Today we announced that the SanDisk FlashSoft software has been validated by NetApp for use with NetApp’s OnTAP enterprise storage and data management solutions. We’re very excited about this announcement, because we’ve worked closely with NetApp over a long period of time to ensure complete interoperability between our products. The NetApp team is excited about working with us because FlashSoft offers their customers a solution that seamlessly improves performance for the broadest set of user applications and operating system environments.

Server-side solid-state caching is a real game-changer in the storage industry, but no matter how great an innovation it represents, there’s little benefit without the assurance of data integrity and compatibility with existing storage systems and operations. From the beginning, FlashSoft software was designed to work with our customers’ preferred server platforms, storage infrastructure and solid-state devices. In our collaboration with NetApp, we’ve gone through rigorous testing to demonstrate that NetApp customers can confidently use FlashSoft software to deliver the performance benefits of a server-side solid-state cache without any disruption to their storage infrastructure.

This year we’ll be working directly with NetApp sales and technical staff, as well as channel partners and customers, to demonstrate the benefits of FlashSoft in NetApp storage environments with servers running Linux, Windows Server, and VMware vSphere. We’ll be hitting the road to visit cities across the country in the NetApp Partner Academy program during May and June, and we’ll be back in Las Vegas for NetApp Insight in October.

If you’re considering solid-state caching in the server for use in your NetApp storage environment, you will want to learn more about FlashSoft.

Tom

At Dell World last month, I had the opportunity to chat again with the folks from Truth in IT. Host, W. Curtis Preston and I discussed the rapid change in the mindset of enterprise organizations when it comes to the adoption of flash as a cache in the server – moving from a possible application to an inevitable application – to take full advantage of the potential that flash offers in reducing I/O latency.  We also talked about the benefits associated with implementing FlashSoft™ for VMware® vSphere® software in the data center to intelligently accelerate I/O to use cache most effectively.

The complete interview is available here.  Check it out when you have the chance.

Rich

In 2012, SanDisk demonstrated its commitment to the enterprise market in various ways. SanDisk’s acquisition of FlashSoft and Schooner Information Technology, coupled with its 2011 acquisition of Pliant Technology, allowed the company to quickly offer a strong portfolio of flash-optimized hardware and software solutions for the enterprise.  In fact, SanDisk launched two new enterprise product lines in 2012 –  Lightning® PCIe Solid State Accelerators (SSAs) and FlashSoft™ 3.0 for VMware vSphere.

2012 was an incredibly productive year, and SanDisk culminates its success with participation at Dell World and HP Discover, widely attended by some of most influential enterprise and IT-focused managers, businesses and media.   These events provided SanDisk with the opportunity to be the first to demonstrate prototypes of SSDs with the new NVM Express and SCSI Express PCIe interfaces, and show the power and breadth of our FlashSoft product line.

At Dell World, SanDisk showcased its range of enterprise hardware and software solutions qualified to meet Dell’s strict standards, including SanDisk’s SAS enterprise SSDs and FlashSoft software. SanDisk’s next-generation Small Form Factor NVMe SSD was demonstrated within Dell’s booth, underscoring SanDisk’s technology leadership in the enterprise storage market. In addition, SanDisk participated in live streaming interviews at the Dell News Desk, featuring discussion of its enterprise SSDs and FlashSoft software. The company also contributed a guest blog post on the Dell World Online site entitled, “Understanding the Implications of New Connectivity Standards.”

Rich Petersen discusses performance and efficiency in virtualized environments.

Mike James discusses the implications of emerging industry standards like NVMe in data centers.

Image courtesy of StorageReview.com

Prior to Dell World, SanDisk displayed its robust portfolio of enterprise solutions at HP Discover, and exhibited a working demo of two Small Form Factor SSD prototypes connected via SCSI Express to an HP Express Bay server. SanDisk is also currently the only SSD vendor able to support a working SCSI Express SSD prototype. SanDisk SAS SSDs also appeared in the ProLiant Gen 8 demo where they produced 8x greater results than in the previous Gen 7 system.

As managing the daily flood of new data and content becomes more complex moving into 2013, SanDisk will continue to innovate and provide our customers and partners with leading edge, next-generation solutions that bring performance and efficiency benefits of flash-based storage to the enterprise.

Thanks to everyone for such a wonderful 2012. We look forward to another exciting year in 2013.

Patricia

As I previously mentioned the SanDisk FlashSoft team participated in NetApp Insight in Las Vegas a few weeks ago and I can’t say enough what a great experience it was to talk with NetApp® technical sales folks and learn about their customers’ challenges and how we can work together to solve I/O problems. In fact, Tom Matson, Global Channel Sales Manager for FlashSoft software, participated in a video interview in which he commented on the partnership and shared the ways we are working closely with NetApp to link our products together.

Aside from giving some background on the partnership and how the products work together, Tom also shared a thought that is worth calling out – one of the many reasons SanDisk is such an ideal partner for NetApp is our shared philosophy for openness. Meaning, the customer can plug in whatever flash device makes sense to them while still taking advantage of both NetApp and SanDisk solutions to solve I/O challenges.

Together, we provide a game-changing solution for customers. This includes 3 – 5x* performance improvement and about 3x** density improvement. Plus, we’re able to support any operating system in the guest that VMware® currently supports, important for customers running many of the Linux distributions and older versions of Windows. This is due to the way our product is architected and, in turn, how it works so seamlessly with NetApp storage. Whether you are looking for solutions for VDI deployments, virtualizing enterprise data center applications, or accelerating stand-alone database servers, FlashSoft with NetApp can help you achieve your goals without disrupting your existing storage infrastructure.

You can view the full video interview here to learn more about how SanDisk is not only an extension of NetApp but a storage technology partner as well.

Victoria

Trademark, copyright and performance data information, and other technical claims are detailed in the SanDisk Legal Disclaimer page.

Last week, I met with many of the top analysts and industry watchers following the storage industry at Needham’s Sixth Annual HDD/Flash Memory Conference. Their expertise in markets spanning HDDs, solid state drives (SSDs), PCIe, and flash-based next generation storage systems was quite impressive. At the event in Boston several key public and private companies were present to discuss the key trends in the storage business in 2013 and beyond.

In case you missed the live stream, please visit the SanDisk website here to view the full presentation.

Mike Chenery

Last week I had the privilege of attending the NetApp Insight event in Las Vegas, along with Tom Matson, Channel Sales Manager for FlashSoft software. NetApp® has a rich history of delivering game-changing technology and it was clear from the Insight event that they are still at it, particularly in solid-state caching technology. It was awesome to see the number of sessions covering flash technology and server-side caching.

SanDisk is a NetApp Advantage Alliance Partner. Our partnership with NetApp helps us bring SanDisk’s FlashSoft™ software to enterprise, mission-critical applications that require server-side caching to meet their requirements for high-performance storage. FlashSoft software leverages enterprise flash to reduce I/O latency. This reduction in latency is a key enabler for increased performance and scalability for databases, enterprise applications, and virtualization environments.

In my conversations with NetApp Insight attendees, a couple of key points that resonated were our hardware independence and our agentless design.

Hardware Independent – FlashSoft is designed to work with any solid-state technology, whether from SanDisk or another vendor. Our open approach allows customers to select the flash hardware best suited to their specific needs. This flexibility was a key requirement for many of the people I spoke to at Insight.

Agentless Design – A second point that resonated with attendees is the fact that our software is agentless. This is critical in virtualized environments, where a single host can run multiple VMs. Being agentless means that no software is installed in the VM. In an enterprise environment that may have hundreds of virtualized hosts running thousands of VMs, installing agents in each VM introduces management overhead that admins want to avoid. Because the FlashSoft design is agentless, agents in VMs are simply not an issue. Installation on a virtualized host is straightforward, and users begin realizing caching benefits immediately.

We are excited to be working with NetApp to deliver solutions that allow customers to better meet the demands of the enterprise data center.

Victoria

The Nikkei Global Management Forum is a special event that each year brings together a carefully chosen group of the world’s most accomplished business executives. The aim is to discuss corporate strategy, management philosophy and the latest trends in management from a truly global perspective. Since its inauguration in 1999, the Forum has come to be recognized as one of the most prestigious international conferences in Asia.

The theme for the 14th Nikkei Global Management Forum is “Visionary Leadership: The Path Forward in a Changing World,” and president and CEO of SanDisk, Sanjay Mehrotra, was invited to address this esteemed group of industry leaders on this topic. In his presentation, titled “Flash Memory: Driving Change,” Sanjay discussed the importance of risk-taking and the constant effort to drive flash technologies forward within the context of a constantly evolving global platform.

Mike Chenery

As we’ve said earlier, this year’s VMworld was a huge event for the SanDisk FlashSoft product team. Following the launch of FlashSoft™ Software for VMware® vSphere®, this year’s VMworld event in San Francisco was our first big opportunity to share our software with virtualization professionals on a large scale.

Some of our partners and customers joined us at the event, and we have a short video featuring them speaking about their experiences with FlashSoft software, and their plans for the future. You can watch the full video here.

A few highlights:

Gary Lamb, CTO of NextCloud, talks about how increasing VM density provides a competitive advantage to a cloud services provider, and the value of the FlashSoft software integrating cleanly with the hypervisor.

Tim Russell, VP of Data Life Cycle Solutions at NetApp, discusses how working with SanDisk, NetApp can address a broader range of customer performance requirements.

Kaku Yamaguchi of SCSK Corporation describes how the company is looking to alleviate IO bottlenecks for the company’s data center customers.

Shridar Subramanian, VP of Marketing at Virident, speaks about how caching with FlashSoft keeps the benefits of shared storage, while delivering the performance benefits of PCIe flash.

Enjoy!

Rich

This week members from the SanDisk FlashSoft team are at the Intel Developer Forum, along with other members of the SanDisk Enterprise Storage Solutions group. The hardware team has been doing innovative work with NVMe, and is demonstrating the potential for NVMe flash devices with a very cool prototype.

But you might be asking, what’s that got to do with the FlashSoft software?

In the rapidly evolving world of server-tier caching solutions, many early innovations coupled the caching software to a specific flash hardware device or standard. The FlashSoft product design explicitly avoided doing this, because our engineering team knew that enterprise flash technology was developing quickly, with new physical architectures like eMLC and new interface standards like NVMe. Thinking about the future potential of our technology, we chose a completely hardware-neutral software design that would require minimal system overhead.

From the first FlashSoft software release two years ago, to our most recently announced release for VMware vSphere®, one thing that has never changed is the message that FlashSoft software can use any enterprise flash device – SATA, SAS or PCIe – from any vendor – as a cache in the server. In fact, we recently announced our business collaboration with Virident to underscore that message for our mutual customers.

One thing is changing now. Instead of just saying “SATA, SAS, or PCIe”, we’ll be adding NVMe to the interfaces for which we validate our software.

If your server-tier caching technology is anchored to a specific vendor’s flash hardware, controller, or interface, you might want to ask about NVMe. It’s not the only future development that might affect your caching roadmap, but it is one of the most important.

And if you’re at IDF this week, stop by and meet the SanDisk team – hardware and software. Because both sides of our team have a lot to share with you about NVMe.

Rich