I wonder about performance - will this new storage protocol be at least as performant as current standards (ATA, SCSI) ? We need better performing drives, didn't the datacenter sort of already took care of itself?
That's an interesting question, and I think the answer isn't immediately obvious.
One important thing is that the disk is doing more work now -- you offload a bunch of what the filesystem has traditionally had to do onto the disk itself. That should mean less traffic, and lower latency. Maybe not higher throughput, though.
The interface is 2x1gigabit, so that's obviously slower than a 3-6 gigabit SAS or Sata interface. But maybe the offloaded work will be worth it? Especially if you are doing lots of "small" IO operations, the potential for lower latency might be a win.
It's a cost reduction at the end of the day, not a huge performance bonus. I am very interested to get my hands one and see how it plays out.
I don't think we need better performing hard disks. Everyone who cares about performance should have moved to flash already. Kinetic looks like it was designed by "disk people", not "flash people".
