And that trend looks as if it will continue in 2014 as we move beyond the question of "Should I use flash in my data center?" to "Where should I use flash in my data center?" and "What kind of flash should I use?"
Analyzing the almost staggering amount of activity around flash during the past year, we've culled our top five flash story lines from 2013.
The P420m multi-level cell (MLC) card should help Micron sales because MLC cards are more commonly deployed than single-level cell (SLC) in the enterprise. MLC cards are cheaper than SLC and software enhancements have improved MLC's reliability and performance. Micron was slow to the MLC market, as most of its major competitors already have MLC PCIe flash cards.
QLogic refers to the FabricCache card as a "caching SAN adapter." Clustered servers running FabricCache adapters can access and utilize all of the combined caches in the cluster.
CEO and founder Radoslav Danilak said the vendor dropped the price to about one-third or less than most enterprise flash storage systems by improving the life of the consumer-grade MLC instead of using more expensive single-level cell (SLC) flash. He said Skyera employed techniques such as lower write amplification and adaptive error correction codes (ECCs) to improve the life expectancy of the consumer-grade flash to five years of enterprise use.
