In the early days of All-Flash Arrays (AFA) deduplication was a key catalyst for adoption. Server and Desktop virtualization environments benefited greatly from the technology because of the similarity between virtual machine images. The environments also didn’t have the same…
Hyperconverged Infrastructures (HCI) move software-defined storage (SDS) – described in the last blog – into the hypervisor cluster. The SDS component either runs as a virtual machine or as part of the hypervisor kernel itself. The SDS solution typically leverages…
When vendors claim that have a solution to optimize production storage, they are typically talking about optimizing one of two areas. They either have a solution that maximizes performance through the use of flash memory, SSD drives, and a caching…
Generally speaking, most All-Flash Arrays (AFA) increase performance by adding more processing power, more RAM and more drives. Adding more of any of these components also adds more cost. The only significant cost reduction method that most storage software solutions…
Organizations have tried a variety of solutions to regain control of their data storage infrastructure. They’ve invested in monolithic storage systems, software defined storage (SDS) and hyper-converged systems. While each approach may have brought some value, each failed in its…
The raw performance of a single enterprise flash drive is often higher than 70,000 IOPS. Most all-flash arrays, even though vendors fill them with 12 to 24 flash drives, deliver only a few hundred thousand IOPS. The cause of the…
When an organization moves Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) projects from the test and design phase to production, the responsibility for maintaining that project often lands in IT’s lap. IT then has to put together an architecture that…
In most data centers, Tier 1 production storage has evolved from high-end hard disk-based systems to hybrid systems supported by flash to all-flash arrays. These Tier 1 systems are also typically well equipped with enterprise features like snapshots, replication and…
Next generation all-flash arrays (AFA) face a serious problem; they will provide more capacity than most data centers need. While too much capacity doesn’t sound like a problem it will be because organizations are still going to pay for it.…
Our last blog, “Are Cloud Providers Really Efficient“, discussed how cloud providers, from a resources perspective, aren’t really any more efficient than the typical data center. The provider’s use of automation and their scale is what separates them from the…
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