Tag: Storage for DBAs

The Final Post: Hardware Is Dead

Well, my friends, this is it. The time has come to retire the flashdba jersey after more than seven years of fun and frolics. In part one of this post, I looked back at my time in the All-Flash storage industry and marvelled at the crazy, Game of Thrones-style chaos that saw so many companies arrive, … Continue reading The Final Post: Hardware Is Dead →

Flash Debrief: The End (part 1)

Seven years ago this month, I created a blog and online presence called flashdba to mark the start of my journey away from Oracle databases (and DBAing) into the newly-born All-Flash Storage industry. Six years ago this month, I posted the first in what transpired to be a very long blog series attempting to explain the … Continue reading Flash Debrief: The End (part 1) →

All Flash Arrays: Scale Up vs Scale Out (Part 2)

In the first post on the subject of Scale Up versus Scale Out, we looked at the reasons why scalability is a key requirement for storage platforms, as well as discussing the limits of Scale Up only architectures, i.e. systems where more capacity is added to the same fixed number of controllers. In this article, … Continue reading All Flash Arrays: Scale Up vs Scale Out (Part 2) →

All Flash Arrays: Scale Up vs Scale Out (Part 1)

Imagine you want to buy some more storage for your laptop - let's say an external USB drive for backups. What are the fundamental questions you need to ask before you get down to the thorny issue of price? Typically, there is only one key question: How much capacity do I need? Of course there … Continue reading All Flash Arrays: Scale Up vs Scale Out (Part 1) →

All Flash Arrays: Active/Active versus Active/Passive

I want you to imagine that you are about to run a race. You have your trainers on, your pre-race warm up is complete and you are at the start line. You look to your right... and see the guy next to you, the one with the bright orange trainers, is hopping up and down on … Continue reading All Flash Arrays: Active/Active versus Active/Passive →

All Flash Arrays: Controllers Are The New Bottleneck

Today's storage array market contains a wild variation of products: block storage, file storage or object storage; direct attached, SANs or NAS systems; fibre-channel, iSCSI or Infiniband... Even the SAN section of the market is full of diversity: from legacy hard disk drive-based arrays through the transitory step of tiered disk+flash hybrid systems and on to modern All-Flash Arrays (AFAs). If … Continue reading All Flash Arrays: Controllers Are The New Bottleneck →

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 sargassum seaweed invasion. And I made the decision to leave the comfort of Oracle databases and join the exciting … Continue reading Understanding Flash: The Fall and Rise of Flash Memory →

All Flash Arrays: Hybrid Means Compromise

Sometimes the transition between two technologies is long and complicated. It may be that the original technology is so well established that it's entrenched in people's minds as simply "the way things are" - inertia, you might say. It could be that there is more than one form of the new technology to choose from, … Continue reading All Flash Arrays: Hybrid Means Compromise →

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

In recent articles in this series I've been looking at the architectural choices for building All Flash Arrays (AFAs). I surmised that there are three main approaches: Hybrid Flash Arrays SSD-based All Flash Arrays Ground-Up All Flash Arrays (which from here on I'll refer to as Custom Flash Module arrays or CFM arrays) I've already blown metaphorical raspberries at … Continue reading All Flash Arrays: SSD-based versus Ground-Up Design →