One emerging technology that could help with Fibre Channel disk sprawl is solid-state drives (SSDs), which have the I/O speeds required for the ever-increasing CPU requirements of relational databases, but without the need to throttle hundreds of spinning disks to get there.

Even so, Kubacki said he isn't looking to SSD use because his entire IT environment recently moved to high-end EMC storage. "We're able to manage that environment with less than five people because the team is very comfortable with the technologies we have," he said. "We can do that because we configure all the Clariions the same way and it maps to our internal storage management allocation system.

"At this point I'm also building a new data center, and just like I haven't talked to some of the other disk providers to this point, I'm not considering SSD because I don't want to take my eye off the ball in terms of the team building the data center and putting in disaster recovery. To introduce a new technology new, I think, would be disruptive," he said.

In contrast, Herbalife's Hansen said his shop is about to install its first RAID array comprised entirely of SSD in his Symmetrix array. "It will be in production and we'll probably set our indexes on it. We'll see how it goes. If we get that virtualization thing, we can get SSD from another vendor that might even lower our cost to use it," he said.

© 2007 Computerworld Inc.