Violin Memory Plays an Enterprising Flash-y Tune

Greetings all—I’m Donpaul Stephens, president of Violin Memory. If you’re not familiar with us, we make memory appliances for applications that demand very high IOP/s or low latency for use in data-center operations. Micron’s Kevin Kilbuck and I were talking the other day and we thought it might be interesting for me to write a quick post on our work with Micron re: the enterprise space and NAND Flash memory.

We started working with Micron a little more than a year ago to leverage their work in NAND flash and look for ways to use those innovations to enable our own plans for our products. Ultimately it’s really a symbiotic relationship where each company can bring requirements, breakthroughs, goals, napkin sketches, all-the-above, to the table to understand the capabilities and (frankly) the wish lists for NAND in the storage space. Through that relationship, we learned about the work they were doing to extend the lifespan of NAND. This was right up our alley–because what they were proposing was a new NAND flash technology that was going to hit one million write cycles.  They dubbed it Enterprise NAND.

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HDD & SSD Counseling: “Prunes are Great!”

Unlike an SSD that has a measured and graceful life span–with time to coordinate a retirement, HDDs often die with absolutely no warning. And this traumatic event often takes our most valuable information to the grave. Our fifth “Counseling Session” video allows us to lament with poor HDD, as he mourns the nature of his mortality and worries about his own impending, and unpredictable, demise.

HDD & SSD Counseling: “Need a Woobie?”

Due to their sensitivities to heat, movement, and pressure, HDDs need stable, well-controlled operating conditions. They need a certain level of coddling. And, if you offset this delicate balance, prepare for disaster. In our fourth “Counseling Session” parody, we learn more about HDD’s fragile nature and the potential consequences of upsetting his carefully managed state of equilibrium.

HDD & SSD Counseling: “I like calling it nappy-time …”

HDDs crash. We’ve all experienced it. In fact, in the largest study of its kind, Google found that HDDs crash even more often than their manufacturers predict … and once an HDD has demonstrated an error, it’s likely to fail again–soon. In this third installment of our ”Counseling Sessions“ videos, we continue to have a bit of fun at HDD’s expense and learn how devastating an HDD crash can be.

HDD & SSD Counseling: “I’m big-boned …”

HDDs are mechanical devices—with moving actuators, spinning platters, and shifting heads. And as such they’re predisposed to consume more power than an SSD … in fact, I guess you could say they were “born” this way. So in this, our second ”Counseling Session“ video, we poke a bit of fun at a really serious challenge as our friend the HDD works to keep up with his energy consumption needs.

HDD & SSD Counseling: “How long was I out?”

We talk a lot about the things that differentiate solid state storage from traditional spinning platters—be it at the enterprise level or in the laptop right in front of me. Perhaps as a relief to that intense level of focus, we made a series of videos to have some fun with the performance issues in HDDs. Of course, in reality, these are real challenges. But in this short vignette, it’s all fun and games as a counselor questions an HDD about some personal problems he’s been having lately.