Expect HDD, SSD shortages as AI rewrites the rules of storage hierarchy — multiple companies announce price hikes, too |
Posted by nohup_me@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 30 comments
Monsta_Owl@reddit
I call BS. They are building factories since for 3 years. Construction will typically fun for a year to completion. Been building a lot of factories since COVID.
Excuses to raise prices.
ime1em@reddit
Could be both most likely. For sure their profit margin increased
RenlyHoekster@reddit
Was also posted in Newsmaxx...
and my response there is the same as it is here:
The article indicates that consumer SSDs and HDDs are not expected to be greatly impacted. Enterprise cares not for our cute little 1TB or 4TB NVME drives, and SATA is just a toy for them. (Meaning, good for us) ;)
ClickClick_Boom@reddit
Well we're not all gamers here. It sucks for those of us that buy enterprise SSDs second hand for our homelabs. The U.3 1.92TB Kioxia that I purchased about half a year ago are already +$30 over what I paid... nevermind my hopes to some day get my hands on those 15TB, 30TB enterprise SSD...
I've already toasted a couple consumer M.2s in my server including one 4TB m.2.
RenlyHoekster@reddit
Sure, but in r/hardware I don't expect the r/datahoaders or r/homedatacenter crowd. I have 16TB SATA drives in my NAS, so I am not a typical gamer I think. Yet, enterprise doesn't use SATA drives, they use SAS for nearline storage, and sure enough, the SAS version of my SATA drives is a good 20% - 30% more expensive, and that stuff is evidently set to get more expensive.
So, I do think us "prosumers" with "decent" NASes at home are interested mostly in storage that isn't quite in the enterprise side... mostly. U.3 is not prosumer, it's entrprise, yepp. And that has nothing to do with being a gamer or not, and sadly, folks with SAS, U.3, and CXL at home get to pony up more.
ExternalHat6012@reddit
The sas is upsetting, I'm running low on space and my NAS is using a perc 710 and 4 8terabyte drives in raid 5. I was planning to upgrade them to 4 16tb drives but with prices being what they are it looks like I'm not, unless I go with SATA but this whole reason I'm running the perc card was for sas.
meshreplacer@reddit
There was a great time where you could buy NOS SN840’s U.2 6.4tb drives cheaper per gig vs consumer etc..
ClickClick_Boom@reddit
That's damn well how it should be when they've been ran hard and put away wet which is often the case with used enterprise gear. But apparently people are willing to pay more for used enterprise gear so it sells for more :/
Alive_Worth_2032@reddit
Looking just at price per TB is not a correct way to compare used enterprise drives vs consumer though. Because most enterprice gear is at worst comparable vs upper mid tier SSDs in terms of performance.
Go check what a TLC consumer drive with DDR cache and 4GB/s+ SUSTAINED write speed costs (they barely exist). I think you will find the refurbished server parts are still very price competitive.
Stingray88@reddit
I stopped using SATA back in 2019… even my NAS is all NVMe.
loozerr@reddit
One way to waste money
Stingray88@reddit
It's not a waste of money in the slightest. It serves exactly its purpose to my specifications, not yours.
I wanted a completely silent NAS, which you simply can't do with HDDs. And when I built it about 10 months ago, NVMe SSDs were actually cheaper than SATA. It lives on my desk in my 2nd bedroom which is also used as a guest room. I didn't want guests to have to listen to whirring hard drives all night while they're trying to sleep. You might reply to that "can't you just stick it in a closet or basement?" I live in a 2 bedroom condo in the city, there is no where for me to hide a NAS away that isn't active living space.
loozerr@reddit
"SATA drives are still good for home computing"
"but not for ME!"
Okay buddy.
Stingray88@reddit
Did you read my comment? I literally explained my use case. I simply don’t have a use case for SATA anymore. I would have one if I still used HDDs, but I explained exactly why I don’t. And SATA SSDs aren’t any cheaper than NVMe SSDs anymore.
Jaded_Ad9605@reddit
I once got an enterprise ssd to play with at home for testing. My wife asked me why i smiled so much. I toldnher the disk was worth more than our car.
spiral6@reddit
Enterprise relies on read intensive or mixed use drives, which come in any variety of 1.92/1.6 TB models or higher.
And yes, while the new trend seems to be shifting away from SATA and towards NVMe, there's still limitations with heat and density of drives (as well as PCIe lanes) that lead to still requiring those smaller drives in bulk.
Alive_Worth_2032@reddit
Consumer HDDs often use the same platters as enterprise drives, just fewer of them. It's true that none helium drives will probably not be impacted . But any higher capacity consumer HDDs partially share production lines with enterprise.
As for SSD, it's all just NAND in the end.
Stilgar314@reddit
So, those cute little drives are made in different production lines? Because cute little consumer GPUs are different from big ugly AI GPUs and, still, they ate the full production capacity and hindered the offer available for consumers.
Aggravating-Dot132@reddit
Yes, but memory itself will be in use. Which will affect the price in some way
eetsu@reddit
The controllers and PCBs may not be the same, but I'm sure there might be some competition for the NAND chips and drive up the cost of NAND in general.... It's not about consumer SSD SKUs being swallowed hole as if this was the chia mining madness all over again, it's about driving up demand for NAND
shinodaxseo@reddit
There's a news like that every 2 years
labalag@reddit
Price goes up because demand goes up and supply barely increases. Basic economics in action.
shinodaxseo@reddit
There's a news like that every 2 years
Tman1677@reddit
The storage market just seems to have insane boom/bust cycles recently where the prices literally double, then get cut by 70%. We seem to be in the boom phase of that where prices are higher and production ramps up, in a year we'll be reading about the extreme oversupply and price cuts as suppliers go out of business
whyte_ryce@reddit
The AI boom has superseded the typical NAND boom/bust cycles. Prices are high and supply is tight and vendors are selling whatever they are crapping out. If AI HW spending suffers a drastic cut then things may go back to the typical pattern.
Tman1677@reddit
The booms and busts are always driven by industry trends. I'm pretty long on AI, far from an AI skeptic, but even if AI transforms the industry and increases datacenter demand 10x, eventually the supply catches up. It catches up a bit too much and we have a bust period with shockingly low prices.
whyte_ryce@reddit
NAND boom/bust cycles used to be like clock work because the reactionary cap ex cuts and explosions in reaction to the market were easy to predict. NAND crashes were something you could draw out because demand and supply was comparatively (to now with AI) easy to approximate. Hell, at one point you could easily predict the odd year FMS vendor parties would be lavish and the following even years would be sparse to non-existent
If you're arguing this is typical NAND market behavior, no it is not. Again, AI spending has superseded the typical patterns. The yearly swings that came from pure over and under spending on cap ex are gone because vendors have been able to sell whatever they can with no problem.
If you're arguing that some point in the future. Ok, great. But that's relatively meaningless in this conversation since unlike previous NAND boom/bust cycles you're going to have a hard time pin-pointing when. If you're arguing demand will eventually match supply, well sure maybe eventually but the demand for more drives and faster drives as of now seems to be continuing to outpace capacity expansion.
It's actually quite amusing. Flash vendors have pretty much stopped trying to push ancillary tech like smart ssds or data placement as a way to sell drives like they did in previous years. No one gives a shit about pushing FDP to convince companies to buy new drives because they can just sell plain jane SSDs with no bells or whistles for ridiculous prices without even trying. Hell, QLC is actually a thing now because of AI
illicITparameters@reddit
Well this is gonna suck in 6 months when I have to order a new server cluster.
INITMalcanis@reddit
I was literally just thinking today "huh SSDs have come down in price". Shut up, brain, I can't afford you any more.
AutoModerator@reddit
Hello nohup_me! Please double check that this submission is original reporting and is not an unverified rumor or repost that does not rise to the standards of /r/hardware. If this link is reporting on the work of another site/source or is an unverified rumor, please delete this submission. If this warning is in error, please report this comment and we will remove it.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.