This week I had the opportunity to record a webinar on a subject very close to my heart, the Software-as-a-Service industry. From 2003 to 2007 I managed the production infrastructure for a global SaaS company through the transition from startup to acquisition (partly by Salesforce.com). At the time, SaaS was a relatively new phenomenon, predating any concept … Continue reading How the Next Generation of Flash Storage is Changing the Economics Of SaaS Businesses (Recorded Webinar)
Category: Blog
Understanding Flash: The Fall and Rise of Flash Memory
This month sees the four year anniversary of some interesting events. Commonwealth countries around the world celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Whitney Houston was tragically found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel. The Caribbean was hit hard by a sargassum seaweed invasion. And I made the decision to leave the comfort of … Continue reading Understanding Flash: The Fall and Rise of Flash Memory
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
Almost exactly a year ago I published a post covering my first impressions of the ASM Filter Driver (ASMFD) released in Oracle 12.1.0.2, followed swiftly by a second post showing that it didn't work with 4k native devices. When I wrote that first post I was about to start my summer holidays, so I'm afraid … Continue reading Oracle’s ASM Filter Driver Revisited
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