How should you budget for enterprise storage when flash prices are rising?
Treat enterprise storage pricing as part of the design. Measure how much of each quote is flash, work out how much of your data actually needs it, choose the levers that reduce your exposure, and give finance a range instead of a single number. Compare designs on cost per usable terabyte over the full lifecycle.
Cost per usable terabyte is the total cost of a system over its lifecycle, including hardware, software and support, power, cooling, space, expansion, and refresh, divided by the usable capacity left after redundancy and reserved space.
What is happening to flash and memory prices?
TrendForce raised its first-quarter 2026 NAND forecast from 33 to 38% to 55 to 60% in its February 2 release, which also projected enterprise SSD prices up 53 to 58% for the quarter. In its March 3 release, it raised the NAND forecast again, to 85 to 90%. For the fourth quarter, TrendForce’s September 30 release projects conventional DRAM contract prices up 10 to 15% and NAND flash up 15 to 20% quarter over quarter, and it expects enterprise SSD price growth to accelerate because most of the incremental supply is already committed. These are forecasts published on the dates linked, so check for newer releases before you rely on them.
Disk isn’t an easy escape either, since in September 2025 TrendForce reported that nearline HDD lead times had stretched from a few weeks to more than 52 weeks, and in April 2026 Seagate said on its earnings call that its nearline capacity was almost fully allocated through calendar 2027.
Brett views the current market not as a temporary spike, but as a permanent structural reset. The largest technology companies are securing memory, high-bandwidth memory, and flash through long-term commitments, forcing enterprise buyers to compete indirectly and leaving infrastructure budgets to take the hit.
Why did buying flash by default stop working?
For a decade, buying flash was the safe choice, and it’s easy to see why. Flash offered lower latency, easier performance planning, higher density, and economics that kept improving, so buyers could assume prices would keep falling by the next refresh, but that assumption no longer holds.
An index published by a hybrid storage vendor and reported by Tom’s Hardware put a 30 TB enterprise SSD at over 18 times the price of a 30 TB nearline hard drive per terabyte in August 2026, as compared to seven times the price the previous year.
None of this is an argument against all-flash storage, and Brett says so directly. Transactional databases, metadata-intensive applications, dense virtualization, real-time analytics, and the hottest parts of AI pipelines can justify premium media, especially where latency affects revenue, productivity, or model performance. The problem he points to is treating every byte as though it has the same performance requirement.
AI environments make that costlier than it looks, because they accumulate large volumes of valuable but less latency-sensitive data, raw training data, older checkpoints, source video, intermediate outputs, telemetry, and compliance copies, plus the backups and archives that follow. Putting all of it on the fastest media simplifies the first design, but adds a compounding cost penalty as capacity grows and flash prices rise, exposing your budget to market volatility.
How much of your data actually needs flash?
The answer decides how much of that market exposure you can design away. While every workload can benefit from higher performance, it’s valuable to look at ways to estimate and quantify those benefits.
- Sort capacity into tiers. Group known data into types based on general demand – databases are hot, a departmental file share is warm, and backup archives are cold.
- Collect access statistics and metrics. Many arrays and file systems can report I/O or last-access activity by volume, LUN, or dataset. Collect at least 30 to 90 days, and include your busiest period.
- Note what breaks if it’s slower. A production database that stalls for seconds at a time, and an archive job that takes an extra minute to complete at midnight are two very different problems.
- Total the capacity in each tier, and compare it with the flash capacity your quote assumes.
| Data | Latency need | Starting lean |
|---|---|---|
| Transactional databases and hot working sets | High | Flash |
| Large datasets and retained copies read mostly in bulk | Moderate | Disk or hybrid |
| Mixed workloads | Varies | Evaluate both on cost per usable terabyte |
Brett puts the cost of skipping this step plainly, which is that a fast platform can still be a poor deal if inactive data sits on premium media. That also makes the SSD vs HDD question a per-workload decision and not a platform-wide one.
Which levers reduce your exposure, and what do they cost?
| Lever | How it helps | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Right-size flash to the working set | Buys less of the media with the steepest increases | Needs reliable access data, and a misjudged working set slows applications |
| Use a hybrid design with caching | Memory and flash caches can serve frequently used data while bulk capacity sits on disk | Disk is supply-constrained too, and cold reads are slower |
| Reduce stored bytes with compression and efficient snapshots | Fewer physical bytes to buy, power, and protect | Results depend on your data, and deduplication consumes compute and memory, so apply it selectively |
| Phase the purchase | Buys what you need now and expands in steps | Later steps may cost more, so ask who sets that price |
| Negotiate quote validity or price protection | Holds today’s price while approvals finish | Vendors may shorten terms or charge for it |
| Move cold data off premium media | Frees expensive capacity for data that needs it | Moving data between systems has an operational cost |
| Choose a platform that can change its flash-to-disk mix | Keeps options open whichever way prices move | Check whether growth needs downtime or data migration |
On the software side, Brett argues that a cost-rational platform should treat different device classes as one coherent pool, keep data integrity intact end to end, and let you grow capacity and performance separately, which means fewer expensive bytes to buy, power, protect, and eventually replace. A design that can adapt its flash-to-disk ratio is less exposed to any single component cycle. If flash gets cheaper, you add more, and if prices keep rising, you reserve it for the workloads that need it. He frames the goal as avoiding an architecture that depends on one price curve always moving down, not predicting the market perfectly.
Should you buy now or wait?
Start with what waiting is likely to cost. While the price of a storage appliance isn’t entirely mapped to flash or disk, it makes up a significant portion – so consider that at least half of the quoted price could be directly subject to increasing component costs.
Then compare it with the lost “opportunity cost” of delaying a project depending on the storage. If the project loses more per quarter than the expected increase, buy now and use the levers to buy less of what’s expensive. If waiting costs you little, waiting may be reasonable, but the forecasts have moved up more than once this year, so a plan that depends on prices falling is a risky one. If you can’t afford today’s price and can’t afford to wait, phase the purchase and lock the price of the expansion.
What budget range can you give finance?
Build four cases with the same formula, and show the base and stress cases together. Here’s a sample chart, with round numbers for simplicity:
| Case | Assumption | Quote change | Example quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | Prices stay flat | 0% | $400,000 |
| Base | Low end of TrendForce’s Q4 ranges (flash +15%, memory +10%) | About +8.0% | About $432,000 |
| High | High end of those ranges (flash +20%, memory +15%) | About +10.75% | About $443,000 |
| Stress | Two quarters at the high end | About +23.6% | About $494,000 |
Questions worth asking any storage vendor
Brett argues that storage evaluations should move past peak benchmarks to cost per usable terabyte, data-reduction assumptions, rebuild behavior, protection overhead, hardware flexibility, and the operational cost of moving data between systems. These questions put that into practice.
- How long is this quote valid for?
- Who sets the price of each capacity step I’ll add in years two and three?
- Can I change the flash-to-disk mix later, and does expanding need downtime or data migration?
- Is the capacity quoted raw, usable, or effective, and what data reduction ratio does it assume?
- How does the system behave during a rebuild, and how much capacity does protection consume?
- What does moving data between tiers or systems cost in staff time?
- What do support and renewals cost in years four and five?
Where TrueNAS fits
TrueNAS has written about how rising memory prices change storage economics on its memflation page, and about the case for hybrid storage in Disk Isn’t Dead. In his AiThority article, Brett closes by arguing that in the age of “memflation”, adaptability may count for more than any other performance characteristic. All TrueNAS Enterprise appliance lines can be configured as either all-flash or hybrid, so you can choose the flash-to-disk mix that fits each workload. For related reading, see the TrueNAS guide to choosing an enterprise storage appliance, which includes a section on budgeting without leading with the sticker price.
Ready to optimize your infrastructure for the era of rising flash prices? Contact the TrueNAS team to discuss your requirements, and explore TrueNAS Enterprise to configure a flexible hybrid or all-flash storage solution tailored to your workloads.
FAQ
Why are flash prices rising?
TrendForce attributes the increases to AI server demand. It projects enterprise SSD bit demand to grow more than 80% year over year in 2026 as cloud providers expand AI inference infrastructure, and it says most of the incremental supply is already committed.
How much are enterprise flash prices expected to rise?
TrendForce projects NAND flash contract prices up 15 to 20% and conventional DRAM up 10 to 15% quarter over quarter in the fourth quarter of 2026, and it expects enterprise SSD price growth to accelerate. Earlier in the year it raised its first-quarter NAND forecast twice, to 85 to 90%. Beyond the fourth quarter, prices are uncertain.
Should I buy now or wait?
Compare the expected increase for one quarter, which is your quote times the flash and memory formula, with what a quarter of delay costs your project. If delay costs more, buy now and use the levers above to buy less flash. If you can’t do either, phase the purchase and lock the expansion price.
Is hybrid storage cheaper than all-flash storage right now?
In a hybrid vs all-flash comparison, a hybrid design buys less flash, so its price is less exposed to flash increases, but disk is constrained too. Compare dated quotes for both designs on cost per usable terabyte.
How much more do SSDs cost than hard drives?
An index published by a hybrid storage vendor put a 30 TB enterprise SSD at over 18 times the price of a 30 TB nearline hard drive per terabyte in August, as reported by Tom’s Hardware. It’s a single sample, and the ratio varies by drive class and availability, so compare dated quotes for your own configuration.
What is cost per usable terabyte?
It’s the total cost of a system over its lifecycle, including hardware, software and support, power, cooling, space, expansion, and refresh, divided by the usable capacity left after redundancy and reserved space.
How do I find out how much of my data is hot?
Collect 30 to 90 days of access statistics from your arrays or file systems, including your busiest period, then group capacity by how recently data was active and what happens if it’s slower.