Chris Evans does a great job showing that Pure Storage’s FlashArray//X isn’t important because it’s a bold new product for the company, but rather because it’s the latest step of iteration in a well executed vision.
AIRI: Converging FlashBlade into an AI Reference Architecture
Pure Storage’s AIRI platform provides a converged infrastructure approach for ML and AI workloads, combining FlashBlade and NVIDIA DGX-1 servers. Chris Evans sees this as a more fundamental achievement, creating reference architectures around specific applications to best take advantage of FlashBlade.
Touching the Void: Cloudian Acquires Infinity Storage
Cloudian recently made an interesting move by scooping up Infinity Storage. This is more than a little curious. The big draw around Infinity Storage is that they provide file storage, whereas Cloudian has made it’s name as an object storage provider. Except that as we’ve covered, Cloudian now offers file services via HyperFile. So… why spend the money on the acquisition?
Where Do SATA SSDs Fit In An NVMe Market?
Whenever you talk to storage vendors, they’re quick to mention their plans for NVMe. For good reasons, it’s becoming the de facto standard for the highest performing drives. But what about SATA SSDs? Chris Evans breaks down where these still fit in the market.
Of Storage Arrays and Meltdown
We’ve seen OS and chipmakers respond to the Meltdown and Spectre flaws with patches since the rampant speculation last week. What remains unanswered is how these patches will specifically impact performance on storage arrays and HCI systems. Chris Evans runs down what we do know, and some of the initial company responses.
The Four Stages of Cloud Adoption
Chris Evans has some interesting thoughts on where cloud adoption is going. He stages for cloud adoption go from initial private cloud implementations to something he calls a “multi-cloud brokerage”. There’s no doubt that in 2017 we saw multi-cloud strategies become common talking points for any number of vendors. While fear of cloud lock-in is perhaps overblown, multi-cloud seems to be where many organizations want to go.
Seagate’s Vaguely Unsettling Multi-Actuator Drives
Mechanical hard drives are fighting a losing war against flash in most markets. That doesn’t diminish the fact that they are marvels of engineering. The precision needed to add increasing density and platters is truly a remarkable feat of technology. Seagate just upped the technical “wow” quotient by announcing upcoming drives with multiple independent actuators.
Failing Startups, Dying Private Clouds, and more in Gestalt Cloud News 17.9
In this iteration of Gestalt Cloud News:
– The Gestalt IT Rundown discusses AWS re:Invent announcements
– Chris Evans discusses the potential death of the private cloud
– We interview Eyvonne Sharp for our IT Origins series
Is the Private Cloud Dying?
IDC predicts cloud spending will hit $554 billion by 2021, doubling since 2016. With the ever expanding features and capabilities of the public cloud, will private clouds still have a place in the enterprise?
QLC NAND – how real is it and what can we expect from the technology?
In storage, there is an inexorable march toward greater capacity. In general this means denser storage. Spinning disks have come up with a variety of ways to skirt the laws of physics to put more bits in a single drive enclosure. Platters were added, drive heads were made more precise, and some companies have tried write schemes like Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR).
Flash storage has gone through similar iterations to increase density. Chris Evans outlines the challenges and opportunities afforded by quadruple-level cell flash storage.