Avoiding the Storage Performance Bathtub Curve

We’re probably all familiar with the concept of the HDD or SSD reliability bathtub curve (figure 1).  This shows how over the lifetime of a drive, failures typically follow a pattern where failure rate increases over time to a steady state, then increases again as the device wears out.  But have you considered the idea… Read more »

The Britpop Battle of Rubrik and Cohesity

Were you a Blur or Oasis fan?  Perhaps you were on the side of Jarvis Cocker and preferred Pulp.  Whatever your choice, the Britpop wars of the 1990s were memorable for building hype around the UK music industry and the idea of Cool Britannia. In lots of ways, the evolution of the data protection industry… Read more »

NVMe over Fabrics – Caveat Emptor?

For the past 20 years, Fibre Channel has been the dominant enterprise data centre storage networking technology.  By this, I mean traditional Fibre Channel, not variants that work over IP or use Converged Ethernet (more on that in a moment).  It’s true that other protocols exist.  Smaller organisations have typically used iSCSI, because of the… Read more »

IDC 1Q2018 Data Shows a Rebound for Storage Hardware Sales

The latest IDC Storage Tracker numbers are out and in the spirit of recent analysis, I’ve put the numbers into my tracking spreadsheet.  The figures represent data for Q1, which now has 12 years’ worth of coverage.  With around 42% growth in the general storage hardware figures and 20% in external storage sales, the numbers… Read more »

Avoiding All-Flash Missing IOPS

We are living in a golden age of storage media, where new products come to market offering ever greater performance with lower latency than previous generations.  Today the hard drive and even early flash drives look positively archaic compared to modern NVMe drives built from 3D-XPoint, capable of delivering hundreds of thousands of IOPS and… Read more »

The Race towards End-to-End NVMe in the Data Centre

The next greatest thing in storage hardware is the move to NVMe.  This is occurring in two ways – conversion of internal designs within shared storage platforms to use NVMe at the “back-end”, and front-end (or host connectivity) using NVMe over Fabrics in some form.  Vendors are starting to use the term “end-to-end” NVMe as… Read more »

Micron ushers in the era of QLC SSDs

To date we’ve only seen QLC NAND storage in the consumer SD card format, however, that’s set to change as Micron announces the first QLC SATA SSD for the data centre.  The Micron 5210 ION SSD will deliver up to 7.68TB of capacity in a standard 2.5″, 7mm form factor.  But there’s a catch –… Read more »

Conflating Data Protection and Data Mobility

Sitting on the sidelines, I’ve been watching some of the traffic and communications coming from VeeamON this week.  Chris Mellor just posted a quick article summing up the ambitions of Veeam as a company.  It struck me that we continue to conflate the idea of data protection and data mobility.  To me, these are two… Read more »

NetApp Extends Cloud Volumes to GCP

Following their introduction on Microsoft Azure last year, native NetApp Cloud Volumes are to be made available through Google Cloud Platform.  NetApp now offers Cloud Volumes in some form on the three major (Western) cloud providers, AWS, Azure and GCP.  How should we view this, especially in respect of how cloud services are evolving? Maturity… Read more »

PowerMax, VMAX, XtremIO – the Agony of Choice

Last week Dell EMC announced the next generation of the long-running Symmetrix platform with the release of PowerMax.  This all-NVMe array apparently isn’t a replacement for VMAX (or XtremIO).  However it is yet another decision point in customer choice for all-flash from Dell EMC.  Does the company need another all-flash array or is this just… Read more »

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Latest
  • Intel Ruler SSD and Chassis

    Flash Capacities and Failure Domains

    Chatting with good friend Enrico Signoretti earlier today on the subject of 1PB flash in 1U, I was reminded of the new Intel Ruler form factor.  In case you missed the news, in August Intel debuted a long, thin form-factor SSD dubbed the ruler that stacks back to front and vertically in a server, potentially… Read more »

  • Cloud Data Migration – Database Import Tools

    This is one of a series of posts discussing techniques for moving data to and from public cloud.  Previous posts have covered physical appliances and the shipping of virtual machines. Cloud Data Migration – Shipping Virtual Machines Cloud Data Migration – Data Transfer Using Physical Shipping & Appliances Amazon Web Services Another option for moving… Read more »

  • Seeding the Object Storage Market with Free Licences

    Updated 15 March 2018 with new links Last week, Caringo, an object storage startup, announced that the company would offer full licences of up to 100TB to qualified companies in the Media and Entertainment sector.  The assumption is, that once a company is hooked on the first 100TB and sees the simplicity of the solution,… Read more »

  • SanDisk 400GB MicroSD Card – QLC in Action?

    Yesterday SanDisk/Western Digital announced the availability of a 400GB microSD card, doubling the capacity of their previous offering.  In a press release WD said: Western Digital achieved this capacity breakthrough by leveraging its proprietary memory technology and design and production processes that allow for more bits per die. Is this the first, or at least… Read more »

  • VMware Cloud on AWS – What We Know So Far

    VMworld, VMware’s flagship user conference was held this week in Las Vegas, USA.  One of the main announcements was the eagerly awaited VMware Cloud On AWS (VMC) moving to general availability.  VMC provides the customer experience of VMware software running on AWS hardware in the public cloud. It potentially removes the need to run on-premises… Read more »

  • Cloud Data Migration – Shipping Virtual Machines

    Previously we discussed the use of content migration tools to get data into public cloud services.  Another alternative is to ship entire virtual machines into the cloud, including the application and data. Why VMs? Why would it be more practical to ship an entire VM than just the data?  In some instances and with some… Read more »

  • QLC NAND – how real is it and what can we expect from the technology?

    Since NAND flash storage was first introduced into enterprise computing, we’ve seen a rapid explosion in the types and capabilities of flash products that can now be deployed in servers, HCI solutions and storage arrays.  QLC is the next evolution of cost reducing, space increasing flash technology.  What is it and what can we expect… Read more »

  • Flash Diversity: High Capacity Drives from Nimbus and Micron

    The desire to provide cheaper and greater capacity storage devices knows no bounds and has been a focus of the industry for the last 60 years.  Following on from Seagate’s 60TB “concept” flash drive, we now have two vendors selling 50TB OEM flash drives from Nimbus Data.  Let’s put that into context – the largest… Read more »

  • Scale Computing Moves Deeper Into the Enterprise With All-Flash HCI Nodes

    Sometimes a technology captures your imagination and shows real promise for developing into something of real value for the customer.  Scale Computing is one such company that has continued to demonstrate technical innovation and a continuning evolution in their platform.  The most recent announcements bring to the market higher performance and capacity appliances, including an… Read more »