New Fusion ioMemory PCIe Card and Mezzanine Application Accelerators

By Nathan Kirsch

SanDisk Introduces Next Generation of Fusion ioMemory PCIe Application Accelerators for Boosting Data Center Performance

Ranging in capacity from 1TB to 6.4TB, new cards leverage SanDisk NAND to deliver up to 4x price performance improvement and 2x capacity across varying workloads

LAS VEGAS and Milpitas, Calif., April 27, 2015 SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions, today unveiled a new generation of its Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerators to dramatically improve performance, while helping to drive data center consolidation and lower total cost of ownership. The new Fusion ioMemory PCIe application acceleratorscomprised of SanDisk NAND flash, and Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) data access acceleration softwaredeliver up to a 4x price performance improvement, with up to a 61 percent list price reduction over the previous generation Fusion ioDrive2 product1.

“Fusion-ios technology fundamentally transformed expectations about data center performance when it debuted eight years ago and it remains the standard by which all other PCIe products are judged, said John Scaramuzzo, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions, SanDisk. Combining the power of Fusion ioMemory technology with SanDisks vertically integrated NAND flash, our engineering talent and portfolio of SATA and SAS SSDs, provides customers with an unparalleled combination of flexibility, performance, scalability, quality and value to help solve their data center challenges.”

A recent Gartner report indicates that “with the proliferation of server virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), in-memory computing applications, and the need for real-time analytics, Gartner has detected a heightened focus on PCIe technology”2. Over 250,000 Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerators have been deployed by more than 7,000 customers including storage DataLogix, ObjectRocket by Rackspace, Pandora, Santa Monica City College, ServiceNow, TransUnion, theUniversity of Michigan and University of Victoria, making Fusion ioMemory a proven and safe choice for business-critical data centers.

The Fusion ioMemory portfolio offers an array of form factors ranging from PCIe cards to mezzanine storage for HP and Cisco blade servers. Each card is optimized for mixed-use or read-intensive workloads and can also be paired with SanDisks recently announced next generation FlashSoft caching software, which reduces I/O latency in VMware vSphere, Windows Server and Linux environments, helping customers further accelerate enterprise applications.

“At Dell, were committed to providing customers with solutions that have enterprise-class storage reliability and serviceability, said Ravi Pendekanti, vice president, Dell Server Solutions. By providing high-performance storage devices in our PowerEdge portfolio such as the Fusion ioMemory PCIe accelerators were giving our customers powerful solutions to address their most demanding enterprise environments.”

Accelerating Time to Value for Customer Applications

Fusion ioMemory PCIe cards solve one of the most challenging data center computing problems: reducing the length of time and infrastructure needed to extract data out of conventional hard drive-based storage systems. By streamlining data access, Fusion ioMemory cards can increase performanceand thereby customer satisfactionassociated with Microsoft SQL, Oracle and MySQL databases, as well as new database technologies such as Spark, Redis and MongoDB. For example, with Fusion ioMemory, customers can speed up search or ecommerce applications or shrink the time required to run database reports by 7x or more3.

“Every aspect of our stack has been tuned to make MongoDB fast, which is why we only use the fastest storage like PCIe application accelerators in our platform. No matter what the instance size is, everyones application deserves the best quality of service,” said Chris Lalonde, chief executive and co-founder of ObjectRocket. “We rely on the superior performance of Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerators so that our customers get more transactions per second and more consistent performance without the typical penalty of a shared cloud environment.”

By substantially reducing the total amount of hardware, software and other equipment required to manage and run critical applications, customers regularly experience data center consolidations of 3x or more4.

“Our business relies on being able to offer a single, integrated IT work-flow and management system around a single system of record, said Allan Leinwand, vice president and chief technology officer, Cloud Platform and Infrastructure, ServiceNow. “SanDisk and Fusion-io are experts in solid-state storage and flash technology with a decades-long history of delivering innovation. We utilize their PCIe solutions so that we can be successful in helping CIOs focus on delivering business value from the ServiceNow enterprise cloud.”

The newly updated Fusion ioMemory application accelerator portfolio includes:

  • SX350 and SX300 Seriesranging in capacity from 1.25TB up to 6.4TB, the SX350 and SX300 provide a cost-efficient solution for both mixed-use workloads such as virtualization, databases, business intelligence and real-time financial data processing and read-intensive workloads, such as web hosting, data mining, seismic data processing, content caching, 3D Animation, and CAD/CAM.
  • PX600 SeriesRanging from 1TB up to 5.2TB, the PX600 series is designed for mixed-use workloads such as virtualization, databases, business intelligence and real-time financial data processing.
  • Mezzanine SeriesAvailable on the latest HP Gen9 and Gen8 BladeSystem Servers and the newest CISCO UCS B-Series Blade Servers, the SanDisks Mezzanine Series delivers high performance and density gains over hard disk drives for virtualized environments. Utilizing the Mezzanine cards helps support more virtual machines per server, and accelerates database mining and business intelligence, resulting in cost and time savings.
  • FlashSoft BundlesThe new bundles deliver the benefits of Fusion ioMemory flash hardware and caching software in a single solution that is easy to evaluate, deploy and support, regardless of storage operating systems or architectures.

Each of the new Fusion ioMemory PCIe cards also offer 2x more random read performance over the ioDrive2 generation for increased endurance, and an updated Virtual Storage Layer (VSL), which provides direct memory access, minimizes latency and maximizes application throughput1.

The new portfolio of Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerators is available immediately for customer qualification. It is also available through the SanDisk Enterprise Reseller Partner Program for SanDisk Commercial Business Channel partners that resell select SanDisk data center hardware and software solutions. To learn more about how Fusion ioMemory PCIe devices can accelerate your business, visit SanDisk at booth #1767 during the Interop Las Vegas Expo taking place April 28-30 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Alternatively, check out www.sandisk.com/enterprise, the SanDisk IT Blog or view this video about the new generation of Fusion ioMemory products. You can also register for our webinar series on the business benefits Fusion ioMemory application accelerators deliver, taking place Tuesday, May 12, 2015 at 8:30am PT. Further notes on the history of Fusion ioMemory innovation and benefits delivered to data center infrastructures can be viewed here.

About Interop

Interop is the leading independent IT industry event dedicated to providing technology professionals with the unbiased information they need to thrive as new technologies continue to transform the enterprise. Part of UBM Tech’s family of global brands, Interop connects all levels of the IT community by showcasing the latest innovations and technologies while providing unique opportunities for networking and career advancement. Through in-depth educational programs, workshops, real-world demonstrations and live technology implementations in its unique InteropNet program, Interop provides the forum for attendees to experience the most powerful innovations and solutions the industry has to offer. Interop Las Vegas is the flagship event held each spring, with annual international events in India, London and Tokyo, all produced by UBM Tech and partners. For more information about these events, visit www.interop.com.

About SanDisk

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, is a global leader in flash storage solutions. For more than 25 years, SanDisk has expanded the possibilities of storage, providing trusted and innovative products that have transformed the electronics industry. Today, SanDisks quality, state-of-the-art solutions are at the heart of many of the world’s largest data centers, and embedded in advanced smart phones, tablets and PCs. SanDisks consumer products are available at hundreds of thousands of retail stores worldwide. For more information, visit www.sandisk.com.

1 Price/performance numbers as compared to ioDrive2 and current list pricing.

2 Gartner, “Market Trends: The Next-Generation Server-Side SSD Landscape,” February 2015.

3 Example from Transunion Interactive case study, a financial services customer that reduced report time by 7-9X by replacing three server blades and four shelves of storage with a single blade containing three Fusion ioMemory PCIe cards.

4 Example from WeMakePrice case study, a $1 billion e-commerce company in South Korea that reduced its footprint by 3:1, while increasing random query times by 120x and VM build times by 6X with Fusion ioMemory.