The Ramifications of Cisco’s Acquisition of WHIPTAIL Technologies

September 13, 2013

Earlier this week Cisco officially became a storage provider when it announced its intention to acquire privately held WHIPTAIL Technologies. While this may have come as a surprise to some, rumors that Cisco was looking to acquire a storage company were already circulating in 2012 at Storage Networking World (SNW) as I discussed in a blog entry last year. So now that Cisco is in the process of becoming a storage company, what are the ramifications of this change in its product offerings?

A Working Definition of Hybrid Storage Arrays and Why This Definition Matters

September 6, 2013

As we were researching arrays for inclusion in the DCIG 2013 Flash Memory Storage Array Buyer’s Guide we kept encountering an intriguing group of companies that had designed–or were developing–storage arrays from the ground up to realize the performance benefits of an all flash array, but with storage capacities and price points that would bring the benefits of flash memory storage to a broader range of businesses. The resulting hybrid storage arrays achieve this balance of performance, capacity, and cost by intelligently combining flash memory with large capacity disk drives in a single storage system.

Multiple Paths to Affordable High Performance in Hybrid Storage

August 9, 2013

As we have been working on the development of a DCIG Buyer’s Guide for Hybrid Storage Arrays, it has been interesting to see the different approaches that the vendors are taking as they seek to leverage flash memory plus traditional hard drives to deliver previously unheard of IOPS and ultra-low latencies at a cost per GB that makes sense to a broad range of businesses. The “secret sauce” varies from vendor to vendor, but in every case it involves sophisticated caching and/or automated storage tiering software.

Hybrid Storage Makes Storage Tiering in the Virtualized World Irrelevant; Interview with Tegile Systems VP Rob Commins Part III

August 1, 2013

In the fast-paced, ever-changing world of virtualization, the ability for a storage array to deliver performance at exactly the right time is essential. Unfortunately, most tiered storage systems are poorly equipped to respond to these new dynamics. This is where hybrid storage arrays come into play. In this third installment of my interview series with Rob Commins, VP of Marketing at Tegile Systems, we discuss the practical applications of storage and data movement in a virtualized world, how storage tiering falls short of consumer requirements and why Tegile’s hybrid storage is so well-equipped to meet them.

The Tipping Point in Going from Hybrid to Flash: Interview with Tegile Systems VP Rob Commins Part II

July 2, 2013

Hybrid and all_flash memory arrays are arguably the two hottest technologies in storage systems right now. However determining which of these two types of storage arrays is the right one for an organization’s environment is influenced by both cost and production application requirements. In this second installment of my interview series with Tegile System’s VP of Marketing, Rob Commins, we discuss what the tipping point is in going from hybrid to an all-flash memory storage array.

Sub-millisecond Response Times are the New Gold Standard in Storage System Performance; Interview with Tegile Systems VP Rob Commins, Part I

June 19, 2013

It was not that long ago – like no more than five (5) years ago – that if as a storage administrator you could configure a storage system to provide average response times of around 2 milliseconds for any application, you were a hero to everyone you supported. Fast forward to today’s hybrid and all flash memory systems and 2 millisecond response times are the new “slow.” In this first installment of my interview series with Tegile System’s VP of Marketing, Rob Commins, we discuss how hybrid and all flash memory are redefining the “Gold” standard for performance in storage systems.

NetApp Goes Back to Its Roots to Lay the Foundation for Its Future

June 14, 2013

To say or imply that NetApp was in any near term danger of falling from its position as a storage leader would be a gross mischaracterization of its current condition. However it would be accurate to say that the industry lacked clarity as to how NetApp would respond to the encroachment of flash memory storage arrays on the high performance end of storage. After attending the NetApp Industry Analyst event this week it is now clear that to address this challenge NetApp plans to go back to its roots to lay the foundation for its future.

Fusion-io Acquires NexGen to Accelerate the Process of Data Center Transformation

May 3, 2013

Last week’s acquisition of NexGen Storage by Fusion-io was greeted with quite a bit of fanfare by the storage industry. But as an individual who has covered Fusion-io for many years and talked one-on-one with their top executives on multiple occasions, its acquisition of NexGen signaled that Fusion-io wanted to do more than deliver an external storage array that had its technology built-in. Rather Fusion-io felt it was incumbent for it to take action and accelerate the coming data center transformation that it has talked and written about for years.

IBM Validates Systemic Data Center Savings Enabled by Flash Storage

April 12, 2013

DCIG has for some time been recommending the adoption of flash storage in the data center as a way to achieve substantial overall savings and ROI. As part of the April 11 announcement of the IBM Flash Ahead Initiative, IBM revealed that a flash storage enabled systemic rethinking of the data center can generally achieve savings of over 30% in data center hardware and software costs. This finding affirms DCIG’s belief that Flash Memory Storage Arrays are poised to address not only special I/O-intensive use cases, but to begin displacing traditional storage arrays in many data centers.

The Two Forces Driving the Evolution (or is it Revolution?) in Enterprise Midrange Array Architectures

February 22, 2013

In May 2010 DCIG released its first-ever Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide in which we covered 70+ models from over 20 vendors. Fast forward just three (3) short years later and DCIG is on track to release not one, not two, not three no, not even four Buyer’s Guides on enterprise midrange arrays but five distinct Buyer’s Guides on this topic! So what has changed in just three (3) short years that DCIG feels the need to produce so many? To understand this requires a closer look at the forces that are driving the evolution and revolution in enterprise midrange arrays.

Category: Flash Memory

The Ramifications of Cisco’s Acquisition of WHIPTAIL Technologies

A Working Definition of Hybrid Storage Arrays and Why This Definition Matters

Multiple Paths to Affordable High Performance in Hybrid Storage

Hybrid Storage Makes Storage Tiering in the Virtualized World Irrelevant; Interview with Tegile Systems VP Rob Commins Part III

The Tipping Point in Going from Hybrid to Flash: Interview with Tegile Systems VP Rob Commins Part II

Sub-millisecond Response Times are the New Gold Standard in Storage System Performance; Interview with Tegile Systems VP Rob Commins, Part I

NetApp Goes Back to Its Roots to Lay the Foundation for Its Future

Fusion-io Acquires NexGen to Accelerate the Process of Data Center Transformation

IBM Validates Systemic Data Center Savings Enabled by Flash Storage

The Two Forces Driving the Evolution (or is it Revolution?) in Enterprise Midrange Array Architectures

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