Storage Switzerland suggested a few years ago that IT professionals look for ways to get as much as 10 years out of their flash arrays. The problem was, as we cited at that time, most storage hardware manufacturers counted on…
Blog Archives
Overcoming All-Flash Array Post Implementation Problems
Tagged with: Capacity, Compression, Data Reduction, Deduplication, Density, Flash, Flash Array, Thin provisioning
Posted in Blog
Posted in Blog
Flash for Files
Flash-based storage systems continue to make inroads into the enterprise. Initially those inroads started as flash systems targeted at improving database response time. Then it spread to virtual workloads to alleviate the IO blender. Now, flash storage is on the…
Tagged with: All-Flash, Areal Density, Density, Flash, HDD, IBM, SSD, Unstructured data
Posted in Blog
Posted in Blog
Flash + SMR = Storage Density and Performance
Cloud and traditional data centers face two competing challenges. The first is meeting the ever-increasing demand for performance. Flash, in its various forms, can meet these requirements. On the other end of the spectrum is meeting the demands of storing all the data we create. The answer to these environments has not been as simple. Flash, by itself, is not the answer due to its higher cost per GB. SMR hard drives improve the ability to meet capacity demands, but have limited random write performance. By coupling SMR drives with flash, these two technologies can create a very practical solution which enables adoption without significant change to the existing infrastructure. In this article we will discuss how SMR drives work and how they can be coupled with flash to meet both of these challenges
Briefing Note: Netlist Readies PCIe Based High Performance NVRAM
The ever-increasing density of virtual infrastructures, and the need to scale databases larger than ever, is creating an ongoing need for faster storage. And while flash has become the “go to” performance option, there are environments that still need more.…
Tagged with: All-Flash, Deduplication, Density, Flash, Netlist, PCIe, RAM, Snapshot, SSD, Virtual Infrastructure
Posted in Briefing Note
Posted in Briefing Note
Three new considerations for Scale-Out and Scale-Up All-Flash Architectures
A couple of years ago Storage Switzerland wrote an article “Scale Out or Scale Up? – 6 Key Considerations for the Flash Array Buyer”. The points made in that article are still relevant, but vendors in both architecture camps have…
Briefing Note: Pure Storage announces an All-Flash Converged Infrastructure
We covered Hardware Convergence in a recent column, “What are Converged Infrastructures?”. Hardware Converged Infrastructures (HCI) are architectures based on independent name brand components that are pre-integrated and optimized to work together. Pure Storage has just announced a new converged…
Tagged with: All-Flash, Density, Hardware Converged Infrastructure, HCI, performance, Pure, Virtual machine, VM
Posted in Briefing Note
Posted in Briefing Note
Storage Opinion: Storage Evolves thanks to the Processor not the Business Model
Robin Harris over at Storage Mojo recently wrote about the future of legacy storage vendors in the face of low-margin commodity hardware and a primal force in their industry – the cloud. He cites the fate of the minicomputer and…
Tagged with: Commodity Hardware, Density, Opinion, Purpose Built Backup Appliance, Scale Up, Software Defined
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Posted in Blog
Seagate’s Kinetic Drives improve Cloud Storage TCO and Performance
In an earlier column we talked about the world’s insatiable appetite for storage and the gap between projected demand and supply of that capacity. In response to this demand disk drive companies are thinking beyond the drive, to the array…
Tagged with: Areal Density, Capacity, Cloud, Density, Hard Drive, Seagate, Shingled Magnetic Recording, SMR
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Posted in Blog
Seagate plans 20TB Hard Drives… but we’ll still need more!
At their second Industry Analyst Cloud Summit in San Francisco last week, Seagate shared some information that we’ve heard many times: the amount of data being created is almost incomprehensible. But they said something that many probably haven’t heard before:…
Tagged with: Areal Density, Capacity, Cloud, Density, Hard Drive, Seagate, Shingled Magnetic Recording, SMR
Posted in Blog
Posted in Blog
Why is VM Density so low?
In our recent webinar “Max VM Density Requires Optimal Storage Networking & Operational Transparency” respondents to one of the polling questions indicated that over 40% of the time their servers were supporting less than a dozen virtual machines (VMs). This…
Tagged with: Archive, Brocade, Density, ROI, Storage Networking, Virtual machine, Virtualization, VM
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Posted in Blog
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