#239 – Unpacking the details of PCI Express 7.0 with Al Yanes

Chris Evans Flash Memory Summit 2022, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

The PCI-SIG recently announced the next generation of PCI Express – 7.0 – will be released in 2025. We’ve only just heard about PCIe 6.0 (see this recent podcast), so it’s interesting to see that the working group is already committed to extending the performance and capabilities of PCIe further into the future. Chris caught up with Al Yanes (President and Chairperson of PCI-SIG) earlier this year at Flash Memory Summit to get an update. This podcast was recorded after the event and goes into the detail about the improvements. The timeline for PCI Express …

#238 – SAS 24GB+ Updates with Rick Kutcipal

Chris Evans Flash Memory Summit 2022, Guest Speakers, Standards, Storage Unpacked Podcast

Once again Chris is joined by Rick Kutcipal, board member with the SCSI Trade Association. It’s been four years since episode #74 when Rick provided an update on SAS 24Gb. This time, Rick has details of new features in 24Gb+. What does the “plus” mean in this context? While the bus speed may not be increasing, new features (+) are continually being added to the SAS protocol, hence the additional designation. In this episode, Rick discusses some interesting enhancements to drive management, mainly driven by the demands of hyper-scalers. These include Command Duration Limits, Format …

#237 – Flash Memory Summit 2022 in Review with Chris Mellor

Chris Evans All-Flash, Flash Memory Summit 2022, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this episode, Chris chats to friend of the show Chris Mellor from Blocks and Files. Both Chris’s attended Flash Memory Summit this year, held annually in San Jose and in person for the first time since 2019. Two big technology developments stand out from this year’s event. Firstly CXL, which is current flavour of the month with all vendors. The second is the diversity of SSD products, from computational storage to Ethernet drives. Chris walks through some of his observations, including MemVerge, NeuroBlade, Intel, Micron, Neo Semiconductor and Solidigm. There’s a lot to unpack …

#235 – FlashCore Futures with IBM CMO Scott Baker

Chris Evans All-Flash, Flash Memory Summit 2022, Guest Speakers, IBM, NVMe, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this episode, Chris is joined by IBM Storage CMO Scott Baker. The discussion takes place at Flash Memory Summit 2022 (FMS), being held in person in Santa Clara, USA. FlashCore Modules are IBM’s custom flash drives, developed from IP acquired with the acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. Scott is presenting at FMS, discussing how FlashCore could be used for anomaly detection and enhanced ransomware protection. You can learn more about FlashCore modules in our deep dive into FlashSystem 5200 and in this podcast recorded in September 2020. Elapsed Time: 00:13:36 Timeline Related Podcasts & …

#234 – Introducing Pure Storage FlashBlade//S and Evergreen//Flex with CTO Rob Lee (Sponsored)

Chris Evans All-Flash, Guest Speakers, Object Storage, Pure Accelerate techfest22, Pure Storage, Sponsored, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this episode, Chris talks to Rob Lee, CTO at Pure Storage about today’s announcement covering FlashBlade//S and Evergreen//Flex. FlashBlade//S is a new hardware platform that evolves the solution into a disaggregated architecture. The design enables compute and storage resources to be scaled independently, while incorporating existing DFMs (DirectFlash Modules) that are currently used in the FlashArray family. To exploit the benefits of FlashBlade//S, Pure has also announced a realignment of the Evergreen programme, including the new Evergreen//Flex option. //Flex customers can retain hardware ownership while benefiting from “component” mobility. The hardware changes in FlashBlade//S …

#233 – Introduction to the VAST Data Ceres Hardware Platform with Jeff Denworth (Sponsored)

Chris Evans All-Flash, Guest Speakers, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast, VAST Data

In this episode, Chris is in conversation with VAST Data CMO, Jeff Denworth. The topic covers the recent announcement of Ceres, a new hardware platform combining ruler form-factor flash and BlueField DPUs. The new solution, which will eventually replace the current “Mavericks” D-boxes is a 1U system with flash, storage-class memory and network connectivity through DPU SmartNICs. The design can be vastly simplified compared to other storage solutions as the hardware component simply presents storage as drives over NVMe-oF. A single 1U system supports up to 22 ruler drives, with a capacity of 675TB. Jeff …

#232 – Building Power-Efficient Storage Systems with Justin Emerson from Pure Storage (Sponsored)

Chris Evans All-Flash, Guest Speakers, Pure Storage, Sponsored, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this episode, Chris talks to Justin Emerson from Pure Storage about modern design considerations for power-efficient storage. The cost of powering data centres has increased massively over the last 12 months, driven by the global economy and recovery from COVID-19. At a component level, servers are increasing their power usage, with faster processors and memory, plus the use of power-hungry GPUs. By contrast, storage power demands have reduced, as flash takes over from HDDs. Of course, this doesn’t mean there aren’t still considerations to make. Vendors such as Pure Storage have developed custom flash …

#231 – Introducing Infinidat InfiniBox SSA II (Sponsored)

Chris Evans All-Flash, Guest Speakers, Infinidat, Sponsored, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this episode, Chris talks to Eric Herzog, CMO at Infinidat about the announcement of SSA II, the second generation all-flash InfiniBox platform. The first generation SSA (solid state array) was developed to address a customer requirement that all long-tail latency I/Os must be delivered at all-flash levels of performance. The InfiniBox architecture is capable of delivering up to 95% of I/O from DRAM, but for some customers, that figure simply wasn’t high enough. With SSA II, Infinidat has moved to the Intel Cascade Lake architecture, adding a further 48 cores of processing. In addition, …