organizations use the technology on a small scale does not reduce or prevent security issues. Data integrity is the most important aspect to consider when choosing storage methods. Information present in the database about the disabled veterans is very confidential, and in case the memory or the controller chip gets damaged, the information can be lost. It is not worth it for the Delaware health and social services organization and the Disabled American veteran to consider the SSD storage due to security risks (Kesavan, et, al., 2020). Security should be a priority, especially when dealing with big data and the vast growing organization.
SSD technology is more difficult for computer forensic personnel to examine due to various characteristics of the technology (Hallak, Levy, Goren, and Horev, 2019). When deleting data from the device, the technology does not purge information from the device due to the complex algorithm and the nature of the model. The manufacturer’s issue can only be addressed, which is challenging, especially when the manufacturer is far. Various companies have tried to develop a solid-state drive toolbox to fix the issue, but it remains a bother to most forensic computer personnel (Reddy, 2019). Additionally, the SSD controller software affects data redundancy when the disk is opened. The disk garbage collector depends on instructions from the operating system where most personnel confuse with the TRIM instructions used to enhance the performance of the solid-state storage (Shahidi,et,al.,2016).
Digital forensic computer personnel goes through the above issues, although there is fewer data concerning the challenges. The issues affect the organization, especially on data recovery, which is a priority (Reddy, 2019). Forensic computer personnel should understand solid-state storage control behaviors and housekeeping methods (Hallak, Levy, Goren, and Horev, 2019). With the challenges encountered by the forensic computer personnel, I would not recommend the Delaware health and social services organization and the Disabled American veterans to consider the purchase of SSD. The major issue is difficulty in erasing and recovery of data.
Solid-state storage technology was adopted to minimize the challenges faced when using the HD drives, which consume power, low data speed and not reliability to most organizations. SSD technology is economical, especially in having on time and resources (Hallak, Levy, Goren, and Horev, 2019). The technology does not use more power and does not produce excessive heat. Apart from the benefits, the SSD has several challenges that affect most computer personnel, such as forensics. The issue begins with a limited number of erasing and rewrite cycles with fewer to a hundred thousand cycles. The issue has affected the recovery and erasing process. The SSD technology is not suitable, especially when security is a top priority, the technology can lead to vulnerability and cyber-attacks. However, some organizations may decide to take the risk due to the benefits provided by the technology.
References
Ahmadian, S., Taheri, F., & Asadi, H. (2019). Evaluating Reliability of SSD-Based I/O Caches in Enterprise Storage Systems. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing.
Hallak, R., Levy, A., Goren, A., & Horev, A. (2019). U.S. Patent Application No. 15/804,329.
Kesavan, R., Curtis-Maury, M., Devadas, V., & Mishra, K. (2020). Countering Fragmentation in an Enterprise Storage System. ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS), 15(4), 1-35.
Reddy, N. (2019). Solid State Device (SSD) Forensics. In Practical Cyber Forensics (pp. 379-400). Apress, Berkeley, CA.
Shahidi, N., Kandemir, M. T., Arjomand, M., Das, C. R., Jung, M., & Sivasubramaniam, A. (2016, November). Exploring the potentials of parallel garbage collection in ssds for enterprise storage systems. In SC’16: Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (pp. 561-572). IEEE.
