It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to say farewell. On Wednesday, the last day of the Solutions Exchange, our excitement was just as high as ever, though our energy may have begun to flag toward the end.

Our preparation began months ago, with our plan to introduce FlashSoft™ Software v3.0 for VMware® vSphere® at this year’s VMworld in San Francisco. Months of hectic activity ensued as our team laid out the preparation for this milestone event – the first launch of a new software product by SanDisk Enterprise Storage Solutions.

We arrived at the Moscone Center on a beautiful Sunday morning, where we unpacked our bags and tidied up our booth in the Solutions Exchange hall. We set up our demo stations, and checked dozens of little details, right up to the moment the doors opened at 4:00PM on Sunday.

And then you arrived.

Thousands of VMware experts from every state in the United States, and everywhere around the world poured into the Solutions Exchange. With food and drink on Sunday night, then immediately after the keynote on Monday morning, and over the next three days, we got to meet you, hear from you, and draw on whiteboards with you, to learn what you were doing to virtualize servers and desktops, and to manage them more efficiently. And we had the opportunity to talk directly with you about FlashSoft.

Some vendors go to conferences to deliver a pitch. But it is just as important for us to listen to you, to hear what you are doing with virtualization, what challenges you face, and what goals you have for the future.

At this year’s VMworld, we learned that I/O latency remains a problem, and that a server-tier solid-state cache is something you want to investigate. In some cases you’ve virtualized the low hanging fruit, but held off on certain apps where performance might be an issue. In some cases, the latest upgrade to storage infrastructure delivered the expected performance bump to most of your hosts, but you still need to boost some that are especially I/O constrained. For some of you, server-tier caching on flash is a key strategic goal, and you are already in the process of determining the right path to that goal.

Over three and a half days, we learned a lot from you. Thanks for teaching us about your operations, and talking with us about FlashSoft. Then perhaps we saw you one last time at the party on Wednesday night. Well, no need to get into that…

So we talked and listened to each other, and we scanned your badge (of course). And now we ask, are we going to build on what we learned from each other? Will we make that conversation at VMworld a starting point for an investigation of server-side solid-state caching with FlashSoft? Will we take the next step and plan an evaluation, to see how much FlashSoft can increase VM density and application performance in your environment?

Speaking for the FlashSoft team at SanDisk, I can say that we’ll do everything we can to make sure that the conversation we had at VMworld is just the start of a serious effort to help you achieve your goals for VMware vSphere.

Oh, and by the way, will we see you in VMworld in Barcelona?

Rich

This week, I had the pleasure of joining a panel discussion about Flash and Virtualization at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California. I was speaking with a colleague who has attended the Flash Memory Summit regularly over the years, and he pointed out how much the event had changed.

“Just a few years ago, all anyone wanted to talk about was phones, phones, phones. And, tablets. Lots of tablets. This year, it’s all about the enterprise.”

I could only agree. It’s amazing how flash technology continues to change different parts of our world. Over the past two decades, flash has completely changed the world of consumer technology. Now it’s having just as great an impact in the enterprise.

There’s another difference that I noticed at the event. On my panel, the majority of the speakers talked about software, not hardware. Some, like me, spoke about software designed to apply enterprise flash to improve performance and scalability in virtual computing environments. However, our panel also included Alex Danilychev, Senior Storage Engineer at Citrix and Sandeep Uttamchandani, Technical Director Storage from VMware, who spoke about future opportunities to apply flash for their virtualization platforms.

In the year since our team last presented at Flash Memory Summit, our team has seen great changes: we became a part of the SanDisk Enterprise Storage Solutions business, and have been growing the scale and scope of our technology development and business operations.

I couldn’t help but speculate that between this year’s Flash Memory Summit and next year’s, we will see significant changes in how flash is used in enterprise servers. We’ll see innovations that enable server-tier flash to more effectively complement flash in storage. And we’ll see continued innovation in applications of flash to solve I/O latency problems for virtualization.

And, as I look into my crystal ball to see the agenda for next year’s Flash Memory Summit, I predict that we’ll still be talking about the enterprise, software, and virtualization. There’s a lot more innovation ahead for us.

Rich

It’s been an exciting few days for SanDisk at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., as the company celebrated the 25th anniversary of flash memory technology.

Flash memory is used by billions of consumers and countless businesses in smartphones, tablets, ultra-thin laptops, data centers and other electronic devices. In just 25 short years, flash memory has reshaped the consumer electronics industry and produced many of the key innovations enabling the digital world of tomorrow.

IEEE – the world’s largest technical professional association – honored SanDisk’s co-founder and retired CEO, Eli Harari, with the prestigious IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing award for the floating gate EEPROM, a significant technological innovation that enabled data storage in flash memory. Also, Eli was moved by a tribute video that highlighted the impact that flash memory has had on the consumer electronics industry and the millions of people around the world who rely on the mobile devices that are a key part of their digital lifestyle. The video can be viewed here.

In addition, executive speakers across the client and enterprise storage solutions businesses participated in panel discussions and presentations that cover the breadth of enterprise offerings and supporting activities, ranging from flash-based enterprise hardware and software to server virtualization and protocol interfaces designed to accelerate application performance even further. Client-based storage solutions were also highlighted and focused on the future of storage interfaces as well as the explosive growth in SSDs that is being driven by the emergence of ultra-thin laptops and the promise of new, higher-performing desktops for consumers.

At SanDisk, we envision a world where flash memory fuels every interaction with digital content, from capturing photos on a smartphone to sharing those images via the cloud powered by SSDs. Flash memory is uniquely suited to meet the needs of consumers and businesses, and SanDisk is committed to enriching people’s lives through anywhere, anytime access to digital content.

Greg

SanDisk ESS’ director of software marketing, Rich Petersen, recently participated in an interview on TMCnet.com in which he discussed SanDisk’s robust portfolio of enterprise offerings, underscoring the specific benefits of integrating caching software with flash memory in enterprise servers for improved efficiency and performance.

Check out the full video interview here.

Greg

SanDisk expands its portfolio of enterprise storage solutions with the new FlashSoft™ software for VMware® vSphere®. Compatible with both Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) configurations, the FlashSoft technology caches frequently accessed, “hot” data, on low-latency solid-state devices installed directly in the server, thereby reducing I/O latency that can slow application performance in virtual server environments.

FlashSoft for VMware vSphere software provides a 2x to 4x increase in application performance** on virtual machines, a 2x to 3x increase in VM density* and the ability to run transparently while supporting all VMware vSphere features. Enabling I/O acceleration directly in the servers themselves, this type of performance boost is well-suited to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments and business-critical applications where concerns over response latency often prevent the migration of “tier-one” applications to virtual environments.

We’re thrilled about offering the new FlashSoft software for VMware vSphere to the enterprise market – stay tuned for more good news from SanDisk as it continues to expand its presence in the enterprise storage arena.

The full press release with additional details can be found here.

Greg

* Results from OLTP workload test. System under test: Dell R720. Performance numbers are tpm scores. Complete test report available
**Results from tile-based virtualization workload test. System under test: Dell 810. Complete test report available