Essential Guide
Essential guide to the all-flash array market
This Essential Guide reviews the all-flash storage array market, offers examples of today’s all-flash storage arrays and details the flash storage terminology you need to know to make the right purchase decision.
Introduction
Initially, products in the all-flash array market lacked enterprise-class capacity and features such as snapshot, replication and quality of service. As such, all-flash arrays were relegated to accelerating performance of specific applications.
Today, all-flash array capacities, physical characteristics, application, features and endurance now rival those of market-leading hard disk drive arrays and hybrid flash arrays. Costs have also decreased as the price of NAND chips continues to decline. Because of this, some organizations are considering all-flash storage arrays for their Tier-1 data.
However, not all-flash arrays are created equally. Like storage arrays, they come in a variety of price points that offer different capacities, performance levels and baked-in functionality.
This guide to the all-flash array market offers in-depth articles on choosing the right all-flash storage array for your needs. You'll also find a handful of examples of all-flash arrays, including helpful product specifications.
1Choose your array wisely-
Navigating the all-flash array market
The following in-depth articles detail everything you need to know to navigate the all-flash array market when making a purchase, including how to select the right model for your specific needs, important functionality and features you should look at, savvy buying tips and how to decide if you even need an all-flash storage array in the first place.
Is your environment ready for all-flash storage arrays?
All-flash arrays aren't new, and products now offer the high performance and advanced features enterprises are looking for. As such, it's hard to come up with reasons not to purchase one. Continue Reading
All-flash array purchase considerations
The cost of solid-state storage and its particular performance standards mean it takes more than knowing application and workload information to get the right system for your technical and business needs. Before you wade into the all-flash array market, get information on how to write a request for proposals. Continue Reading
Evaluate all-flash storage array features
Understanding the importance of deduplication and compression in the all-flash array market is not easy, but this article and its accompanying chart break down features and which vendors offer them. Continue Reading
2Shop around-
A sampling of the all-flash array market
The following links are not an exhaustive list of the all-flash array market, but rather a cross-section of available products (accurate as of September 1, 2015).
EqualLogic PS6210S geared toward SMBs
Dell's flash array is based on a virtualized and modular architecture, and is optimized for tasks such as faster networking, server virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), OLTP and other high IOPS needs. Continue Reading
EMC's XtremIO all-flash array focused on flash media
The XtremIO scale-out enterprise storage array is designed to improve application performance. It can be managed through a GUI interface, VMware vCenter plug-in, command line interface or REST API. Continue Reading
HP's StoreServ 7450 runs 3PAR for the course
HP's 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all-flash storage array is designed for midsize and enterprise shops. Its inline dedupe reduces flash costs by lowering capacity demands without storage pools or post-processing. Continue Reading
Hitachi Unified Storage VM offers scalability
The Hitachi Unified Storage VM scalable flash storage array offers 300 TB of raw capacity per system and works with database, analytics, virtual server and virtual desktop environments in the enterprise. Continue Reading
IBM's FlashSystem 840 series uses RAID for performance in failure
The IBM FlashSystem 840 series is designed for OLTP, VDI and cloud environments, while the V840 series is an enterprise-level, software-driven series. Both product lines use IBM Variable Stripe RAID and system-wide RAID 5 to prevent data loss in a failure. Continue Reading
Violin Memory 6000 Series family fit for enterprises
The Violin 6000 series of flash arrays includes the 6600, 6200 and 6100, and can be used for midsize and enterprise businesses that run larger VDI, big data analytics and other applications. Continue Reading
PDF: Is parallel I/O suitable for mission critical apps?
Download this PDF to learn where performance problems stem from, how technologies such as cloud, flash and software-defined storage work to curb them as well as the drawbacks storage administrators need to be aware of.
3Glossary-
Brush up on your NAND knowledge
Be a true NAND nerd and check out the following terms you will need to understand to evaluate products in the all-flash array market.
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