For the past couple of years I haven’t designed a single Netapp solution which still included FlashCache. I was quite surprised when NetApp introduced their latest hardware refresh along with Ontap 9.1. Now all new controller models come with NVMe M.2 Flash chips, which in essense are acting as FlashCache. Does that mean that FlashCache is now better option than FlashPool? Typical Pre-Sales answer applies: It depends 🙂 Continue reading “Return of Jedi…, ehm FlashCache”
Tag: ssd
Death of 10k SAS drive?
There is a famous quote by Mark Twain “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, and despite claims made by All Flash disk array manufactures, this quote still holds true for 10 k SAS drives when comparing only cost per gigabyte. SSD drives have been and are still more costly per gigabyte than their spinning ancestors 10k SAS drives.
NetApp AFF and Advanced Drive Partition V2, part 4
In the final instalment of this series, I’ll have a look at AFF setups that have about the same usable capacity, but are built out of different set of SSD drives. Both are using ADPv2 to maximize usable capacity.
This is also the point where things get little bit hairy.
In previous posts I was comparing apples to apples in hardware terms, the only difference was version of ADP used, solutions under comparison were equal in terms of total cost and performance. Since ADPv2 is more efficient, you can lower $/GB without altering total cost or performance, making AFF more cost effiecient, you get more bang for your buck.
This time I am comparing apples to oranges in hardware terms. Using different hardware components makes comparison more complex, it is not just about usable capacity, different hardware has also different performance characteristics and total cost. I am not going to touch performance aspect too much as it would overcomplicate the comparison.
Continue reading “NetApp AFF and Advanced Drive Partition V2, part 4”
NetApp AFF and Advanced Drive Partition v2, part 3
In previous posts I wrote about AFF and ADPv2 with 12 SSD disks, you can find these two entries here and here
With AFF product family ADPv2 supports slicing up to 48 SSD disks. Let’s investigate larger setups, starting with 24 SSD disk setups.
Continue reading “NetApp AFF and Advanced Drive Partition v2, part 3”
DontPokeThePolarBear 