Yeah, I read stuff. Mostly tech stuff. Once in a while, I come across something particularly lucid. Quality techie geeky stuff, with pictures.
Let's start this journey back in 2013, the dawn of PCIe SSD, as NVMe was just starting to surface. Yeah, that seems like ancient history, but this article is still spot-on and relevant for the basics of the storage tech that we're now enjoying in affordable consumer forms today, such as the Samsung SSD 950 PRO M.2 NVMe drives. Check it out, a great read!
Note the mention of the Samsung PM1725, with 5.5GB/s read and 1.8GB/s write speeds. Holy guacamole!
Finally, it's time to look further ahead at the brave new world of memory and storage getting all intertwined. Let's quickly get past the vendor hyperbole about the Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Module (NVDIMM):
Designed for applications that are sensitive to down time and require high performance to enable frequent access to large data sets, NVDIMMs combine the speed of DRAM, the persistent storage of NAND and an optional power source into a single memory subsystem that delivers increased system performance and reliability.
How would your life change if you could do things hundreds of times faster? If the wait went away? What if your storage device was that much faster? You could unleash the power of your processor instead of it working at a fraction of its power.
and dive into a story instead, told in a way that just make sense. Business sense. Nerdy sense. Enjoy!
Storage-class memory (SCM), also known as persistent memory, may be the most disruptive storage technology innovation of the next decade. It has the potential to be even more disruptive than flash, both from a performance perspective and with the way it will change both storage and application architectures
These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.
After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop SuperServer bundles in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. Bare bones system sales continued for years longer.
What's next in 2025? I don't yet have my answer for my home lab, especially now that VCF certification is required to keep non-production home lab licenses going, even as a vExpert and VMUG Advantage EVALExperience customer.
As for a SuperServer follow-on, the Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! Feb. 27 2025 update update looks promising, but pricey. Infortunately, it's become clear to me that Supermicro is less focuses on the mini-tower form factor these days.
As for the CPU industry, it's unfortunate that Pat Gelsinger was apparently ousted from Intel's helm in these challenging times, but I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.
These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.