The Importance of the Effective Capacity Ratio in Modern Storage Systems

In modern storage devices (especially All Flash Arrays), extensive data reduction techniques are commonplace and expected by customers.

Practical Considerations for Implementing NVMe Storage

Before we begin, something needs to be clear: Although dual-ported NVMe drives are not yet cost effective, the architecture of Nimble Storage is NVMe-ready today. And always remember that in order to get good benefits from NVMe, one…

The Importance of SSD Firmware Updates

I wanted to bring this crucial issue to light since I’m noticing several storage vendors being either cavalier about this or simply unaware.

I will explain why solutions that don’t offer some sort of automated, live SSD firmware update…

An explanation of IOPS and latency

<I understand this extremely long post is redundant for seasoned storage performance pros — however, these subjects come up so frequently, that I felt compelled to write something. Plus, even the seasoned pros don’t seem to get it sometimes… :) >

Going Green: Why I Joined Nimble Storage

I am proud to announce that, as of today, I am a member of the Nimble Storage team.

This marks the end of an era — I spent quite a bit of time at NetApp: learned a lot, did a lot — by the end I had my hands in all kinds of sausage…

Nimble Cloud Volumes Removing Risk From Cloud Storage

As of February 27th 2017, Nimble Storage announced Nimble Cloud Volumes (NCV), marking Nimble’s entry into the cloud space.

For those short on time: Nimble Cloud Volumes is block storage as a service, works with…

The Importance of Automated Headroom Management

Before we begin: This is another vendor-neutral post. I realize there may be no architecture that can do everythingI’m proposing, but some may come closer to what you need than others. Whether you’re a vendor or a customer, see it as stuff you…

Filesystem and OS benchmark extravaganza: Software makes a huge difference

I’ve published benchmarks of various OSes and filesystems in the past, but this time I thought I’d try a slightly different approach.

The Well-Behaved Storage System: Automatic Noisy Neighbor Avoidance

This topic is very near and dear to me, and is one of the big reasons I came over to Nimble Storage.

I’ve always believed that storage systems should behave gracefully and predictably…