News

Flash storage and solid-state drives (SSDs)

• June 24, 2025 24 Jun'25

  Interview: Pure Storage on the AI data challenge beyond hardware

  We talk to Pure Storage’s vice-president of AI infrastructure about data quality for artificial intelligence and the need for data engineering to ensure the integrity, completeness and appropriateness of data for AI training

• June 23, 2025 23 Jun'25

  Interview: Rolf Krolke, regional technology director, The Access Group

  We talk to The Access Group’s technology director for APAC about integration and ongoing management of legacy systems in an extremely acquisitive company, and the worldwide storage refresh he’s overseeing as part of that process

• June 20, 2025 20 Jun'25

  Pure CEO Charlie Giancarlo on data management, all-flash and tariffs

  We spoke to the Pure CEO about Enterprise Data Cloud and how it can offer insight and management across all its storage, plus a catch-up on the death of the HDD and tariff uncertainty

• June 18, 2025 18 Jun'25

  Pure Enterprise Data Cloud bundles its IP for business outcomes

  All-flash evangelist bundles storage management and as-a-service under Enterprise Data Cloud banner while boosting hardware offerings with performance arrays and a 300TB flash module

• May 21, 2025 21 May'25

  Vast Data launches into AI stratosphere with AgentEngine

  Vast has built out into data management from its roots and will now offer customisable agentic AI agents that can tap into its existing storage, database and messaging capabilities

• May 08, 2025 08 May'25

  Nutanix opens up to all external storage

  CEO Rajiv Ramaswami says Nutanix will open its platform to all external storage, allowing it to profit from customers wanting to move away from VMware, as well as the hyper-converged curious

• May 07, 2025 07 May'25

  Nutanix escapes the datacentre with Cloud Native AOS

  Hyper-converged infrastructure provider offers its operating system independently of a hypervisor to allow containerised apps to run at the edge or on Kubernetes runtimes in the Amazon cloud

• March 24, 2025 24 Mar'25

  Storage players ride the Nvidia bus at GTC 2025

  As artificial intelligence’s big beast holds its annual shindig, storage firms line up to launch everything from new array products to validations, certifications and vague ideas around data ecosystems

• March 20, 2025 20 Mar'25

  NAS storage: TrueNAS aims to make it big in Europe

  Aimed at the SME market, but with NAS systems that go to tens of petabytes, iXsystems brings dual controllers, NVMe and hybrid flash, AI-capable storage, and container support

• March 11, 2025 11 Mar'25

  Pure aims at AI beyond the enterprise with FlashBlade//Exa

  FlashBlade//Exa targets use cases between the enterprise and hyperscalers with a disaggregated architecture and its DFM flash modules to be available separately for the first time

• March 04, 2025 04 Mar'25

  Flash drive prices bump along, as SAS HDDs gain mystery bounce

  Flash drive prices drop again, but slowly, as they bump along after highs in late 2023. Meanwhile, spinning disk HDD prices experience a rare flutter, with SAS cost per gigabyte rising 18%

• February 11, 2025 11 Feb'25

  New componentry extends NetApp ASA and E-series block storage

  One-time king of the filers adds anti-ransomware to its more recent block storage families, while also adding in an extra FAS array, all on the back of upgraded components

• January 28, 2025 28 Jan'25

  Has Pure got the first of its ‘HDD is doomed’ ducks in a row?

  Pure Storage predicted the end of spinning disk by 2028. Will its agreements with flash makers Micron and Kioxia, and an unnamed hyperscaler, be the first nails in the coffin for HDD?

• January 16, 2025 16 Jan'25

  DDN seeks AI leadership as it bags $300m investment

  DDN aims to take high-performance computing expertise and become a leader in storage for artificial intelligence. It builds on years in the HPC space, and now has £300m from Blackstone, a fund with an AI focus

• December 11, 2024 11 Dec'24

  IaaS firm uses Pure Storage as a service for ‘virtual datacentres’

  Espresso Gridpoint moved from largely NetApp to Pure Storage FlashBlade file and object for its ‘virtual datacentres’ business model that offers VMware, Hyper-V and ProxMox VMs

• December 03, 2024 03 Dec'24

  VMware ‘shock’ spawned lock-in rebellion, says NetApp

  NetApp makes predictions for 2025 that include lower tolerance for lock-in due to VMware changes, a shift to DRaaS, AI disillusionment and big spending on energy infrastructure

• November 18, 2024 18 Nov'24

  Infinidat gets in on the RAG act with workflow architecture offer

  Storage array maker says customers can get data from any NFS storage to use in RAG for internal enterprise AI projects, and claims its OS metadata expertise enables this

• November 12, 2024 12 Nov'24

  Pure Storage CTO: How AI is changing storage demands

  Pure Storage’s CTO stresses the need for adaptable IT systems to support AI workloads, advocating for open architectures and flexible storage platforms to avoid supplier lock-in

• November 11, 2024 11 Nov'24

  NetApp boosts AFF, StorageGrid and E-series hardware with 60TB drives

  Bigger drives, new CPUs and controller hardware add to upgrades to NetApp arrays that started in September, while the supplier undergoes transition to data management as a key focus

• October 30, 2024 30 Oct'24

  Scality Ring XP to offer object storage at scale with rapid access

  Lightweight S3 API trades storage features for microsecond access. Scality pairs it with all-NVMe flash in Ring XP, aimed at AI use cases for small object data in PB-scale datasets

• October 28, 2024 28 Oct'24

  Western Digital boosts HDD capacity with 32TB shingled drives

  An 11th platter gives extra capacity, while shingled (overlapped) writes – best suited to sequential recording use cases – allow for greater density and big gains in thoughput

• October 21, 2024 21 Oct'24

  Synology takes aim at enterprise customers and flash storage

  Best known as an SME and consumer brand, Synology claims multiple enterprise customers especially in backup and storage of infrequently accessed data, but has plans for flash, too

• October 15, 2024 15 Oct'24

  Google launches Parallelstore file storage at cloud AI training

  Originally driven by Intel’s now-defunct Optane storage class memory, Parallelstore offers massive parallel file storage targeted at artificial intelligence training use cases on Google Cloud

• September 26, 2024 26 Sep'24

  Auckland museum enhances digitisation efforts with storage upgrade

  A major storage upgrade is enabling the Auckland War Memorial Museum to safeguard its vast collection, ensure digital sovereignty and enhance visitor experiences using AI

• September 25, 2024 25 Sep'24

  NetApp E-series: Not part of the big message, but here to stay, says CEO

  We asked NetApp about its high-performance computing-focused E-series block storage arrays and found inconsistent messaging but ultimately a commitment from CEO George Kurian to retain it

• September 24, 2024 24 Sep'24

  Pure punts raft of unifying features in FlashBlade file and object

  Features are aimed at Pure’s file and object architecture with functionality based on software that aids management at system level

• September 24, 2024 24 Sep'24

  NetApp maintains push to data management for AI

  From data storage to intelligent data infrastructure – that’s the plan from NetApp, which has announced data curation for artificial intelligence as well as additions to its ASA and FAS storage arrays

• September 17, 2024 17 Sep'24

  Toshiba follows the pack with launch of 24TB and 28TB HDDs

  Several months behind Seagate and Western Digital, Toshiba achieves the maximum possible in commercial HDDs and benefits from a speed boost over its rivals

• September 03, 2024 03 Sep'24

  Flash prices drop as drive production increases but demand lags

  Flash prices were high in the early part of this year as a result of manufacturer production squeezes but have since dropped because demand has been slack, with flash now costing just under 10 cents per gigabyte

• August 21, 2024 21 Aug'24

  QiStor flashes key-value storage software for hardware acceleration

  US-based startup will develop storage software allied with FPGA chips to allow data storage to bypass spinning disk era block addressing to speed performance and cut energy use

• August 13, 2024 13 Aug'24

  Oracle Exadata Exascale: Big architecture shift for small workloads

  Exascale is multitenant architecture for Oracle Database that promises performance equal to dedicated infrastructure and savings compared with existing products, with AI workloads in mind

• July 02, 2024 02 Jul'24

  Interview: Nvidia on AI workloads and their impacts on data storage

  We talk to Charlie Boyle of Nvidia about data challenges in artificial intelligence, key practical tips for AI projects, and demands on storage of training, inferencing, RAG and checkpointing

• June 19, 2024 19 Jun'24

  Pure CEO: AI needs write speed and storage in place

  We spoke to Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo about why write speed is key for artificial intelligence workloads, accessible storage for AI data, and his prediction of the death of spinning disk

• June 19, 2024 19 Jun'24

  Pure deepens Fusion as reorientation to storage for AI continues

  Pure Storage launches Fusion ‘storage classes’ across its arrays as a pool of storage for AI-centric workloads, plus AI Copilot and Evergreen//One for AI storage-as-a-service

• June 11, 2024 11 Jun'24

  Nuclear waste body cuts energy use by 20% as Pure replaces HPE

  French nuclear waste agency Andra has cut storage energy use by 20% and strengthened its disaster recovery capabilities by deploying Pure Storage and 10-year controller upgrades

• June 04, 2024 04 Jun'24

  Mad Max production company gets Dell PowerScale to leverage generative AI

  One supplier enters, one supplier leaves: Australian film production company replaces HPE with Dell storage and compute as it leverages GenAI

• June 03, 2024 03 Jun'24

  Dell launches PowerStore Prime and hints at PowerScale AI boost

  Array range launched at Dell World 2024 in Las Vegas as PowerScale gets OS upgrade and new Intel Xeon CPUs, while Dell CEO hints at acceleration for PowerScale NAS

• May 26, 2024 26 May'24

  Nutanix beefs up AHV hypervisor, doubles down on AI

  Nutanix takes aim at VMware with enhancements to its AHV hypervisor along with tighter integrations with Nvidia and Hugging Face to simplify AI deployments

• May 22, 2024 22 May'24

  Infinidat adds smaller footprint G4 arrays with claimed 2x performance

  Purveyor of triple-controller all-flash and hybrid flash arrays aimed at high-end customers tails and tops InfiniBox and InfiniBox SSA ranges, and adds Azure cloud storage to AWS

• May 20, 2024 20 May'24

  Toshiba shows 32TB HDDs with heat-assisted and shingled drives

  Drive maker demonstrates 32TB and 31TB capacity hard drives that boost write density by use of heat and microwave assistance plus shingled – overlapped – drive tracks

• May 14, 2024 14 May'24

  NetApp upgrades AFF all-flash as it targets AI storage

  New AFF arrays offer performance boost for artificial intelligence, while NetApp trumpets its advantages as a provider of sustainable and intelligent infrastructure for all kinds of workloads

• May 08, 2024 08 May'24

  Huawei launches exabyte-scale OceanStor A800 at AI workloads

  Chinese storage array maker announces high-performance NAS that can build out to clusters in excess of 1 exabyte, plus NVMe flash drives of 128TB coming to market next year

• April 30, 2024 30 Apr'24

  Arcitecta offers file and object storage with huge transfer rates

  Australian startup offers single namespace file and object storage with rapid access via a metadata database that puts the right data in the right place according to recent use

• April 24, 2024 24 Apr'24

  AI firm saves a million in shift to Pure FlashBlade shared storage

  AI consultancy Crater Labs spent vast amounts of time managing server-attached drives to ensure GPUs were saturated. A shift to all-flash Pure Storage slashed that to almost zero

• April 02, 2024 02 Apr'24

  Flash storage prices rise by 25% as manufacturers chase profitability

  Analysis of 30,000-plus drive prices shows cost of flash drives per gigabyte rose sharply since October 2023, as memory manufacturers limit supplies and increase prices

• March 26, 2024 26 Mar'24

  Alletra MP hardware changes see HPE orient arrays towards AI

  HPE doubles controller nodes, boosts capacity with denser drives, cuts caches and builds in 100Gbps links to bring denser, faster storage aimed at all parts of the AI/ML pipeline

• March 19, 2024 19 Mar'24

  Vast targets AI checkpointing write performance with distributed RAID

  AI checkpointing operations targeted by Vast Data as it touts QLC-based storage for AI workloads

• February 26, 2024 26 Feb'24

  Storage and backup spend in 2024 targets risk and resilience

  The TechTarget and ESG spending intentions survey finds big bias towards averting risk and building organisational resilience, but on-premise storage a significant planned outlay

• February 19, 2024 19 Feb'24

  Music agency halves space and energy costs with switch to Pure

  SUISA handles billions of royalty payments, but had capacity and storage admin nightmares with its EMC hardware. It cued up Pure Storage for simple admin, space and cost savings

• February 06, 2024 06 Feb'24

  Inside NetApp’s cloud and AI strategy

  NetApp’s senior executives talk up the company’s efforts to support AI initiatives and deliver first-party storage services on public cloud platforms