Flash has revolutionized storage, and its increasing affordability is rapidly making it the new standard for enterprises. Still, if you decide to go all-flash, you may not be getting your investment’s worth if your networking is outdated. In order for flash storage to be all it can be, it requires an advanced network to match its speed and agility.

Jack Rondoni, VP of Storage Networking at Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., a storage networking company, likens it to a buying a Lamborghini and putting it on a congested highway in the middle of a rush hour. Obviously, you’re not going to experience the car’s optimal performance. Likewise, he said, flash storage needs a network of wide open lanes to function at its highest level.

Rondoni told Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, that Brocade has addressed this issue with the launch of its X6 Director, a new director-class switch series that implements the Gen 6 Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. Rondoni said the use of Gen 6 Fibre Channel is finally giving flash storage the network it deserves. “When you think about fibre channel as a market, flash has given it a whole new sense of purpose,” he said.

Death, taxes and storage

“The utilization of the storage is becoming much more efficient than it was before,” he said, adding that this is crucial because data stores are certainly not getting any smaller.

“I always say it’s like death and taxes — more storage is a given in life, so you can’t stop it. But it’s like, how do you contain it?” he stated.

New territory, new map

Rondoni said that Brocade’s adding sensors throughout the network now allows you to map storage workflows. It’s almost like Google Maps for an enterprise network, he said. This is crucial to maintaining SLAs and enabling real-time analytics, he argued.

He predicted that NVMe (aka SSD 2.0) — a communications interface/protocol developed specially for SSDs by a consortium of vendors — will advance storage further, allowing us to do more with data and analytics at the device level.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s live event coverage.

Photo by SiliconANGLE