Allflash tech AdvancesAllflash tech: What’s an all-flash array? An all-flash array (AFA) is a storage system that doesn’t have any spinning disk drives. Instead, it has only flash memory drives. A Solid-State Array is another name for storage that is all flash (SSA). AFAs and SSAs give your business apps speed, performance, and flexibility.

Where Do All-Flash Arrays Fit in the World of Data Storage?

Hard-disk drive (HDD) technologies, set up as network-attached storage (NAS) and/or storage area networks (SAN), have been the most common in data centers for a long time (SANs).
Solid-state drives (SSDs) made it possible for data storage companies to sell expensive, high-performance flash memory for Tier 0 and Tier 1 data applications. Solid-state drives are much faster than traditional technologies because they don’t use spinning disks.

Moore’s Law meant that flash storage kept getting cheaper, which made it possible for NAS and SAN devices to use only flash storage. Pure Storage® is the only company that sells all-flash arrays (AFAs).

All-Flash Arrays: Giving the Data Center the Benefits of Flash Memory

As you might expect, replacing your HDDs with SSDs is all it takes to make your NAS and SAN solutions faster and run better. All-flash arrays have the same benefits as flash memory:

Speed: When you can read, write, and access memory faster, you can do things faster and better. The best all-flash arrays use NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) to improve the speed and latency of data transfers across a SAN.
SSDs are much smaller than HDDs, making them easier to carry around. Flash memory has the advantage of taking up less space than other types of memory. In terms of cost per capacity, flash memory is quickly catching up to hard disk drive (HDD) solutions.
Durability: Because SSDs don’t have physical parts that move, they are less likely to break when dropped or hit hard than their spinning-disk counterparts.

All-Flash Arrays, Hybrid Storage Arrays, and Hard Drive Arrays (HDD Arrays)

Should you go all-flash, mix-and-match, or old-school? When choosing the best on-premises data storage solution for their needs, this is a question that many businesses have to answer. Speed, performance, and reliability are only some of the things that go into the equation. Also important are how easy it is to use, how it is kept up, and how safe it is.

In general, all-flash arrays are the fastest and best at what they do. Then come hybrid arrays, which use both flash drives and hard disk drives in the same storage array. Even though they aren’t as fast as all-flash arrays, cheaper HDD racks can be used to add more storage space when speed isn’t as important. The slowest are the traditional arrays.

Why should All-Flash Arrays go with Pure?
Modern data centers look to all-flash arrays to meet their needs for performance and storage space, but not every all-flash array is the same. It’s important to know the difference between arrays that were built for a specific purpose and arrays that were added later. Retrofits try to combine all-flash with disk-based architectures that are 20 years old. This keeps customers from getting the best return on investment (ROI) and shows where performance, reliability, and simplicity are lacking.

Straight Stash With its stateless architecture and flexible metadata, FlashArrayTM has a proven track record of letting customers take advantage of both flash and compute improvements without causing any downtime. The complexity of traditional storage portfolios and the limitations of flash-based alternatives are removed by the ease of use and flexibility of Pure Storage solutions.

Use Cases for an All-Flash Array, Allflash tech AdvancesAllflash tech

So, where do all-flash storage arrays fit into the tiered storage structure of an enterprise? SSDs are more expensive than HDDs, so all-flash storage arrays have been seen as the best SAN solution for Tier 0 and Tier 1 applications for a long time. Moore’s Law, on the other hand, means that the cost-effectiveness of all flash-arrays is going up, which makes it possible to use more storage. FlashArray/C from Pure Storage is the first all-flash storage area network (SAN) that is priced to compete with hybrid storage arrays for Tier 2 storage applications.

Here is an overview of how all-flash storage arrays can be used for each storage tier:
Tier 0 is the tier with the best performance (most IOPS per dollar), and it includes block storage solutions for financial transactions, eCommerce apps, and any other applications where performance is very important.

Allflash tech AdvancesAllflash tech

Tier 1: This is the second-best performance level in terms of the balance between IOPS/$ and capacity. It includes business processing, data analysis, and data mining.
Tier 2: This tier has lower performance and is more focused on capacity. It handles email, files, and prints, as well as data backups and archives.
Enterprise Flash Storage Arrays from Pure Storage are made to take advantage of how flash works.

Pure Storage has two all-flash storage array product lines that cover storage needs for Tier 0, Tier 1, and Tier 2:

FlashArray/X is a performance-optimized, all-flash, end-to-end NVMe and NVMe-oF storage array made to store blocks for Tier 0 and Tier 1 applications.
FlashArray/C: An all-flash NVMe storage array for Tier 2 applications that is optimized for capacity.
These all-flash arrays (AFAs) are changing storage because they offer cloud-like application consolidation and a level of flexibility that has never been seen before. These features help both IT and business change. The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant and Gartner Critical Capabilities reports on solid-state arrays show that Pure Storage is the leader in this market.