StorageReview.com editor Kevin O’Brien is quite familiar with the latest offerings from SanDisk, including those resulting from the Pliant Technology acquisition nearly a year ago. As such, he was looking forward to the opportunity to test drive the SanDisk Lightning® LB406S Enterprise SSD for his readers.

Overall, when compared to others, the SanDisk Lightning drive offered class-leading performance, with Kevin noting, “…it really shined in areas with a mixture of read and write activity that generally brought other drives down.”

Considering SanDisk’s level of enterprise storage expertise, Kevin concluded, “The drive’s performance makes us that much more excited for the next generation SSD where the full benefit of the Pliant/SanDisk relationship can be realized.”

Check out the full review here.

C.T.

* SanDisk provided a drive for testing purposes

SanDisk will demonstrate its latest advancements in Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technologies for the enterprise at the SCSI Trade Association (STA) Technology Showcase: “Taming the Data Beast” on Wednesday, May 9 from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Hotel in Santa Clara, CA.

As an official event sponsor, the SanDisk Enterprise Storage Solutions (ESS) group will take part in the following demonstrations over the course of the show:

• Advancements in PCIe Storage (SCSI Express)
Accelerate your enterprise using SCSI Express – a proven SCSI protocol combined with PCIe to create an industry-standard path to PCIe-based storage – to provide unprecedented levels of performance and low latency

• Unstoppable Data Center
SanDisk Lightning SSDs highlight the robustness and resiliency of SAS-based storage solutions to provide end-to-end data protection

• Tiered Storage in a Flash
Underscore the benefits of tiered storage to enable organizations to optimize data storage infrastructures using a combination of storage solutions to lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase performance

• No Compromise Performance
Achieve unprecedented levels of performance, scalability and true interoperability, requiring no modification to existing system configurations or software

As an active member of STA, SanDisk’s participation in this event underscores its commitment to promoting and supporting the latest industry initiatives and driving enterprise technologies forward.

It’s free to attend, so hope to see you there. For additional details or to register to attend, click here.

Mike

SanDisk Lightning Enterprise Solid State Drives (SSDs) were chosen to deliver high I/O performance in the new Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse Platform 6690 (Teradata Active EDW), designed to be an analytic workhorse managing tough, real-time workloads for enterprise customers.

The Teradata Active EDW is the company’s newest generation of hybrid storage leveraging a balance of SSDs and HDDs to handle massive data volumes from thousands of concurrent users. The system easily manages concurrent mixed workloads that include ad hoc, tactical, and basic reporting queries.

SanDisk Lightning SSDs are equipped with leading enterprise-class performance, reliability and endurance, making our drives the top pick for the new Teradata Active EDW.

Here are a few links to industry information on the benefits of hybrid storage, and the Teradata press release:

Solid State Drives – A big Step Forward for Analytic Workloads: B-eye Network Podcast, Dan Graham
Teradata’s Hybrid Storage: White paper, Jerome Wendt, DCIG analyst
Hot and Cold Running Data: Teradata Magazine article, Keith Muller
Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse Platform 6690 press release

Greg

SanDisk believes that high performance interfaces are key to delivering the full performance potential of PCIe-based SSDs. Dave Landsman, SanDisk senior staff standardization engineer, shared his thoughts on NVMe-based solutions.

Click here to read Dave’s post on the NVM Express blog.

Greg

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-iOL) formed Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) Consortium to broaden industry support and cooperation for the adoption of PCIe SSDs. As an industry leader in both enterprise and consumer-based SSDs, SanDisk is among the founding members.

The Consortium will focus on using NVMe as the protocol interface for PCIe flash-based SSDs, allowing members to test interoperability and conformity to industry standards in a vendor neutral location.

SanDisk’s participation in this collaborative testing model not only helps drive innovation in demanding enterprise storage environments, but underscores our commitment to be an end-to-end resource for IT managers and OEM system developers.

The full press release is available here for your reference.

Greg

As a leading provider of enterprise-class SSDs, SanDisk will share its expertise and market insight in the Avnet Embedded Solid State Drive Virtual Summit, a free, on-demand technical summit that offers the latest in product and technical information.

SanDisk’s senior product marketing manager, C.T. Chu, will discuss several topics on how to leverage SSDs in the enterprise. Presentations include:

• Achieving Predictable QoS Under Increasing Workload with Enterprise SSDs
SSDs are fast, but how to tell you’re actually getting the best performance for your applications

• SSD Use Models (Do More with Less!)
Mystified by SLC and MLC? Determine which works best for your application. SanDisk offers an easier way to choose

• SSD Solutions for All Facets of Enterprise Applications
SATA, SAS and PCIe – discussing the differences and advantages of these interfaces

In addition, C.T. will conduct a live chat session on April 4 from 8:30 – 9:30 a.m., to discuss how enterprise IT managers and systems developers can take full advantage of next-generation flash-based storage technologies.

Click the banner below to register. Lots of interesting information will be delivered, so I hope you can tune in.

Greg

SanDisk has acquired caching software provider, FlashSoft, extending SanDisk’s Enterprise Solutions portfolio and strengthening its position as an industry leader in the enterprise storage space.

FlashSoft enables flash products such as SanDisk’s Lightning® Enterprise SSDs to be configured as high-performance cache for servers’ HDD storage, allowing customers to improve performance with smaller, more cost effective storage configurations and to deploy more virtual machines per server in virtualized environments.

We’re excited to welcome FlashSoft to SanDisk’s enterprise storage team and look forward to new, innovative solutions we can create together.

Greg

PS: You can see the full press release here for more detail on the acquisition.

According to the Storage Magazine article, “Storage managers poised to tap new technologies,” IT budgets are finally on the rise, and storage managers are looking to emerging technologies including solid state storage, as a means for satisfying ever-increasing data growth and performance demands. A whopping 30 percent of IT managers are now considering implementing solid state drives (SSDs) into their current storage models.

At SanDisk® we are committed to providing new, innovative levels of cost-effective system design flexibility and solutions. Through advanced controller design and software architecture, our Lightning® drives deliver dramatic I/O performance and reliability improvements over competing SSD technology, as well as ensure low energy consumption in large enterprise computing environments. In addition, by replacing a number of HDDs with a few Lightning drives to create a hybrid solution, data centers can realize significant cost savings and improved performance flexibility.

To view our complete enterprise storage solutions portfolio click here.

Greg

SanDisk® ESS director of engineering, Mike James, has been elected to the SCSI Trade Association (STA) Board of Directors. The STA is a prominent, member-run industry association established to support and promote the understanding and benefits of SCSI technology to the industry.

Mike James’ election to the STA Board of Directors further underscores our commitment to be an end-to-end resource for IT managers and OEM system developers and designers within the enterprise storage space.

Congratulations Mike!

Greg

SQLServerCentral.com’s Wesley Brown holds enterprise storage to high standards, and when testing SanDisk’s Lightning® LS 300S, he didn’t hold back. His two-part review covers drive basics and I/O performance, and then delves into benchmarks and long-term stress tests.

The Lightning drive performed very well in each test pattern, one “real world” scenario and the other loosely based on the Intel database test pattern. The drive performed particularly well with response times and capacity for write workloads.

Wesley concludes, “I can say without a doubt the … LS 300 is one of the finest solid state disk I’ve ever worked with.”

See the full review here: Part One and Part Two.

Greg