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.
Category: Blog
Understanding Flash: What is 3D NAND?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
All Flash Arrays: What Is An AFA?
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.






