The age of spinning disk storage solutions is drawing to a close. Solid-state flash arrays are taking over the data center, and with good reason. Flash can run faster, with a much smaller footprint than traditional storage solutions. Until recently, cost was a factor, but the price of flash goes down almost daily. Now, it’s almost the only option that makes sense.

To gain an understanding of one company’s journey into the world of flash, John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, talked with Octavian Rotaru, technology manager of technical architecture at Amdocs, Inc., during the EMC World 2016 conference in Las Vegas.

Going through the process

The discussion opened with a simple question: What’s working? Rotaru replied that there is no silver bullet — businesses still have to adjust their implementation to the requirements of each customer. Usually, they receive a set of requirements they must meet. They translate those requirements into a technical architecture that goes down to storage, network and everything else.

Each time they have to rightsize, Rotaru said. If they go too low, the system won’t deliver; but go too high, and the customer will wonder why they’re buying way more than they need.

Talking flash

Rotaru said he sees all-flash as a technology enabler for his workload. They’re looking at all-flash as a way to meet customer needs, while at the same time achieving efficiency through a reduced data footprint.

The team works on different projects and also provides architectures for existing customers. They started with all-flash in-house, but after discovering its benefits, they began rolling it out to customers who own their own infrastructure. Customers, are asking for it, and they want to go forward with all-flash, according to Rotaru. 

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE