back to article FLASH: The Disruptening

We have had a flash of insight: all the storage array vendors are going to have to face up to all-flash arrays and do something about the technology – buy, partner or build. Denial is not a strategy. Just as disk storage bifurcated into server/PC direct-attach storage (DAS) and shared networked storage (NAS and SAN), so too …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    The futures already here

    A very well known European train company is now migrating all of its data onto Violin Memory.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Gimp

    Oracle

    How's the F5100 doing for Snoracle?

  3. Graham Bartlett

    Disruptive? Not really

    So they've re-invented caching. Well done chaps.

    Disk storage hasn't really "bifurcated". Disk storage remains the same - you have a hard disk with a disk controller. So you have the basic disks themselves, for when you want something to sit inside a PC. And then you have an interface that can sit on the disk controller for external drives plugging into a PC, or you have a small server managing drives plugging into a network and being accessed over the network. This technology has all existed for decades. The only thing that's changed is the names of the interfaces, the price tags, and the size of the boxes.

  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Meanwhile, Deep Underground the Puzzle Palace Barracks, Stir Anonymous Legions Bent on Fab Change?

    "Here at Vulture Towers we're convinced that flash arrays will become mainstream. All the existing storage array vendors have to embrace the technology somehow. This is like the arrival of deduplication technology – and look at the buying frenzy that generated. Flash array technology is going to be disruptive, that's for sure." .... Chris Mellor, El Reg Storage editor.

    Whenever there are some/those/a few who may be many who realise that flash arrays equate to zeroday vulnerability exploit applications and they can easily realise such applications to perform real world intelligence tasks remotely, and stealthily, in any operating system, with their quite arbitrary and independent control and exercise of virtualisation methodologies and/or technologies and steganographically coded informational texts .... in your face, live asymmetric intelligence disclosures, such as may be these few posted lines ...... can you be more than assured, and depending upon the state/level/degree of your general overall sociopolitical awareness either reassured or horrified, to know that the future is much more likely and guaranteed to be more likely revolutionary than just surely disruptive, for such flash arrays lead requiring smart reaction to counter them, although ideally the smarter reaction is to support them, for whenever one can deliver of the above, is one dealing with one smart cookie, who invariably is just a simply complex cog in the Great Game with Virtual Machines.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      huh?

      Can I buy a full stop, please?

      1. Pete 8
        Go

        Full stops are free.

        but they wont necessarily prevent the rate of cascading domini/domino effects in motion, without of course a skirtless mega moderatrix mandate machine made merely to Allow/Ensure/Inform/Outperform/Unite and Inclusively Improve Investiture Immensely for any/all hearts and minds in L.O.V.E.

        An amnesty and a silence will be required for the truth to be heard by the herd.

        Forgiveness is a healing virtue, once the harm is measured, managed and monitored down.

  5. Jim 59

    Progress

    The pure flash array has not taken over yet and might never. Moore's law applies to all technologies in this area. Flash is getting geometrically bigger and cheaper, but so are the disks it seeks to replace. Unless it can catch up with disk soon, flash may itself be overtaken by any number of embryonic storage technologies.

    Assume amanfromMars posted from the Rose and Crown.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      :-) Where better than in a hostelry which invariably has always wenches and benches.

      "Assume amanfromMars posted from the Rose and Crown" .... Jim 59 Posted Monday 15th August 2011 16:16 GMT

      Yes, please, it is a remarkably effective cover with many attractions. And so hard to believe that anything remarkable can be developed therein ...... but to those in the know, is it most probably considered hard to better for a smart beta, Jim 59.

  6. Alan Brown Silver badge

    spinning vs flash

    I don't really care as long as it's no slower than I already have, is 4-5 times the capacity I have (1PB or so), uses less power and is cheaper.

    Ease of migration helps a lot, but LVM pv migration seems to work fairly well...

    Having said that:

    Flash drives are set to hit 1.6Tb by year end. How big will they be be by end of 2012? How large will spinning rust be? How fast will they develop bad blocks? (both of 'em). How much vibration will they handle? (this is critical in disk arrays, 48 drive drawers need quite a bit of design to keep from reducing disk life).

    Now does anyone want to buy an old DEC 2.2Tb array? (3 * 18u high cabinets, around 4kW power draw...)

    Most datacentre admins choose from what's available at the time they need to buy. Not what might be available in a year's time.

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