Blog Archives

VMware Server Side Caching – Flash SSD or DRAM

Posted on June 18, 2013 by George Crump

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
Posted in Article

Overcoming The Challenges With SSD Reliability

Posted on June 3, 2013 by George Crump

Articles posted on the Storage Switzerland web site that focus on SSD Reliability are consistently among the top read articles on our site. Clearly there is concern about using the technology in the enterprise and IT planners want to know…

Tagged with: Flash memory, Hard disk drive, Hardware, Solid-state drive, SSD, Storage
Posted in Article

The Unknown Risk of SSD Mapping Tables

Posted on May 16, 2013 by George Crump

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
Posted in Article

Video Review of Sonnet Tempo And Samsung 840 Pro SSD

Posted on March 22, 2013 by George Crump

Next up in our lab is a review of the Sonnet Tempo PCIe SSD Card and the Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Once again we leveraged the OWC Helios as part of the test exchanging the OWC Accelsior with the Samsung…

Tagged with: Flash memory, Hard disk drive, PCI Express, Personal computer, Samsung, Samsung 840, Samsung 840 Pro, SATA, Serial ATA, Solid-state drive, Sonnet Tempo
Posted in Blog, Video

Overcoming The Challenges To All-Flash Arrays

Posted on December 20, 2012 by George Crump

All-Flash arrays are storage systems that are 100% solid state and give a complete set of robust features like snapshots and replication, similar to traditional hard-drive based storage systems. While their performance enhancing potential is very appealing, All-Flash arrays have…

Tagged with: All-Flash Array, Computer data storage, Data center, Flash, Hard disk drive, Pure, Solid-state drive, VMware
Posted in Article

Is it Time for Hybrid SSD RAID Controllers?

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Eric Slack

Server side SSD caching solutions are popular implementation choices for performance upgrades because they allow users to put the performance right where it’s needed, in the application server itself. For many of these use cases, a direct attached disk array…

Tagged with: Flash memory, Hard disk drive, LSI, Multi-level cell, Nytro MegaRAID, PCI Express, RAID, RAID controller, SandForce, Solid-state drive
Posted in Briefing Note

How to Solve the SSD Endurance Problem

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Eric Slack

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
Posted in Article

Nimble Solves The Scale-Up or Scale-Out Dilemma

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Eric Slack

Nimble has recognized the challenge of growing storage systems in a performance-critical environment. With traditional, scale-up storage architectures, as more disk capacity is added storage controllers can become the bottleneck, causing performance to suffer. In scale-out storage systems, an appliance…

Tagged with: Hard disk drive, Nimble, Scalability, Solid-state drive, SSD
Posted in Briefing Note

Overcoming The All Flash Cost Challenge

Posted on March 28, 2012 by George Crump

If all storage were the same price, all storage would be solid state storage. We would end data tiering, there would be no performance tuning and the discussion of storage performance problems would be a thing of the past. Of course all…

Tagged with: Flash memory, Hard disk drive, Multi-level cell, Pure, SLC, solid state storage, Solid-state drive, storage efficiency, VMware
Posted in Article

The Challenges with SSD Caching and Tiering

Posted on February 29, 2012 by George Crump

It is universally accepted that for most applications, adding flash to the storage infrastructure will greatly improve storage performance and offer a productivity return on the investment. The controversy in the industry is deciding where the flash storage should be…