All-flash arrays (AFAs), sometimes known as solid-state storage disks, are a type of external storage that only uses flash media to store data, rather than using a hard disk or a solid-state drive. Modern workloads and services – such as AI, data analytics, and deep learning – require a high level of performance to operate. These demands cannot be met by legacy systems. It is common for AFAs to be used so that these technologies run effectively and efficiently.
In many cases, storage solutions will combine flash storage and disk drives within the same product. AFA storage solutions tend to have in-built software that carries our data management and data protection features. All flash arrays are generally expensive solutions; they are therefore most commonly used by medium to larger organizations who need to enhance their network performance and have the resources to implement AFAs effectively.
In this article, we’ll explore the top 10 AFA solutions, highlighting relevant features and suggesting who they are best suited to. As this is a technically complex topic, it is important to have a clear idea of your needs, before trying to find a solution. This way, you can ensure that the solution will be suited to your organization.
Dell’s PowerStorage solution is a highly effective and advanced solution that provides a range of useful features to enhance storage performance. The solution is designed to fit into your existing network specifications – it can support 32Gb GC and 100 Gb Ethernet, as well as being NEBS-ready. PowerStorage provides an exceptional degree of uptime and can be used as a clustered technology to scale up as required.
One of the main advantages to Dell’s PowerStorage technology is its comprehensive cybersecurity capabilities. The solution enforces data encryption, role-based access policies, file level retention, ransomware protection, and secure boot with HWRoT. These comprehensive features give organizations greater assurance that their data and network are protected. We would recommend this solution for larger organizations, who need the assurance that their data is protected in the event of a cyberattack.
Hitachi Vantara is a Tokyo-based, data-driven company that offer a comprehensive range of storage, analysis, and management solutions, supporting multiple use cases. Hitachi’s Virtual Storage Platform uses AI to manage and optimise storage functionality. The solution provides data reduction capabilities, storage virtualization, and non-disruptive migration.
Hitatchi Virtual Storage Platform offers an impressive level of uptime, with a reduced latency of 41µs. The solution is easy to scale and provides a high level of functionality that helps to reduce manual, time-intensive tasks. The platform is reliable and can enable you to exceed IOPs and latency requires. Users praise the service for its ease of setup, and flexibility. We would recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for large enterprises who need a reliable and fully featured storage solution.
Hewlett Packard Enterprises offers a range of network and computing technologies including supercomputers, networking, and storage solutions. HPE Nimble Storage All Flash Arrays are a series of reliable and effective storage solutions with predictive analysis capabilities to optimize storage. It is cloud-ready, giving you greater flexibility over how your data is used and shared.
HPE offer all-inclusive licensing, whilst making upgrades easy. This ensures that the solution will work in a way that suits your needs. The solution is also future proofed to ensure their compatibility with NVMe and SCM. RAID Triple Parity storage is included as part of the solution; this ensures that you can continue working, should you suffer a system failure. Users praise HPE’s service for it’s ease of management and monitoring capabilities. We recommend HPE Nimble Storage All Flash Arrays for large organizations who require a straight-forward solution that is relatively efficient to manage and configure.
IBM’s Storage FlashSystem allows teams to streamline the administration and management of their storage needs across on-premises, cloud, virtual, and hybrid environments. The solution uses predictive analytics and AI to improve storage efficiency and optimize capacity. The system is designed with scalability in mind, so can be expanded as your organization requires it.
IBM Storage FlashSystem is a flexible solution that can adapts to your organizations evolving requirements, ensuring that storage is optimized and efficient. IBM also allows you to ensure operational resiliency through storage backups. The solution gives you a high level of performance and low latency. Users highlight the service as being highly dependable, with strong performance. We would recommend this advanced solution for organizations who require storage management with strong performance for sizable amounts of data.
Lenovo are a leading global technology provider for both consumers and the enterprise space. The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM series are all-flash arrays that improve latency speeds whilst optimizing storage practices. Lenovo’s solution provides integrated hybrid cloud capabilities such as flexible tiering and replication to optimise your data storage. The solution uses ML to offer pre-emptive ransomware detection and enhanced recovery features.
Lenovo’s support team will assist your organization to help you find the best solution and configuration, and then ensure that it is implemented effectively. The ThinkSystem DE Series is designed to handle NAS and SAN workloads, with a 3:1 data optimization for TCO reduction. These features result in a high-quality and efficient storage solution that can handle your most intensive tasks. Users praise the service for its stability and solid functionality. We would recommend the solution for large organizations with intensive workloads like database tasks, VDI, and virtualization.
NetApp offer a range of data management, cyber resiliency, AI, and enterprise applications. Their all-flash array solutions are quick and responsive, allowing you to streamline your enterprise activities. NetApp AFF provides native deduplication and compression features, ensuring that your storage is optimized and efficient. The solution enables you to reduce your data centre needs by providing 2PB of storage in a 4U compact system.
NetApp offer self-support tools, in addition to pro-active customer support, ensuring that issues can be solved quickly. Cold data can be tiered, non-disruptively, to free up space. Both the hardware and the software of the NetApp AFF series is robust and reliable, it allows you to perform intensive workloads, without strain. Users highlight this service for it’s efficiency and ease of use. We would recommend NetApp AFF for organizations looking for an effective, reliable, and predictable all flash storage solution.
Pavilion is a storage company based in San Jose, CA. The HyperParallel Data Platform is designed to support NVMe and NVMe-oF protocols, meaning that HyperParallel offers an efficient and flexible solution. The solution can offer 2.2PB of storage capacity and perform 20M IOPs. The platform is designed to cope with large amounts of data traffic; there are 40x 100Gb ports, or 10x 200Gb ports per 4RU array. This allows you to manage and transfer large amounts of data efficiently.
High performance metrics, combined with low latency, makes the Pavilion HyperParallel Data Platform fit a wide number of use cases and can be an asset to range of enterprise environments and use cases. The solution’s architecture employs active standby controllers, allowing performance to be maintained in the case of a failure. We would recommend this solution for large enterprise organizations who need an efficient, effective, and powerful storage solution for large amounts of data traffic.
Pure Storage FlashArray//C
Pure Storage is a data storage company based in Mountview, CA, specializing in everlasting flash storage arrays. Their FlashArray//C solutions provide NVMe performance (non-volatile memory express), which is significantly faster than other protocols like SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment). This solution also has the capacity to test and develop workloads, uses multisite disaster recovery, and has a host of data protection features.
Pure Storage FlashArray//C is a dedicated and effective storage solution. It is an advanced option as it offers data reduction, sophisticated protection, and allows for extended scalability. It takes a degree of technical knowledge to migrate data from traditional storage to the flash array. Users note that this service offers strong technical support and management features. We would recommend this solution for enterprise environments due to its robust data protection capabilities, fast performance, and efficient storage.
QSAN are a data storage company offering simple, yet effective solutions that don’t compromise on security. The XCube FAS solution provides high speed performance (up to 25GbE with 450K IOPs at a latency of 500μs. While QSAN describe this solution as entry-level, it’s performance metrics are impressive, and its modular design makes upgrading easier. The solution can be managed through a simple web GUI, ensuring that you have visibility and control over your storage configuration.
The user-friendly interface gives you insights into operational effectiveness, as well as business usage analysis and real-time storage monitoring. We would recommend this for medium to large organizations who require a good deal of storage power and capacity but may not require all of the features and efficiency that the most demanding workloads require. This solution is a strong solution for organizations who are new to the all-flash array market and are looking to secure some of the key benefits like speed and performance.
Zadara offer a suite of comprehensive cloud solutions that optimize your network, storage, and computing operations. Zadara’s all flash storage solution allows flexible storage of block (SAN) and file (NAS) data, so that a range of workload intensive enterprise applications can run optimally. The platform also provides automatic storage tiering to ensure that your service is optimized and running efficiently.
Zadara’s solution offers further optimization through its data deduplication and compression features. This feature is particularly useful considering that Zadara run a consumption-based pricing model – the tool will automatically reduce unnecessary workload to reduce cost. Security is at the fore of the solution, with data being encrypted while in transit and when at rest. Users praise the service for it’s ease of use and integrations. Zadara is a robust solution for medium sized organizations, particularly those who would benefit from adopting Zadara’s other cloud solutions.
FAQs
What Are All-Flash Arrays?
All-Flash Arrays (AFAs) are an advanced storage solution that is able to store a large amount of data, whilst maintaining a low latency. The solutions need to be able to store and retrieve data at high speeds. This means that the storage solutions can be used in complex and high demand environments.
Practically, AFAs are solid-state storage disk systems. This means that rather than using spinning-disk drives, AFAs are comprised entirely of flash memory devices. While this technology is more expensive, it offers a drastic improvement in experience, performance, and delivery.
As we ask our networks to compute ever more complex tasks, (such as AI and ML), the need for AFAs increases too. This type of advanced computing requires large data sets that can be accessed consistency and without delay. Through using AFAs, the latency time can be measured in microseconds, thereby allowing complex tasks to be completed efficiently.
Key Features Of All-Flash Arrays
All-flash arrays are an advanced form of storage solution. They are likely to be used by organizations who require a high level of service and efficiency from their solution, to complete advanced computing. There are several features to keep in mind when looking for an AFA solution.
- Future proofing
- Low-latency
- Backup services to ensure no loss of service
- Automated data tiering
- Visibility and monitoring of storage status
- Data de-duplication
- Customer support and assistance with implementation
What Are The Benefits Of Using All-Flash Arrays?
AFAs can offer faster storage creating and retrieval, as well as higher capacity, than other forms of storage solution. The benefits do not end there.
Speed – The flash storage infrastructure results in faster writing and reading capacity, allowing you to store and access more data with a reduced latency. The latency of an all-flash array will be measured in microseconds, which is much faster than hard drives with moving components.
Size – physically, solid state drives (SSDs) are much smaller than Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). This means that you can minimise the amount of physical space needed for storage purposes.
Durability – Flash storage does not require any moving parts to function. This means that there is less to manage and therefore less to go wrong. Not only does this make the solutions more durable, but it can also reduce costs associated with maintenance.
What Are The Use Cases Of All-Flash Arrays?
As AFAs provide such a high degree of performance with a low degree of latency, they are designed for workload intensive environments. They can cope with carrying out many data access requests very quickly. This makes them ideal, sometimes essential, aspects of data intensive environments. This includes:
- AI tools
- Financial services
- High performance computing (HPC) such as machine learning
- Integrated virtualized environments
