The university is one of the largest schools in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system, which is the largest provider of higher education in Minnesota. A regional comprehensive university, St. Cloud State has more than 15,400 students and nearly 110,000 alumni.
The most basic difference between the two technologies is that Flash Cache is a PCI-e card (or cards) that sits in the NetApp controller, whereas Flash Pool are SSD drives that sits in NetApp shelves. This gives way to some important points.
NetApp Flash Cache. Flash Cache modules are three-quarter-length PCIe cards that fit into NetApp FAS and V-Series storage controllers. NetApp Flash Cache modules currently range up to 1TB in capacity, enabling up to 8TB of flash capacity per controller. Flash Cache modules contain SLC flash, managed by an on-board FPGA. This FPGA controls all communication between system main memory and flash memory.