Category Archives: Storage Technology
Beyond SSD: Flash is more than faster disk
Robin Harris of Storage Mojo in his recent article, “Are SSD-based arrays a bad idea?” and Matt Kixmoeller of Pure in his response, “The SSD is Key to Economic Flash Arrays,” presents interesting perspectives on whether or not SSDs are … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Flash Storage, Industry trends, Storage Technology
Tagged flash storage, iops, SSD, storage economics, storage IO, storage performance
Comments Off
Flash revolution, part 3: Intelligent flash-based products
In Part 1 of our series of flash storage, we looked at disk-based products using bolt-on flash as a cache. These systems still access disk in their basic data paths and cannot take full advantage of flash performance. In Part … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Flash Storage, General, Industry trends, Storage Technology
Tagged flash storage, iops, latency, SSD, storage, storage economics, storage IO, storage performance
1 Comment
Flash revolution, part 2: flash-based products
In Part 1, we looked at disk-based storage that uses flash as a cache. Because disk-based products rely on disks as a key part of their basic data path, they have difficulty achieving flash-level latency and will be left behind … Continue reading
Flash revolution, part 1: Disk-based flash products
Flash is revolutionizing storage. The decades-long bottleneck in storage – disk spindles — is being obliterated! A single commodity SSD is 400 times faster than a hard disk. In comparison, the speed of sound is “only” 250 times faster than … Continue reading
How Flash Changes Enterprise Storage
Flash-based solid-state drives (SSD) have no moving parts, are more reliable, have faster read times, and offer consistent IO performance (latency) during high utilization, compared to traditional hard drives. Most of us have seen the most immediate impact of SSD … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, General, Guests, Industry trends, Storage Technology
Tagged best practices, flash, SSD, storage, storage performance
1 Comment
Storage Virtualization: An Overview
The concept of virtualization has been around for some time. Virtualization is really just the abstraction of an actual entity or construct into logical representations of those entities or constructs. Most of the time, the term “virtualization” is tied to … Continue reading
Posted in General, Guests, Industry trends, Storage Technology, Virtualization
Tagged datacenter, storage performance, storage virtualization, virtualization, vmware
Comments Off
Choosing which applications to run in flash
As flash storage has become cheaper, it’s becoming increasingly practical to move application storage from hard-disk drive (HDD) to solid-state drive (SSD). Where are we today and how far have we come? In my previous blog post, “When is it … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, General, Industry trends, Storage Technology
Tagged datacenter, flash storage, hard drives, HDD, SSD, storage, storage IO, storage performance, tier 1 applications
Comments Off
When is it cheaper to use SSD vs. HDD?
For many applications, either solid-state drive (SSD) or hard-disk drive (HDD) is sufficient, and the choice comes down to cost. When determining which way to go, buyers want to know: How do we calculate this cost? And how does this … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Economics, General, Industry trends, Storage Technology
Tagged best practices, flash storage, hard drives, HDD, SSD, storage, storage economics, storage IO, storage performance, virtualization
Comments Off
Performance Reserves: Managing Performance like Capacity
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes The storage industry provides excellent visibility into capacity … Continue reading
Posted in General, Performance & Troubleshooting, Storage Technology, Tintri Technology
Tagged managing performance, storage, storage performance, virtualization, vmware, vsphere
Comments Off
vSphere NFS Troubleshooting Basics
In my previous article covering “Connecting vSphere to NFS the Easy Way,” I talked about how connecting vSphere to a NFS network attached storage (NAS) is the easiest way to get shared storage up and running. Additionally, I pointed out … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Guests, Performance & Troubleshooting, Storage Technology, Virtualization, VMware
Tagged how-to, NAS, NFS, shared storage, storage, troubleshooting, virtualization, vmware
2 Comments
Connecting vSphere to NFS the Easy Way
While most admins that come from a Windows server background don’t typically think of NFS for storage, when it comes to vSphere (ESXi), a NFS network attached storage (NAS) is by far the easiest shared storage option to use. I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, General, Guests, Storage Technology, Virtualization, VMware
Tagged best practices, ESXi, how-to, NAS, NFS, shared storage, storage, virtualization, vmware, vsphere
3 Comments