What If Flash Was Software Defined?

Recorded March 4, 2021

View a Complimentary Webinar Sponsored by KIOXIA

The modern hyperscale data center is built on a stack of tightly coupled, software defined components.  Virtual machines and containers have made servers software defined.  Software defined networking connects those servers together.  Cluster-scale software defined file systems hold their data.  But there is one place where software defined hasn’t yet made an impact: the flash memory storage stack.  It’s still held back by the legacy of hard drive based paradigms.

An emerging Open Source effort to address these opportunities is underway which seeks to maximize the value of flash by co-developing a hardware and software stack which can:

• Provide host-driven APIs tailored to modern hyperscale application needs
• Enable tighter latency controls and better latency outcomes than current methods
• Abstract the differences between flash generations and vendors 
• Control data placement in a physically aware, but logically abstracted manner

This webinar will examine how these new software defined flash capabilities can fundamentally change the way storage and the host interact and answer questions like:

• Why is the current way of using storage in the hyperscale age constrained?
• What set of APIs are needed to enable these new capabilities?
• How could software defined flash affect responsiveness at the application and cluster?
• How does software defined flash simplify data center operations management?

And learn how to get involved in this emerging Open Source development effort.