Flash memory and storage

Making the case for an all-flash data center

Companies should ditch hard disk drives and outfit their data centers entirely with flash storage; vendors have solved old solid-state problems, such as wear time and cost. Continue Reading

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• Jim O'Reilly

With trepidation, Tintri storage takes Nasdaq plunge

Tintri heads into the July 4 holiday wearing a new status symbol: publicly traded company. Still, it's initial public offering came a day late and $40 million short. Shares in Tintri storage ... Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Tintri IPO aims at lower share price

The Tintri IPO remains a go for now, but the flash vendor now expects less of a financial windfall than originally anticipated.   The vendor's long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) of stock ... Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

IBM DS8880 arrays lift mainframe archiving to the cloud

IBM Storage has closed the loop on its Transparent Cloud Tiering software by adding it to IBM DS8880 arrays for archival storage of mainframe data. The Transparent Cloud Tiering (TCT) microcode ... Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Two Tegile storage tiers highlight IntelliFlash update

Tegile Systems updates IntelliFlash with two tiers of flash. The 6U Tegile configuration supports 72 SAS SSDs for capacity and NVMe flash drives for performance. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Panzura cloud NAS gets performance jolt from NVMe

Panzura's enhancements to its cloud NAS include support for NVMe flash and increased capacity limit on VMware deployments. The cloud file system works with object storage. Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

USB flash drive

A USB flash drive -- also known as a stick, thumb or pen drive -- is a plug-and-play portable storage device that uses flash memory and can attach to a keychain. Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget
• Sarah Wilson, Associate Site Editor

Reduxio Systems adds CDM, DR upgrades to TimeOS

Reduxio rolls out its third version of TimeOS storage software, adding NoRestore copy data management and NoMigrate DR. The vendor claims to deliver zero downtime and data loss. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Stretch clustering fits Pure customers' wish lists

All-flash array vendor Pure Storage added multisite replication between FlashArray and FlashBlade systems with ActiveCluster stretch clustering, which is included in the Purity 5 OS. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Users get sneak peek at Pure, Cisco NVMe storage fabric

Pure Storage and Cisco Systems showcase NVM Express over Fabrics storage based on FlashArray//X all-flash and Cisco next-gen NVMe fabric protocol at Accelerate conference. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Pure Storage flash array lines bulk up software

Purity 5 software for Pure Storage FlashArray adds active-active multisite replication and portable snapshots. Pure FlashBlade clusters now scale to 75 blades and five chassis. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Pure Storage CEO assesses NVMe, flash storage market

In the run-up to Pure Accelerate, CEO Scott Dietzen assesses the trajectory of the NVMe flash market, vendor consolidation and how customers are using Pure's FlashArray. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

New use cases for flash data storage benefit enterprises

Adoption of protocols such as NVMe and memory bus-based flash DIMMs helps flash storage devices keep pace with the most demanding use cases. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

New use cases for flash data storage benefit enterprises

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HPE storage looks to Nimble, SimpliVity for jolt

Recent Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) storage acquisitions will play a key role in “reengineering” the company, CEO Meg Whitman said. During HPE’s earnings call Wednesday night, Whitman called ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

New Toshiba SSDs support 64-layer BiCS 3D NAND flash

Toshiba ships new client NVMe-based PCIe SSDs that support its latest 64-layer BiCS 3D NAND flash to improve performance and density and open the door to future price drops. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Examining what products the leading all-flash array vendors offer

Although there are many factors to consider when selecting the right all-flash storage arrays for your organization, the first step is to assess your functional specifications. Continue Reading

By

• Logan G. Harbaugh, Independent consultant

NetApp pockets Plexistor, nonvolatile memory software

NetApp quietly slipped an acquisition of storage memory software startup Plexistor into an earnings call otherwise noteworthy for strong results last quarter and a disappointing forecast for this ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Phase change memory technology: Where is it headed?

With the release of Intel's Optane, a product based on phase change memory is finally on the market. Where PCM goes is dependent on quite a few factors. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Why the NAND flash shortage exists and what to do about it

The current NAND flash market product shortage means SSD prices won't dip below hard disk drives any time soon. Make sure to ask your vendors about their supply situations. Continue Reading

By

• Howard Marks, Vast Data

Micron Ceph block storage expands NVMe configurations

Micron Ceph storage comes as a four-node storage cluster that incorporates object features of Red Hat's Jewel release. A single cluster scales to 96 TB of effective capacity. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Western Digital ships enterprise SAS-based 3D NAND SSDs

Tired of waiting for NVMe? Western Digital's HGST Ultrastar-branded 12 Gbps SAS-based 3D NAND SSDs target high-performance virtual, database, analytics and cloud workloads. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Optane memory: Opening the window on Intel's latest technology

Now that Optane products are on the market, the future of fast memory for storage and processing looks bright. But will Optane match the claims Intel has been making? Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Micron SolidScale NVMe-oF-based storage architecture emerges

Micron Technology launched its SolidScale storage architecture based on NVMe-oF technologies, with plans for branded appliances to start shipping later this year. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Dell EMC all-flash moves focus on VMAX, XtremIO and Isilon

Dell EMC VMAX and XtremIO SAN all-flash arrays christen Dell EMC World 2017. All-flash Isilon NAS adds Infinity modular architecture. Dense flash in compact footprint is the focus. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

All-flash data center still an idea in development

The concept of the all-flash data center isn't new, and as the cost of SSDs continue to decline, vendors are pushing the of the all-flash data center like never before. Reality is a different matter, though. When it comes to older data, slower technology tiers -- such as tape and high-capacity HDDs -- and the cloud can still save plenty of money and resources. So how much flash is enough? It depends.

IT resources must remain continuously available nowadays. Establishing data center resiliency through technologies like replication and erasure coding, as well as implementing continuous backup and instant recovery, is only a start. Learn how to develop a resiliency plan of your own.

An increasing array of backup, disaster recovery and archiving services has turned the public cloud into a favorite target for secondary and tertiary data. Advances have also made the cloud a viable option as a primary storage tier in the storage hierarchy. Particularly if tier-two or tier-one workloads could benefit from the scalability, resilience and broad accessibility the public cloud delivers. Here's why.

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Is an all-flash data center worth it?

The elevated cost of flash technology is a reason to limit flash usage. Find out what other factors go into a flash purchase and how it's used in today's data centers. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Is an all-flash data center worth it?

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X-IO storage pivots to the edge with NVMe-based Axellio

New storage strategy for X-IO centers on Axellio appliance with FabricXpress architecture. NVMe flash atop a PCIe edge storage switch allows analytics as data is ingested. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Violin flash storage emerges for encore, sans 'Memory'

Redux of Violin Memory's flash storage is under way with new CEO, new strategy and new ownership by Soros Fund Management's Quantum Partners. Will it finally turn a profit? Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Flash storage market shifting, Kaminario CEO says

Dani Golan of Kaminario sees NVMe as the next big disruptor in the flash market; says Kaminario focuses on cloud and SaaS, while legacy vendors fight over shrinking IT budgets. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Tier 0 storage moves to NVMe to meet demand for speed

Tier 0 has been fast and proprietary, but nonvolatile memory express is changing that second part as a standard programming interface for PCIe SSDs. Continue Reading

By

• Howard Marks, Vast Data

IBM flash storage helps snap 22-quarter downslide

IBM storage sales rose in the first quarter of 2017, for the first time in more than five years. IBM snapped a 22-quarter string of storage declines on the strength of flash hardware and ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

E8 Storage scales higher with new HGST NVMe SSDs

E8 qualifies HGST SN200 6.4 TB PCIe drives for D24 NVMe all-flash system. The 2U enclosure houses 24 SSDs and scales to 140 TB of usable capacity. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

The status of NAND flash memory now and in the near future

Flash memory chips have driven a revolution in storage, and faced a recent shortage because of huge demand. That's easing, and advances in NAND technology show a great future. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Awaiting NVMe flash surge, Pure Storage preps FlashArray//X

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe flash array will be generally available starting in July. It packs 1.1 PB of raw storage in 3U, and 15 PB in a standard 42U rack. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

The present and likely future of the NVMe protocol

The NVMe and PCIe combination of protocol and interconnect was an inevitable development once solid-state drives were created, as was moving NVMe to fabrics. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Flash, hybrid RealStor added to Seagate storage arrays

Hybrid and all-flash Seagate RealStor arrays are sold to original equipment makers to build branded storage systems. The all-flash pricing is pegged at less than $50,000. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Dell EMC XtremIO adds speed to Red Sox IT lineup

A Dell EMC all-flash array knocks a home run for the Boston Red Sox organization, improving management and analytics of ever accumulating data, and speeding performance. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Entry-level Brocade FC switch enables NVMe flash fabric

New Brocade SAN switch turns Fibre Channel into NVMe fabric for all-flash storage. The G610 device is targeted at converged infrastructure, small SANs and rack-based flash servers. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Reduxio Systems snares venture funds, moves closer to IPO

Storage startup Reduxio Systems has bulked up its venture capital, a stepping stone to a potential IPO. On Monday, the hybrid flash vendor nabbed $22.5 million in Series C financing from private ... Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

Intel Optane SSD starts shipping to select customers

New Intel Optane SSDs based on long-awaited 3D XPoint technology ship to early customers, promising up to eight times the performance over NAND flash-based NVMe PCIe SSDs. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

HPE 3PAR all-flash target allows persistent containers

HPE 3PAR flash container reference architecture bundles Mesosphere orchestration software with ProLiant blades, 10 GB SAN FlexFabric and StoreServ 8200 arrays. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Five factors to consider before buying all-flash storage arrays

Before purchasing all-flash array storage, you should determine whether your site plans to integrate AFA storage into its existing infrastructure or to start a new storage silo. Continue Reading

By

• Logan G. Harbaugh, Independent consultant

Enterprise HDDs launch from Seagate, Toshiba

Flash may dominate the storage headlines, but there are still signs of life with HDDs. Seagate showed off 12 TB helium-based enterprise HDDs at last week's Open Compute Project Summit in Santa ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Startup Excelero shares server-based NVMe flash

Excelero's NVMesh Server SAN is generally available after two years of proofs of concept by hyperscale data centers. The product builds SAN capacity from server-based NVMe flash. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

DSSD D5 flash appliance sales cease, Dell EMC says

The DSSD D5 for PowerEdge servers from Dell EMC was the first product from the merged vendors. DSSD instead will be used to accelerate existing and new all-flash systems. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Building a business case for all-flash array storage

To make a business case for purchasing AFA storage, you must first understand what your applications need in terms of IOPS, latency and throughput. Continue Reading

By

• Logan G. Harbaugh, Independent consultant

HPE’s Nimble Storage acquisition expands its struggling portfolio

Hewlett Packard Enterprise today made its second major storage acquisition of 2017, spending $1.2 billion on all-flash and hybrid array vendor Nimble Storage. The Nimble Storage acquisition comes ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Riverbed SteelFusion edge devices embrace NFS

Riverbed adds NAS support to SteelFusion to broaden the reach of the remote office storage appliance, which already supports SAN and object storage. Continue Reading

By

• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

The state of flash storage performance

All-flash arrays have virtually eliminated flash storage performance issues, for now. But applications and user expectations will eventually catch up. Innovations in flash technology -- such as nonvolatile memory express and storage-class memory (flash DIMM) -- promise to keep solid-state storage ahead of the curve, however. We discuss these technologies and more as we explore the current and future states of flash storage performance.

DevOps allows developers to rapidly create, develop, amend and deploy applications using Agile methodologies. DevOps resources, including storage, are consumed differently, though, taking more of a cloud-like approach.

Security and compliance concerns are big obstacles to public cloud storage adoption. Reliability, data movement and poor application performance, frequently from irregular spikes in network latency, are other important caveats. We provide tips on how to overcome these and other issues.

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The state of flash storage systems

Making flash storage performance even faster has little to do with the media itself and more to do with the storage infrastructure that surrounds it. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

The state of flash storage systems

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AFA storage has total cost of ownership advantages over HDDs

All-flash array storage TCO advantages, including reduced power and cooling and increased performance, can help an organization justify its use to store their active workloads. Continue Reading

By

• Logan G. Harbaugh, Independent consultant

AFA storage advances may mean the end of the hybrid market

Flash price drops and speed boosts make the all-flash array the smart choice over hybrid storage arrays for most enterprise users, not just those with high-performance computing needs. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Tegile Systems IntelliFlash HD

Tegile Systems IntelliFlash HD intended to appeal to medium and large enterprises looking to consolidate multiple workloads on a single all-flash array. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Nimble Storage All Flash Arrays (AF-Series)

Nimble's first all-flash array family scales from 20 TB to petabyte and 8.2 PB of usable storage and 1.2 million IOPS per four-node cluster. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Hitachi Data Systems Virtual Storage Platform VSP F800

Modular rack-mounted Hitachi Data Systems VSP F800 runs the vendor's SVOS operating system software and is equipped with custom-designed flash storage modules. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Arrays (CS-Series)

Nimble Storage jumped on the all-flash bandwagon in 2016, but didn't forget its disk fans by upgrading its CS-Series mixing flash and hard disk drives. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Kaminario K2 array boosts performance, capacity

New Kaminario all-flash array features higher performance and capacity, improves data reduction guarantee to 4:1 and offers faster storage networking options. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

NetApp AFF A700s flash array slims down A700 footprint

NetApp launches small-footprint A700s version of its high-end All Flash FAS A700 with built-in SSDs, updates all-flash capacity guarantee for A-Series flash storage line. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Dense Pure Storage FlashBlade storage zeroes in on web-scale analytics

FlashBlade system-on-a-chip from Pure Storage converges compute, flash storage and software-defined networking. The arrays use custom flash modules instead of solid-state drives. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Enterprise flash storage to speed up in 2017

CTOs at leading storage vendors predict speed and latency breakthroughs with new NVMe-based enterprise flash and upcoming memory technologies in 2017 and beyond. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

IBM DS8880 arrays adopt PCIe 3 in all-flash versions

The expansion of the IBM DS8880 hardware line introduces all-flash models designed around the vendor's High-Performance Flash Enclosure Gen2 to support PCIe 3.0, but not yet NVMe. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

All-flash array market advances outpace demand, create opportunities

Scott Sinclair says high-density, high-capacity all-flash storage arrays are a disruptive technology ahead of customer demand for now, but businesses will realize they need it. Continue Reading

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• Scott Sinclair, Practice Director

All-flash array market advances outpace demand, create opportunities

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All-flash storage system 2016 Products of the Year finalists

Our seven all-flash storage system 2016 finalists include products from flash-only vendors, as well as vendors that offer all-flash versions of existing hybrid arrays. Continue Reading

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• Garry Kranz

How eMMC 5.0 can improve your organization's small storage needs

The latest eMMC specification puts the tiny flash storage devices on a level playing field with many SSDs when it comes to speed -- but eMMC is still the smallest flash drive. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Differences between SSD caching and tiering technologies

Brien Posey looks at popular ways of using SSD as cache, including write-around, write-through and write-back, as well as how the technology compares with SSD tiering. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

HPE launches new XP7 based on Hitachi technology

Hewlett Packard Enterprise launched its high-end enterprise storage array upgade today at the same time as Hitachi Data Systems. The HPE XP7 and HDS Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) use the same ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Dell EMC to 'stay the course' with flash storage portfolio

Dell EMC plans to “stay the course” with its flash storage portfolio despite overlapping products at the midrange and low end, an executive at the newly combined company confirmed. Daniel Cobb, a ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Flash storage caching boosts application performance, requires balance

Chris Evans discusses the benefits to caching flash storage, the trade-offs involved and flash cache models, as well as a handy cheat sheet. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Nimble says customers quick to embrace all-flash

Nimble Storage, which was relatively late selling all-flash arrays, is trying to make up for lost time since launching its Predictive Flash platform in February. The vendor received a jolt from ... Continue Reading

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• Dave Raffo

IBM flash storage expands with midrange all-flash products

IBM's all-flash portfolio grows, with a new midrange and entry-level option, and the vendor adds a migration program aimed at EMC-Dell customers. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Almost time for SSD flash storage to be used with object storage

As the price of flash SSD storage continues to fall, it becomes more attractive for object storage, which otherwise counts on big, slow and cheap HDDs. Continue Reading

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• Marc Staimer, Dragon Slayer Consulting

NAND flash technology is just the beginning

NAND flash adoption has been as fast as the speed it offers, but faster storage techs such as 3D XPoint and phase-change memory are on their way. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

How to measure flash storage's true value

Flash storage, or using the broader term, solid-state storage, suffers from an inadequate measure of value. Flash storage provides a step-function improvement in the ability to store and retrieve ... Continue Reading

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• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

How can you increase SSD lifespan and keep performance?

Solid-state drives offer high performance, but their cost remains prohibitive. Here are some ways to prolong your SSD lifecycle while maintaining performance. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Propane provider gives SAN the gas with Violin flash array

Ferrellgas' switch from a hybrid array to a Violin flash storage array brought a boost in performance as well as surprising reductions in cost and management. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

HPE turns 3PAR array from all-flash to hybrid

For years we’ve seen storage vendors take systems designed for hard disk drives (HDDs) and add solid-state drives (SSDs) to them. Now Hewlett Packard Enterprise is taking hardware that ran all SSDs ... Continue Reading

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• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

Pure FlashBlade tackles scale-out unstructured data

Pure Storage launches a blade-based, scale-out unstructured data all-flash system that handles NAS and object storage. The vendor also brings out an entry-level version of its SAN flash array. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Pure Storage accelerates flash revenue

Pure Storage is looking at more competition and more opportunity than ever, and handling both well. The all-flash vendor bucked industry trends by growing revenue significantly last quarter despite ... Continue Reading

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• Dave Raffo

Tintri adds entry-level all-flash, teases analytics

Virtual machine-storage specialist Tintri rounded out its all-flash product line today with an entry level version priced at $125,000 for 5.34 TB of raw capacity. The VMstore T5040 is the third ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Will most 3D NAND flash products continue to feature TLC?

Vendors are using TLC flash in their 3D NAND flash products, which allows for greater capacity at a lower cost, according to Brien Posey. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Server-side caching has new data center role

Some server-side caching products have evolved into complete software-defined storage platforms that can aggregate flash across multiple servers. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Utility watchdog deploys all-flash SolidFire storage array

California Public Utilities Commission was stuck at about 80% server virtualization before adding all-flash SolidFire storage to remove latency problems. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

EMC XtremIO storage array

The XtremIO storage array from EMC is an all-flash system that offers scalability and high performance. Continue Reading

By

• Valerie Silverthorne

Examine your computing environment before you buy flash storage

The decision to buy flash storage can overcome many performance issues, but other areas of your computing environment could be contributing factors. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Will memristor technology replace NAND flash?

Brien Posey says that with HP working on a memristor-based computer it plans to launch by 2020, the technology could eventually succeed NAND flash. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

New Dell storage array, software-defined options added

Dell Storage ships new entry-level SCv2000 arrays, ups performance and density in PS6610 and adds a new Microsoft-based software-defined storage option. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

SanDisk sees PCIe flash take a dive

SanDisk became the PCIe flash market leader with its 2014 acquisition of server-side flash pioneer Fusion-io. Less than a year later, there is a lot less to that market and that is having a ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Four tips to maximize the lifespan of your flash memory storage

The lifespan of flash memory storage is not the hot-button issue it once was, but you should perform these tasks to prolong the life of your drives. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

SanDisk InfiniFlash launches company's all-flash platform

SanDisk launched the InfiniFlash all-flash platform this week. The system is said to deliver flash storage for less than $2 per GB before data reduction. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

How does RDMA work and why is it advantageous with flash?

Remote Direct Memory Access is a good way to reduce latency in flash environments and works with InfiniBand and some Ethernet connections. Continue Reading

By

• Dennis Martin, Demartek

What's the difference between 'usable' and 'effective' flash capacity?

Vendors often publish numbers for 'usable' capacity versus 'effective' capacity. Can you explain this and how can you plan flash capacity needs with these numbers in mind? Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

What you should know about using flash to complement DRAM

George Crump discusses emerging technology that enables using flash as memory, why it matters and its applicable use cases. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

EMC gives ViPR flash-related upgrade

EMC last week quietly upgraded its ViPR software-defined storage and ScaleIO hyper-convergence software, broadening support for platforms and emerging technologies. One of the selling points of ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Essential guide to desktop and laptop solid-state drives

Essential guide to laptop and desktop SSDs Continue Reading

What is the relationship between cache technology, CPU and RAM?

As flash memory caching is on its way in because of its cost and non-volatile nature, RAM may be on its way out the door, says analyst Jon Toigo. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

What should I consider when using SSD cloud?

Using solid-state in the cloud can boost performance, but first be sure you look past cost per gigabyte and are aware of any constraints from providers. Continue Reading

By

• Greg Schulz, The Server and StorageIO Group