Tag Archives: Flash

Pure Storage Announces NVMe DirectFlash and New FlashArray Model

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Pure Storage logoToday Pure Storage, known for their All-Flash Storage arrays, announced their next Big ThingTM, DirectFlash, as well as a new FlashArray model. DirectFlash is a combination of NVMe hardware and the software to manage it (more details on that below). The new array model, the FlashArray//X, uses exclusively DirectFlash as the storage medium.

A Brief Flash Primer

“Flash” refers to silicon-based memory chips used for storage. It tends to come in one of two form factors.

The first is Solid State Drives (SSD). These typically have the same dimensions as hard-disk drives (HDD) and connect via either SATA or (more typically) SAS interfaces.

The second is Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe). These use (not surprisingly) non-volatile memory chips to store data. The “Express” in the name indicates that it connects via PCIe which is not only higher bandwidth than SATA or SAS, but is both physically and logically closer to the storage controllers, making NVMe faster and higher bandwidth than SSD. NVMe is often 5X faster than SSD.

I’ll describe the new offerings from Pure below.

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Pure Storage’s FlashBlade is now GA

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Pure Storage logoToday, Pure Storage, an All-Flash storage vendor, announced the General Availability (GA) of their FlashBlade, a scalable, All-Flash, NFS storage platform, as well as the GA of version 1.2 of Elasticity, the software that runs the FlashBlade.

I wrote about FlashBlade when it was first announced in 2016. At the time I was very excited about the possibilities of this platform. I wasn’t able to get hands-on with the platform. The closest I got was being able to hold and examine one of the blades — encased in a Lucite box. (Really. They handed it to me all boxed up. I was tempted to use my multitool to open the box up to conduct a more-thorough examination, but not only did it feel like it would be rude, they also seemed to always make sure I was within arms-reach of at least three Pure employees at any point the blade was within arms-reach of me… (Kudos to them on having done their advance research.))

At that time, not all of the specifications had been solidified, but those details are available now. Continue reading →

A Closer Look at the All-Flash Isilon, aka Nitro

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isilon-all-flashOn 19 October, Dell EMC made an announcement about the All-Flash Isilon nodes. This product line has been code-named “Project Nitro”. The announcement was timed to occur during the first-ever Dell EMC World event.

I’ll walk through what was announced, and then provide additional details.

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Pure Storage Announces New Solutions and New Architecture

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Pure Storage logoToday, Pure Storage made several announcements: new product, new bundled solutions, and a brand-new scale-out architecture. These announcements were timed to coincide with Day One of their first-ever conference event, Pure//Accelerate, which I am attending.

[DISCLAIMER: In the interest of full disclosure, Pure Storage provided me with a complimentary pass to their conference and also covered my plane fare and hotel costs to attend. That said, there was no requirement that I post anything, nor has Pure reviewed anything I’ve written in this post. The only input they’ve had on this content is being very available to answer any questions I’ve asked.]

The announcements that interested me the most are:

  • A new addition to the FlashArray//m Series line of products
  • New bundled FlashStack solutions
  • A from-the-ground-up new scalable storage architecture

I’ll walk through these in order below. Continue reading →

NetApp to Acquire SolidFire for $870 Million – GeekFluent’s Thoughts

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SolidFire logoYesterday, NetApp announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SolidFire for $870 Million in an all-cash bid.

SolidFire is a privately-held storage company who makes an All-Flash array based on a scale-out architecture. I’m a big fan of both SolidFire and their Element X operating system (available as a software-only option) — I’ve written about them before.

Below I’ll walk through some aspects of the deal and offer my opinions and speculations. I promise they’ll be worth at least as much as you’re paying for them. You can read SolidFire’s official take on it here. My take is completely unofficial. Continue reading →

Pure Storage Announces New Program, New Hardware, New Software Services

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Pure Storage logoToday, Pure Storage, an all-Flash array vendor I’ve written about before, made three major announcements covering a new program for customers, new hardware, and new management software. Specifically, they announced:

  1. Evergreen Storage
  2. The FlashArray//m family (also called FA//m)
  3. Pure1 Management Platform

I’ll cover all three in detail below. Continue reading →

PernixData Announces Version 2.5 of Their FVP Software

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PernixDataToday, PernixData announced version 2.5 of their FVP software product. This product can provide huge storage performance benefits in VMware environments. Since it’s not something I’ve written about before, and it seems that not everyone has heard of PernixData and FVP yet, I’ll spend a little while explaining what it is and why it’s so interesting before I talk about what’s included in the new version.
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SolidFire Announces New Version of Element OS – Nitrogen

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SolidFire logoToday, all-Flash storage vendor SolidFire announced the newest version of their array’s operating system, Element OS. In keeping with the “Element” theme, since this new OS version is the seventh generation of the OS, it is named “Nitrogen” — because Nitrogen is the seventh element on the periodic table.

This updated software adds four main new features, which I’ll go into detail about below. Continue reading →

Two Announcements from SolidFire: Funding and New Hardware Offerings

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SolidFire logoToday, all-Flash storage vendor SolidFire announced both the completion of a Series D round of funding and the upcoming release of two new hardware products.

SolidFire is one of several players in the highly-competitive all-Flash storage array arena. Despite the fact that their products have been being sold for two years now, and that Gartner scores them very highly in this space, I’m always surprised that people don’t seem to be more familiar with them.

I’ll attempt to fix this by giving an overview of SolidFire before I get into the details of today’s announcements. Continue reading →

GeekFluent’s Roundup of the EMC MegaLaunch Announcements

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Perhaps you remember EMC’s first big product announcement event under their then-new CMO Jeremy Burton. They called it a “MegaLaunch” and set out to break several world records as part of the event. If you remember 20 people stuffed into a Mini Cooper, you remember the event.

Every year since then, EMC has repeated the MegaLaunch theme. Last year I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat at MegaLaunch III in Milan.

This year it’s MegaLaunch IV and here are what I think the important bits are:

Which was your favorite part of the MegaLaunch event? Let me know in the comments below.