#138 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part I)

#138 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part I)

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week Chris and Martin are joined by Chris Mellor for what is turning into an annual look at storage technology for the year ahead. We should point out that this is only for enterprise storage and not a forecast on the world in general! We start with a discussion on media. At the macro level, capacities continue to grow for SSDs and HDDs year on year. This trend is expected to continue, but what micro-level advancements are being made? QLC increases in layers, while PLC (penta-level cell) flash is being mooted as increasingly more …

Multiple media types

#113 – The Expanding Storage Hierarchy with Erik Kaulberg

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers, Storage Hardware

This week’s episode is the first in a series from Flash Memory Summit 2019. Chris catches up with Erik Kaulberg from INFINIDAT to discuss how the expanding hierarchy of solid-state storage media will drive new products and solutions in the future. The topics of conversation cover how media has diversified, with new solutions like MRAM and 3D-XPoint. At the same time, we hear that 5-level NAND could be a reality. How are vendors combining these products with traditional storage? Will the ability to learn from the field with the deployment of traditional storage designs, provide …

#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019

#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

The idea of this episode was to put some structure around a set of enterprise storage predictions for 2019.  As you will hear from the dialog, that’s not quite what we achieved!  However, Chris Evans, Chris Mellor and Martin Glassborow do raise some interesting points on the direction of the industry in 2019.  The conversation starts with a look at media.  QLC flash is likely to be a hot topic, but what about storage class memory?  Have hard drives had their day or is the technology moving into a state of equilibrium? The conversation moves …

#79 – Learning More About QLC Storage with Steve Hanna

#79 – Learning More About QLC Storage with Steve Hanna

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers

This week Chris and Martin talk to Steve Hanna, Senior Product Manager for Enterprise SSDs at Micron.  Steve looks after the 5210 ION QLC SSD product line, which was introduced earlier this year.  As an evolution of existing flash technology, QLC offers greater capacities at lower cost.  But what are the issues? The conversation covers how QLC has reduced the price to 1/100th of that seen in early enterprise SSDs.  Although endurance is lower than previous flash generations, in reality for many use cases the ability to write up to 1 DWPD is enough.  However, …

#54 – Are we at All-flash and HDD Array Price Parity?

#54 – Are we at All-flash and HDD Array Price Parity?

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the subject of price parity between all-flash and hybrid or HDD-based storage arrays.  From Martin’s perspective, he is starting to see vendor pricing getting close to parity and it making more sense to buy all-flash than a spinning media device.  However, what are the issues?  TCO is one – it’s not all about array pricing.  Also, flash offers more opportunity to be Opex focused, as it’s easier to increment flash in an array than adding many disks to maintain performance. So what about hybrid?  Does it have a position, …

#44 – Ultra High Capacity Flash Drives

#44 – Ultra High Capacity Flash Drives

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the availability of super-high capacity or ultra-capacity flash drives.  The conversation comes out of an announcement from Nimbus Data that has produced a 100TB SATA SSD.  This follows up from last year’s 50TB drives that were OEMed to Viking and Smart Modular.  You can find some more background at Architecting IT here.  With so much capacity in a single 3.5″ form factor that could cost upwards of $50,000, is this product practical?  How do the drives survive failure?  Can they be repaired and who would build systems from them?  …

#34 – NAND Shortage? What NAND Shortage! with Jim Handy

#34 – NAND Shortage? What NAND Shortage! with Jim Handy

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

In this week’s podcast, the team chat again with Jim Handy from Objective Analysis.  Jim is an analyst covering the semiconductor industry and provides some great insight into where pricing is headed in the NAND flash market.  The conversation covers some of the technical challenges the industry faces, as well as the impact from China entering the market.  Finally, the guys discuss the impact on Enterprise storage pricing. There are some interesting observations in this conversation, such as the capability for NAND to be used in multiple densities and how the ability for the Enterprise …

Talking NAND Flash With Jim Handy – Part One

Talking NAND Flash With Jim Handy – Part One

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

The following podcast was recorded with Jim Handy, from Objective Analysis on 12th December 2016.  The discussion is all about NAND Flash, what it is, where it came from and what we can expect in the future.  Martin and Chris talked to Jim for a little over an hour, so we’ve split the content into two parts. You can reach Jim on Twitter at The SSD Guy, or via his blog(s) at http://thessdguy.com/ and http://thememoryguy.com/. Feel free to provide feedback as comments on our blog or on our Linkedin group.  If you like this podcast, like …