How Does SSD Storage Enhance The Performance Of Your VPS Server?
Data storage in web hosting has undergone a tremendous transformation. Storage devices used for web hosting are divided into two types — Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives. Conventionally, Hard Disk Drives (HDD) have been the preferred mode of storage for web hosting providers. However, with website owners looking to improve their website speed and performance, web hosting companies are offering robust and powerful Solid State Drives (SSD).
SSD-based web hosting plans are offered across all hosting types like SSD VPS, SSD Cloud, and SSD Dedicated Servers.
In this article, we will decode how SSD storage improves the performance of your VPS Server. Let us look at what SSD is.
What are Solid State Drives (SSD)?
SSD stands for Solid State Drives, and it is a fundamentally different and new way of storing data. Instead of using spinning disks and a needle (as done in HDDs or Hard Disk Drives), SSDs use NAND flash memory.
There are no moving parts in an SSD drive. It’s been around since the 1950s, but it was never commercially viable, due to its high costs. But since the early 1990s, there has been significant improvement in storage hardware. As a result of the advancement in the last few years, SSDs have not only become viable, but they’ve also become the storage method of choice.
SSD for VPS Servers
If you’ve looked for a hosting plan recently, you would have almost certainly come across SSD VPS Hosting. It’s becoming popular by the day and pretty much all leading hosting providers now have an SSD VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting plan. This indeed means that your VPS Server stores its data on Solid State Drives (SSDs) instead of traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs).
Switching over to a modern SSD storage offers some significant benefits to your website.
1. Speed
The speed of SSD is what sets it apart from HDD. It is, by far, the most advantageous feature of SSD VPS Hosting. In an HDD, the arm reads and writes data off a spinning disk. Retrieving information with this method takes time. In SSDs, however, there are no moving parts. Information is retrieved almost instantly as a result. This means that your website will load noticeably faster with SSD storage.
Site speed is an important factor because of two things. One, you want your customers to have a smooth experience. Second, of course, is the fact that Google now considers website speed to be one of the deciding factors for rating a website on its index. This means that Google will show faster websites before the slower ones. So, SSDs will help you with your website SEO as well.
This enhancement of speed is particularly good for eCommerce websites. Usually, an eCommerce website has to index products and show a bunch of them, along with pictures and information. That is data-heavy. With SSD storage, all that information can be retrieved quicker. One last thing to consider when looking at speed is the fact that SSDs can read and write data at the same time. HDDs cannot do that. The result is that processing requests take very little time with SSDs.
2. Durability
HDDs fail from time to time. The reason is that they have a lot of moving parts. The disks, the arm — there’s a lot of movement inside an HDD. Whenever there’s movement, there’s wear and tear. And in case of prolonged wear and tear, failure is imminent.
If you’ve seen the hosting world enough, you know that HDDs fail all the time. To mitigate the problem, hosting companies offer great data backup services and do help you get your data back. However, while all this happens, your website might be down. And that’s a huge problem for any website.
SSDs have nearly no moving parts. There’s no wear and tear, and as a result, they don’t fail as often. Now, this does not mean that SSDs don’t fail at all, but they are quite long-lasting. Yes, you’ll still need backups just in case, but you certainly won’t be using them many times. Also, SSDs resist physical damages much better than HDDs.
3. Price
Price of SSDs is going down steadily over the past few years. Not too long ago, SSDs were easily four times more expensive per GB of storage. However, that’s changing rapidly. As the price goes lower and lower, the decision to switch to SSD becomes viable.
However, it’s true that SSDs are still not at the same price point as HDDs. However, the pros outweigh the price that you pay. You get better durability, performance, speed, and reliability. This means that even though you pay more initially, in the long run, SSDs are the more cost-effective choice.
4. Better for the environment
Now, this might sound like a bit of a marketing gimmick, but it isn’t. SSDs use significantly less energy than HDDs. As more of us become environmentally conscious and try to reduce our carbon footprint, SSDs are a viable alternative to HDDs.
5. No Data Fragmentation
An HDD doesn’t know where all its data is stored. Only when a command is issued does it start searching for that data. And to do that, it has to spin disks and read data off those disks. This is called data fragmentation. Data is fragmented and stored in different places. When there’s a need for it, it’s retrieved and used. While the technology works quite well, it does take quite a lot of time.
An SSD does not have to do all this. There’s no data fragmentation in an SSD. When you need some data, it is directly served to you. There’s no searching and assembling that needs to happen. The result is better performance. Data is retrieved and served up to the user quicker.
Conclusion
SSDs are the future of storage. It’s how we’re going to be storing pretty much everything in a few years. There are already laptops that run exclusively on SSDs. The performance, reliability, and the durability that SSD offers simply cannot be matched by HDDs.
Hosting providers are following the trend towards SSD adoption. Now, every leading hosting provider offers SSD VPS Hosting. That’s simply because there’s a greater demand for it now. People see the advantages. And given what it has to offer, you should be giving it a serious consideration too.
Yes, SSDs are slightly more expensive, but they more than make up for it. Irrespective of whether you’re running a small website or managing a high-traffic website that generates a lot of business, VPS Hosting powered by SSD storage can be a viable option for your website.
