QLC Flash HAMRs HDD

This research examines six important storage premises around NAND flash and tape replacing HDD (Hard Disk Drives). The premises are:
1/ Wikibon projects that flash consumer SSDs become cheaper than HDDs on a dollar per terabyte basis by 2026, in only about 5 years (from 2021).
2/ Wikibon projects that HDD volumes will continue to decline rapidly by a factor of 10 by the end of this decade.
3/ Innovative storage and processor architectures will accelerate the migration from HDD to NAND flash and tape by using consumer-grade flash.
4/ As a result of 3, flash is lower cost over 5 and 10 years for almost all file-based workloads than HDD, when storage management and space are factored in.
5/ Flash has already overtaken HDDs in total storage petabytes shipped. Wikibon projects the investments in flash fabs and hybrid flash/tape technologies will complete the takeover of HDD by the end of this decade.
6/ The 10-year and 5-year Business Cases for QLC Flash for Implementation in 2021 and beyond for Exascale NAS environments are Compelling.
Senior IT management should ignore vendor claims of new HDD technologies “just around the corner.” They should assume that flash technology will dominate.  For large-scale storage & Big Data projects, they should implement VAST-like single-tier architectures and position storage investments to combine performance and automated management. This will be an important enabler of a real-time data-led business strategy that enables real-time applications focused on removing asynchronous business processes.