As Storage Switzerland discussed in two articles recently flash based appliances are particularly vulnerable to power failures. This vulnerability is related to the way these appliances use DRAM to buffer writes and to store meta data tables. DRAM is volatile,…
Blog Archives
How to Make Reliable SSDs – Reliable NAND Flash
“Reliability” in a storage context means that the storage infrastructure can be counted on to keep data safe and to produce that data in a reasonable timeframe when called upon. While it’s true that storage systems have redundancies built in…
Tagged with: DRAM, ECC, Flash memory, Micron, Multi-level cell, RAID, Solid-state drive, SSD
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VMware Server Side Caching – Flash SSD or DRAM
Server virtualization has a well-documented problem; it creates an I/O blender that can bring storage networks and storage systems to their knees. The I/O blender vs. the desire to design increasingly dense virtual machine (VM) architectures has created a new…
Tagged with: DRAM, Flash memory, Hard disk drive, Infinio, Solid-state drive, Virtual machine, VMware
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The Unknown Risk of SSD Mapping Tables
Solid State Disks (SSD) and Flash Appliances use mapping tables to track where data is stored on the flash device. These tables play a similar role to iNode or File Allocation Tables (FAT) and if they get corrupted or lost,…
Tagged with: DRAM, Dynamic random-access memory, Flash, Flash memory, Hard disk drive, Non-volatile memory, Skyera, Solid-state drive
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Improving SSD Performance Through Better Flash Management
Solid State Drive (SSD) storage has become a viable performance option thanks to the advent of NAND flash devices which are making memory-based storage affordable. The performance of an SSD is not solely dictated by the NAND but by the…
What Is Hybrid Storage?
Hybrid Storage is a term used to describe storage systems that are designed with a blend of flash-based solid state disk and hard disk drives to provide high performance at an affordable price. They try to address the dollar-per-IOPS vs…
Tagged with: Data deduplication, DRAM, Dynamic random-access memory, Hybrid array, IOPS, Solid-state drive
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How to Solve the SSD Endurance Problem
As the storage medium for main memory DRAM is where the processing work gets done in application servers. It’s generally the fastest mass produced data storage area available and can support the nearly unlimited cycle of writes and overwrites that…
Tagged with: DIMM, DRAM, Flash memory, Hard disk drive, NVDIMM, PCI Express, Solid-state drive, SSD, Viking
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What To Look For in Server Based SSD
As Storage Switzerland discussed in the article “What is Server Based Solid State Caching” there is much to be gained by moving solid state disk (SSD) closer to the application and its processor. The substantial reduction of network I/O and…
Tagged with: Cache, DRAM, Dynamic random-access memory, EMC, Flash memory, Marvell, PCI Express, Solid-state drive, SSD, VMware
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Will SSD Improve Your Database Performance?
The fog around solid state storage is lifting. Most storage and database administrators are convinced that solid state technology is the most practical next step in storage performance. The challenge is that solid state performs so well that now there’s…
Tagged with: Database, DRAM, Kaminario, Oracle Database, PCI Express, Random-access memory, solid state storage, Solid-state drive, Storage
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Pay Attention to Flash Controllers when Comparing SSD Systems
Solid State Disk (SSD) storage devices now commonly use flash memory as the media on which they record data. Flash has driven the SSD cost per capacity significantly below that of DRAM based SSD and flash is narrowing the lead…
Tagged with: DRAM, ECC, Flash memory, MLC, Multi-level cell, SLC, Solid-state drive, SSD
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