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Category: Blog

Understanding Flash: The Fall and Rise of Flash Memory

NAND flash was declared dying in 2012 – but the industry's pivot to 3D NAND proved the sceptics wrong. Here's what the "Bleak Future" paper got right, and what it missed.

flashdba Blog, Flash, Storage, Understanding Flash Leave a comment February 9, 2016June 19, 2026 3 Minutes

Understanding Flash: What is 3D NAND?

3D grid cube illustrating the vertical cell-stacking concept at the heart of 3D NAND flash memory

3D NAND stacks flash cells vertically rather than shrinking them further, overcoming the physical limits of 2D planar NAND. This article explains how V-NAND and charge trap flash work and why they matter for enterprise storage.

flashdba Blog, Storage, Storage for DBAs, Understanding Flash 8 Comments January 26, 2016June 5, 2026 4 Minutes

All Flash Arrays: Hybrid Means Compromise

Hybrid flash arrays promise the best of disk and flash, but they exist only to bridge a gap that is already closing. This article uses the hybrid electric vehicle as a lens to argue that HFAs are a transitory solution – and that the gap is closing faster than they can fill it.

flashdba All Flash Arrays, Blog, Storage, Storage for DBAs 7 Comments January 7, 2016June 5, 2026 4 Minutes

Why Kaminario?

This summer I made the decision to leave my previous employer and join another vendor in the All Flash Array space - a company called Kaminario. A lot of people have been in touch to ask me about this, so I thought I'd answer the question here... Why Kaminario? To answer the question, we first need to … Continue reading Why Kaminario? →

flashdba Blog, Flash, Storage Leave a comment December 15, 2015 4 Minutes

All Flash Arrays: SSD-based versus Ground-Up Design

Should an all flash array use commodity SSDs or custom flash modules? This article compares the two architectures across time-to-market, economics of scale and design agility – and explains why the answer isn't as obvious as it might seem.

flashdba All Flash Arrays, Blog, Storage, Storage for DBAs 5 Comments October 14, 2015June 5, 2026 6 Minutes

All Flash Arrays: Where’s My Capacity? Effective, Usable and Raw Explained

All flash array vendors quote capacity in three very different ways – raw, usable and effective. This article explains the differences, warns against vendor smoke and mirrors, and argues that usable capacity at 1:1 reduction is the only figure that matters when buying.

flashdba All Flash Arrays, Blog, Storage, Storage for DBAs 2 Comments October 6, 2015June 5, 2026 7 Minutes

Goodbye Violin…

  There's a joke among some of the longer-serving employees of Violin Memory that "Violin years" are like dog years: every normal year feels like a decade. It's not meant in a negative way, it's just that things change so quickly and dramatically in the flash industry that whenever we take a moment to look back it … Continue reading Goodbye Violin… →

flashdba Blog 8 Comments September 8, 2015October 12, 2015 1 Minute

All Flash Arrays: Can’t I Just Stick Some SSDs In My Disk Array?

Filling a legacy disk array with SSDs doesn't make it a true all flash array. This article builds a disk array from first principles to show why every architectural decision made for disk turns out to be the wrong one for flash.

flashdba All Flash Arrays, Blog, Storage, Storage for DBAs 6 Comments August 18, 2015June 4, 2026 7 Minutes

Oracle’s ASM Filter Driver Revisited

A full re-test of Oracle's ASM Filter Driver a year on – correcting earlier mistakes and giving a definitive verdict on AFD behaviour with 4k Advanced Format devices.

flashdba Advanced Format, ASM, Blog, Databases, Linux, Storage 10 Comments July 29, 2015June 19, 2026 13 Minutes

All Flash Arrays: What Is An AFA?

All Flash Arrays - Hybrid, SSD-based or Ground-Up

All flash arrays come in three distinct categories: hybrid, SSD-based and ground-up designs. This article explains the differences, cuts through competing industry definitions from IDC and Gartner, and sets out a clear definition for what actually qualifies as an AFA.

flashdba All Flash Arrays, Blog, Storage, Storage for DBAs Leave a comment June 25, 2015June 6, 2026 5 Minutes

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