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

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

We’re looking forward to the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco. Joined by 13 other leading storage solutions companies, including Dell, EMC, Intel and NetApp, we’ll have live demonstrations of NVM Express technology in our kiosk (#444) in the NVM Express Showcase.

NVMe (non-volatile memory express) is an optimized, high performance, scalable host controller interface designed for enterprise and client PCIe SSDs. As an alternative to traditional storage interfaces that were created to support the requirements of spinning magnetic media, new solid state storage interfaces like NVMe fully leverage the low latency benefits of NAND flash media to significantly boost storage performance.

The NVM Express technology demonstration uses a SanDisk-developed controller based on our proprietary IP, and implements native PCIe transport. It supports the NVM Express protocol, and extends the SanDisk enterprise SSD architecture that delivers fast, predictable performance and superior reliability.

At SanDisk, we are committed to delivering leading edge solutions that bring the performance and efficiency benefits of flash-based storage to the enterprise, and are excited to demonstrate this innovative new technology.

If you want to check out the live demos, come by and see me in the SanDisk kiosk within the NVMe Community area, located within the Technology Showcase at IDF 2012 at Moscone West.

Mike

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

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 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

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.