Storage is the foundation on which database performance is built. Latency, throughput, and consistency at this layer directly shape how systems behave under load.
While often abstracted away in modern architectures, storage characteristics continue to define the limits of what databases can achieve – especially as workloads become more demanding and less predictable.
Guest Post I'm excited announce another guest blog written by my good friend and funny-talking American cousin Nathan Fuzi. Like me, Nate comes from a database background but joined the all-flash storage revolution back in its infancy. Which means, like me, Nate how has a little tombstone on his résumé marked Violin Memory. But even though he … Continue reading The Flash Insider: To POC or Not To POC?
Active/passive architecture limits a storage array to 50% of its available controller performance – and costs more per unit of throughput than a true active/active design.
When flash eliminated mechanical latency, the bottleneck moved – from the persistence layer to the controllers. Deduplication and data reduction now place crushing demands on controller CPU and DRAM.
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)
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
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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