Family of All-flash Storage
In 2012, Pure Storage®, an enterprise storage vendor, introduced the FlashArray™, marking the debut of the first enterprise-class all-flash array (AFA). By 2016, competing enterprise storage vendors followed suit, introducing their own AFAs. Over the past decade, AFAs have emerged as the dominant choice for storage shipments catering to high-performance and high-availability workloads. Unlike traditional hard disk drive (HDD)-based storage systems, AFAs offer superior and more consistent performance, increased availability, enhanced reliability, and facilitate the utilization of advanced technologies such as compression and deduplication for latency-sensitive workloads. Additionally, AFAs boast easier management compared to HDD-based systems and contribute to reduced energy consumption and floor space utilization. Consequently, the market for “high-performance” 10K and 15K RPM HDDs has nearly vanished.
