Flash memory and storage

7 NVMe storage gotchas to avoid

Avoiding common deployment errors when implementing NVMe technology will save you time, money and professional embarrassment. Here's what to look out for. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

Vexata readies VX-Cloud architecture with server partners

Vexata is thinking outside the box. The NVMe all-flash array vendor is sampling VX-Cloud Data Acceleration Platform reference architecture with major server vendors. The hardware design combines ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Paradox: Violin Systems all-flash stays small to grow large

Violin engineers all-flash storage systems for data centers that require ultrafast performance. The vendor also added ISE G4 arrays from X-IO for secondary storage. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Computational storage takes spotlight in new NGD Systems SSD

See how startup NGD Systems' 16 TB NVMe-based SSD can run applications inside the SSD controller to eliminate the need to move data between storage and host. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Startup Vast Data: Death to disk storage

With $80 million in funding, the all-flash startup unveils its exabyte-scale Universal Storage system that it claims will make disk storage unnecessary in the data center. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

New NVMe Western Digital SSDs target cloud, hyperscale and edge

Western Digital adds two new enterprise NVMe SSDs as the enterprise and cloud markets shift from SATA SSDs to faster NVMe. The new drives include 64-layer 3D NAND. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Is QLC NAND the right choice for you?

QLC drives can offer high storage capacity and low cost per gigabyte, but speedier alternatives may hold more appeal for some organizations. When does a switch to QLC make sense? Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Pure Storage all-flash gains ObjectEngine backup appliance

All-flash vendor Pure Storage provides ObjectEngine inline deduplication appliance to reduce data locally and shuttle it to S3-based object storage for analytics, DR and reuse. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Dell EMC PowerMax

Formerly VMAX, PowerMax flash from Dell EMC is rated to deliver 10 million IOPS. All-flash PowerMax maintains the VMAX multicontroller, but replaces SAS SSDs with NVMe. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

HPE Nimble Storage arrays

Our Products of the Year judges give HPE's all-flash arrays high marks for built-in analytics, automation, ease of use and price-to-performance balance for midmarket enterprises. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Vexata storage gets a boost from Fujitsu deal

Fujitsu North America agrees to sell Vexata arrays. The vendors plan demos in the Fujitsu Solutions Lab and are preparing reference architecture SKUs for Oracle, SAP and VMware. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

7 misconceptions about the NVMe protocol and NVMe technology

See what you need to know to avoid some of the common misperceptions about NVMe technology and making possibly expensive mistakes with your organization's NVMe architecture. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

Enterprise flash storage price drop tops 2019 predictions

Flash storage buyers will find lower NAND prices and more enterprise options in 2019, according to the crystal balls of industry executives and analysts. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Storage startup Termaxia stares at clouds

A startup claims it has pilots and production deployments in place for its petabyte-scale appliance that provides continuous availability without a cache. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Enterprise storage arrays: 2018 Products of the Year finalists

Eleven storage vendors, including legacy brands and some startups, entered arrays for consideration in the Storage magazine and SearchStorage 2018 Products of the Year competition. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

All-flash startup Storbyte previews Eco-Flash file system

Storbyte Eco-Flash drive technology situates Hydra ASIC chips on drives to prolong endurance in write-heavy environments. Eco-Flash stripes data on multiple M.2 modules. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

New NVMe interface specification focuses on management

An NVMe management interface builds on the existing standard, allowing users to monitor NVMe devices. NVMe-MI may represent a significant step forward for the technology. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Sheldon

Tintri by DDN update gives arrays brainpower to migrate VMs

By acquiring Tintri, DataDirect Networks seeks to expand beyond high-performance computing. Tintri Global Center 4.0 is the first joint release since the August merger. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

NVMe flash storage is coming to an enterprise near you

Hyperscale data centers are the early adopters of non-volatile memory express flash, as vendors lay out plans to further flash devices and NVMe fabrics in coming years. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

How to prevent swap usage from hurting your NVMe devices

Overuse of swap files can cut into the life span of your organization's NVMe-based drives. Find out how to monitor and limit swapping on your Linux systems. Continue Reading

By

• Sander van Vugt

Test your grasp of 3D NAND flash technology

Adoption of 3D NAND flash is on the rise and fueling growth in the NAND market. Take our quiz to find out what matters about this key technology. Continue Reading

By

• Stacey Peterson, Senior Managing Editor

Microsoft Azure storage team wants simpler flash devices

Microsoft's Project Denali proposes industry specifications to spur NVMe storage device innovation for Azure and other cloud providers. Will storage vendors cooperate? Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

NVMe performance leap depends on all-flash array architecture used

All-flash NVMe-based storage arrays could bring a big improvement in performance depending on the array architecture you use. We look at what you can expect. Continue Reading

By

• Jerome Wendt

Pure Storage points flash at AWS cloud

Pure Storage’s earnings report painted a sunny picture of revenues at the same time as the flash pioneer unveiled a cloudy focus on its product direction. Pure beat Wall Street expectations with a ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

NetApp revenue keeps growing, but not as much

NetApp beat its guidance and analysts’ expectations for last quarter’s revenue and income, and also exceeded expectations for technology buzzwords used during its earnings call. “Our opportunity is ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Western Digital Ultrastar DC ME200 optimizes memory storage

Western Digital extends its Ultrastar SSD line, adding a software-defined layer for fast in-memory computing. An onboard hypervisor mounts the storage capacity as usable memory. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Micron's SATA-based QLC SSDs take aim at 10K HDDs

Micron targets 10,000 rpm HDDs in read-intensive enterprise workloads with new 5210 ION quad-level cell SSD that stores 33% more bits per cell than triple-level cell NAND flash. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

4 NVMe storage array options to consider

Here's what you need to know to pick the NVMe array that provides your organization with the performance improvement it needs and also fits its budget. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Excelero NVMesh 2 supports TCP/IP, Fibre Channel

Excelero's software-defined storage extends NVMe over fabrics support to TCP/IP and Fibre Channel, but the startup isn't abandoning NVMe over RDMA with its NVMesh 2. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

NetApp Insight: Yes, NetApp still sells hardware

At the end of the final keynote at NetApp Insight last week, founder Dave Hitz decided to add some sanity lest people get the wrong idea about the vendor’s strategy. Hitz summed up the message at ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

NetApp all-flash storage fuels hybrid cloud stance, CEO says

NetApp CEO George Kurian says data center customers are adopting more all-flash file and block storage to manage data across multiple public and private clouds. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

IBM storage products get another NVMe booster shot

IBM bolstered support for NVMe technologies across its storage portfolio with its latest round of product updates, which also adds new Spectrum Discover data management software. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

NetApp flash offerings push into cloud, edge and IoT

At the NetApp Insight user show, the vendor advocates for flash to replace disk for backup, cloud and object storage. NetApp HCI expands, and StorageGrid gets flash. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Which NVMe fabric will win out?

Are you wondering how NVMe over fabrics will shake out? Expect RDMA to take the early lead, but storage pros will continue their love affair with Fibre Channel. Continue Reading

By

• Howard Marks, Vast Data

NetApp MAX Data adds persistent memory tier to OnTap storage

MAX Data is a software-defined product that runs on commodity servers and can use non-NetApp storage. The codebase came from NetApp's acquisition of startup Plexistor. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

NetApp Insight 2018: A primer on storage for AI, flash-enabled cloud

LAS VEGAS-NetApp expects about 5,000 customers and partners to gather here Monday as it lays out a roadmap for flash-enabled AI and cloud applications. NetApp Insight 2018 marks the fifth year the ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

NVMe fabric options include Fibre Channel, RDMA

Planning NVMe over fabrics? Then get to know all about the Fibre Channel and RDMA fabric options to decide which of the two approaches fits your network best. Continue Reading

By

• Howard Marks, Vast Data

Violin buys ISE, X-IO splits off Axellio

Two storage companies on the comeback trail make moves -- Violin Systems buys X-IO's ISE platform, and X-IO rebrands as Axellio. Both have been in transition over the past few years. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

NVMe-oF fends off scale-out storage challenges

NVMe over Fabrics has proven to be a useful fix for the problems faced by scale-out storage architectures, and vendors and users alike are taking notice. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

New memory technologies challenge NAND flash dominance

Cost and scaling limits mean planar NAND flash as we know it will slowly cede its pre-eminent place in the memory hierarchy to emerging technologies such as 3D XPoint. Continue Reading

By

• Jim Handy, Objective Analysis

New memory technologies challenge NAND flash dominance

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Violin Systems AFA lineup adds XVS8 power hitter

Violin, an 'emerging company that's been around a while,' adds new all-flash system that will support NVMe over Fabrics next year and promises extreme performance. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

HPE 3PAR StoreServ all-flash fixes hospital's image problems

Riverside Healthcare dedicates its all-flash 3PAR StoreServ array to revamp its PACS. New images are stored in HPE's onboard cache for quicker retrieval by radiologists. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Quantum Xcellis unwraps NVMe-powered StorNext NAS

Quantum upgrades its StorNext file system to bolster file sharing and replication on Xcellis NVMe flash appliances. It's the first product release under new CEO Jamie Lerner. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

With NVMe-oF, who needs rack-scale PCIe?

NVMe over networks is winning out as the best way to offer shared, flash-based storage systems, with Dell EMC, NetApp, Pure Storage, Western Digital and startups in the game. Continue Reading

By

• Howard Marks, Vast Data

Economic impact of large capacity archival flash

Quad level cell flash technology is leading to high capacity flash devices that have applicability in archival storage or content repositories that are primarily read access. Currently at 96 ... Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns

NVMe over FC is happening, and it's time to prepare

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NVMe over FC is happening, and it's time to prepare

The extent to which the recently published FC-NVMe standard lowers performance latencies in Fibre Channel SANs will be interesting to watch in the coming months. Continue Reading

By

• Scott Sinclair, Practice Director

Samsung adds Z-NAND data center SSD

Samsung's new lineup of data center SSDs designed for channel sales to SMBs includes high-performance Z-NAND add-in card, U.2 and M.2 NVMe PCIe models and 2.5-inch SATA drives. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Tintri bankruptcy deal gives DataDirect an enterprise path

After weeks of uncertainty, the Tintri bankruptcy saga has been resolved. DataDirect Networks (DDN) said it will pay nearly $60 million for Tintri and plans to reveal the product roadmap by ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Attala Systems tackles RoCE shortcomings for NVMe flash

Startup Attala said it can scale NVMe over RoCE across composable bare-metal racks. It has also partnered with Super Micro on NVMe JBOF and has data lake software in preview. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Key steps to destroy an SSD and protect your data

Donating a used SSD may seem like a nice thing to do, but not if you want to keep your data secure. SSD disposal and recycling are more complicated than you might think. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

Why Intel Optane SSDs have 'failed'

Why haven't SSDs built on 3D XPoint taken off yet? Don't blame the technology; blame the marketing behind Intel Optane. New Optane NVDIMMs could fare better. Continue Reading

By

• Howard Marks, Vast Data

Pure Storage all-flash beats street, adds StorReduce dedupe

Pure Storage all-flash sales helped the vendor close a strong quarter in July, generating $309 million to beat its top-end guidance.  The revenue figure represents a 37% increase from the $224.7 ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Move to NVMe technology will depend on need and speed

As a replacement for the SCSI storage protocol, NVMe can provide more responsive storage and lower latency. But transitioning to NVMe in the data center requires thorough planning. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

NAND flash manufacturers showcase new technologies

Get up to speed on new NAND flash technologies, including Toshiba Memory's XL-Flash, startup Yangtze Memory's Xtacking, and SK Hynix's so-called 4D NAND. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Revenue from NetApp all-flash spikes on strong demand

Demand for NetApp all-flash storage surged last quarter, part of strong growth across its cloud portfolio that helped it beat guidance on earnings, margins and revenue. And the storage vendor has ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Scale-out Qumulo NAS qualifies latest Dell EMC PowerEdge servers

Qumulo scale-out NAS software can now run on Dell EMC's PowerEdge servers. That means Dell EMC server customers can choose between Qumulo software and Dell EMC's Isilon. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

You'll never guess what people use Pure's FlashBlade to do

Pure Storage is finding a use case for its FlashBlade array that no one expected when the all-flash system for unstructured data launched in 2016. Brian Schwarz, VP of product management for  ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

IBM DS8882F converges array and mainframe in one rack

IBM skinny mainframes add a few pounds with the DS8882F all-flash array screwed into the IBM Z ZR1 and LinuxOne Rockhopper II 19-inch racks. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Kaminario storage goes for a run on Western Digital OpenFlex

Kaminario storage continues to push farther and farther away from its reliance on purpose-built hardware. The all-flash vendor has qualified its consumption-based Cloud Fabric software for Western ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Violin Systems prepares NVMe launch, but not for drives

Violin Systems will make its first platform launch since its resurrection when it brings out a flash array with NVMe support on the front end for host connectivity in September. Violin CEO Mark ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

New Seagate Nytro SSD line uses Toshiba 3D NAND chips

Seagate shows off its first triple-level cell, 64-layer 3D NAND Nytro SSDs since investing in Toshiba NAND. Analysts wonder if the HDD giant waited too long to get serious about flash. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

NAND flash shortage end could lead to dramatic price drop

Impending NAND flash oversupply will lead to price collapse of NAND flash chips and higher capacity enterprise SSDs, according to semiconductor analyst Jim Handy. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

NVMe-oF and its many benefits take NVMe to the next level

NVMe over Fabrics is revolutionizing the storage market by making full use of data center capacity and becoming an effective replacement for SAN environments. Continue Reading

By

• Sander van Vugt

Newisys NVMe flash array chases hyperscale market

Sanmina-owned Newisys is known as a white-label server OEM to array vendors. The NSS-2560 NVMe flash provides storage density with hot-pluggable SSDs and Intel Broadwell servers. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

The challenges of flash enterprise storage and how to beat them

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NVMe market and technology rapidly evolve

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How NVMe technology will rock the enterprise storage boat

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NVMe flash storage is shaking things up

The development of the nonvolatile memory express protocol is a huge step forward in allowing enterprises to maximize the benefits inherent to flash storage. NVMe puts storage closer to the CPU, reduces latency and increases the amount of parallel sessions available to storage devices. NVMe over Fabrics, meanwhile, is designed to retain the benefits of centralized storage by allowing the client host to talk directly to NVMe flash storage across a high-speed network. This is all good. But adopting NVMe flash storage does raise a number of questions. For example, what is the best approach to take when integrating NVMe flash storage in a particular IT infrastructure? And, perhaps, most imperative to the majority of enterprises, how well will the NVMe flash storage protocol and the devices that support it work with existing data center technologies?

From the get-go, the intrinsic possibilities and benefits of the all-flash data center seemed enormous and attractive. The idea that production databases would respond instantly to requests for unstructured data is extremely appealing to enterprises. Falling flash prices; the advent of unprecedented storage densities, with 16 TB flash drives commonplace and 50 TB-plus drives in the offing; and technologies such as compression and deduplication that work well in a flash environment make all-flash seem more reasonable than ever. The flash-only data center raises two significant issues that must be addressed, however. It makes equipping disaster recovery sites far more expensive and raises the question of why would you want to pay a premium price to maintain cold and stale data on expensive flash storage when a (still) much cheaper hard-disk option would suffice.

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The challenges of flash enterprise storage and how to beat them

Blazing fast all-flash data centers raise important issues. It's expensive to equip DR sites and then there's all that stale data. Find out how to counteract these issues. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

NVMe market and technology rapidly evolve

The tipping point of NVMe acceptance is fast approaching as more enterprises consider adopting the technology to maximize SSD flash investment and performance. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

How NVMe technology will rock the enterprise storage boat

NVMe flash speeds up storage and radically alters server connectivity. How will enterprises adopt NVMe storage and how well will it work with existing technologies? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

NetApp AI storage packages OnTap all-flash FAS A800, Nvidia

NetApp follows Pure Storage's lead, adds Nvidia GPUs to its all-flash arrays to build a storage product designed for data scientists and others dabbling in artificial intelligence. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Western Digital launches 15 TB enterprise SAS SSD

Western Digital's 15 TB Ultrastar SAS SSD has twice the capacity of its previous version, but only half of the capacity of Toshiba's 31 TB whopper. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Storage class memory advances could be a game-changer

Sometimes referred to as persistent memory, SCM may address the growing gap between storage and memory technologies. But don't expect it to happen just yet. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Sheldon

3D NAND technology: What it is and where it's headed

Following a recent NAND flash shortage, 3D NAND is seeing renewed interest from consumers and vendors. Discover what makes the technology a compelling flash memory option. Continue Reading

Gartner: all-flash array market ‘visionaries’ include Tintri

Several vendors with spotty fiscal histories made Gartner’s list of competitors angling for all-flash array market share. Gartner listed Tintri as a “visionary” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Toshiba, Western Digital start shift to 96-layer BiCS flash

New 96-layer 3D NAND flash memory is starting to roll out that can store more data per chip and potentially lower per-bit storage costs over  64- and 32-layer technologies. Toshiba Memory America ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Dell EMC midrange storage systems nudge a little closer

Dell EMC keeps its Unity and SC midrange storage arrays on separate tracks, but shows early signs of eventually merging the platforms. Both get OS upgrades. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Tintri acquisition proposal leaves customers in limbo

DataDirect Networks sees Tintri's analytics and flash capabilities as an entry point to the enterprise, but Tintri customers remain in the dark about their storage vendor's fate. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Adoption of 32 Gbps Fibre Channel being driven by flash

Flash, along with more and bigger workloads and more demanding applications, is driving businesses to switch from 8 Gbps and 16 Gbps FC to 32 Gbps FC storage environments. Continue Reading

By

• Scott D. Lowe, ActualTech Media

IBM all-flash diversifies with NVMe-based FlashSystem 9100

IBM FlashSystem 9100 scales to 32 PB of all-flash storage in a standard rack. IBM guarantees consistent latency of 350 microseconds and 100 million IOPS per four-way cluster. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

With Tintri layoffs, hybrid vendor waves a final goodbye

A new round of Tintri layoffs has cost 200 people their jobs, including its top sales executive, as the hybrid vendor winds down operations. The move leaves Tintri with about 40 to 50 ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

WDC strives to become 'next great storage' company

Since its 2012 acquisition of hard disk drive rival HGST, Western Digital Corp. has bought more storage companies than any other vendor. Some of the deals were whoppers, such as the $19 billion ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Is there an alternative to error correction and detection codes?

Errors in NAND flash memory can be corrected, but that becomes more difficult as NAND reaches the end of its life. Are you utilizing every available error correction tool? Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

New 12 Gbps single-port Toshiba SAS SSD takes aim at SATA

Toshiba designed a new single-ported 12 Gbps RM5 SAS SSD to replace slower 6 Gbps SATA SSDs in servers until faster NVMe-based PCIe SSDs are ready for wider market adoption. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Four common SSD form factors and where they work best

Solid-state drive form factors offer different benefits, from ease of transition to increased throughput. Four popular form factors are currently dominating the market. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Sheldon

The Tintri storage hourglass is almost out of sand

Time is winding down for Tintri, whose slow-motion fall could come by the end of June. The remaining question is whether the publicly traded hybrid storage vendor can complete a last-second Hail ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Industry vet Lewis reveals plan to save Violin flash storage

New Violin Systems CEO Mark Lewis' strategy for saving the flash vendor focuses on its core high-performance technology and a rebuilt channel partner-oriented sales team. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

How can SSD garbage collection help preserve drive speeds?

The rumors are true: SSD speeds can slow down over time. Luckily, there are processes available that can help prevent this from happening and maintain the speedy nature of SSDs. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Pure Storage cloud plan gets warm reception from end users

Pure Storage made new FlashArray and FlashBlade all-flash systems generally available this week, emphasizing their role in moving data seamlessly between local and cloud storage. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Pure Storage software tooled up for containers, OpenShift, VMware

Pure Storage adds software for building, managing and protecting data in containers, clouds, VMs and on premises. Pure ES2 subscription offers a managed on-premises cloud. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

NetApp CEO: Dell EMC ‘years behind’ us on flash, cloud

NetApp CEO George Kurian says things have never been better for the storage vendor since he joined the company in 2011. Kurian maintains NetApp’s all-flash platform is a hit, it’s the first major ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

HPE storage still on its Nimble high

Hewlett Packard Enterprise extended its impressive storage turnaround last quarter. For the second straight quarter, HPE storage revenue increased 24% year-over-year – jumping to $912 million for ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Pure Storage all-flash revamp accelerates and consolidates

The Pure Accelerate conference kicks off with an NVMe-enabled FlashArray refresh and upgrades to all-flash Pure AIRI and FlashStack-Cisco UCS converged infrastructure for Oracle. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Micron starts shipping denser QLC SSD to select customers

Micron and Intel unleash QLC NAND flash that can store 4 bits per cell. Micron starts shipping a 2.5-inch QLC enterprise SATA SSD to select customers and targets fall for general availability. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Pure Storage: flash is a means, not an end, to shared data

SAN FRANCISCO – Pure Storage will push the theme of a “data-centric architecture” at its annual Accelerate user conference that begins Wednesday. Data-centric architecture is Pure’s description for ... Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Pavilion Data gets funded for NVMe-oF push

As all-flash array pioneer Pure Storage celebrates its $1 billion in annual revenues, two of its former executives are planning the next big thing in flash. Pavilion Data, whose CEO Gurpreet Singh ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Does SSD overprovisioning have storage benefits?

While overprovisioned SSDs have less usable capacity available, that space is put to good use. The majority of SSD manufacturers overprovision their drives, and for good reason. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey