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 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

In the past couple of months since we launched FlashSoft for VMware vSphere, it feels like we’ve been in a whirlwind of IT industry events: the Flash Memory Summit, VMworld 2012, the Intel Developer Forum, and Oracle OpenWorld…and we’re not stopping! This week we’re in Barcelona at VMworld meeting with many of our European customers and partners.

In addition to hands-on demonstrations of FlashSoft software in our booth, our very own Peter Crosby – product manager for FlashSoft software – gave a presentation in the Solutions Exchange Theater titled: “Many Paths: Flash Memory and Virtualization.” In his presentation, Peter discussed how to understand the capabilities that server-tier flash brings to virtualization environments in particular, and the differences among various architectural approaches that have been taken to bring a solid-state caching capability to VMware vSphere. If you missed his presentation and you’d like to see the slides, just let us know.

Rich

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