SanDisk intros FlashSoft for virtual machines

BANGALORE, INDIA: Flash storage maker SanDisk Corporation announced a new addition to its FlashSoft software product line.

The new software is designed to increase application performance and the number of virtual machines available in virtual computing environments.

Already available for servers running Windows Server and Linux operating systems, the FlashSoft software brings solid-state storage benefits to virtual computing by installing as a module within the operating system of leading virtual computing platforms.

Key Benefits of the New FlashSoft Software:

The company claims that it can provide an increase of two-to-four times the application performance on virtual machines.

It can also provide an increase of two-to-three times the number of virtual machines available on a single platform (increased VM density).

Moreover, to comes with an ability to run transparently within the hypervisor (a hardware virtualization technique allowing multiple operating systems, to run concurrently on a host computer) providing native operating system support for key functions within a single server and in clusters, says a release.

"The release of our new FlashSoft software underscores SanDisk's commitment to serving enterprise customers with high-performance solutions," said Greg Goelz, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions. "Today's enterprise customer looks to solid state technology to relieve I/O constraints and deliver greater benefits from virtual computing. FlashSoft software works with enterprise solid-state devices from all vendors to reduce I/O latency for improved VM density and application performance."

FlashSoft technology caches frequently accessed (or "hot") data, on very fast solid-state devices installed directly in the server. By caching hot data on flash memory in the server, the FlashSoft software reduces I/O latency that can slow application performance, especially in virtual servers. FlashSoft software is compatible with any enterprise flash device, including PCIe, SAS or SATA, from all vendors.

The software runs in any enterprise server, working efficiently with both storage area network (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) configurations.

Unlike flash memory-based storage systems that accelerate storage I/O broadly, FlashSoft software targets I/O acceleration capabilities directly to the servers that require performance acceleration.

For each virtual machine, the system administrator can select specific virtual disks for acceleration, delivering I/O acceleration directly to the data and compute resources that need it most.

FlashSoft software provides full support for all standard virtualization features, including high availability, virtual machine migration, snapshot clones and linked clones. With the software installed in the hypervisor, no additional components or external management modules are required, and no additional software agents are installed in the guest VMs, adds the release.

FlashSoft software requires no changes to virtual machines, applications or storage infrastructure. With no VM-resident agent software, virtual machines can run Linux, Windows, or any other supported operating system. Since the software is transparent to both the virtual machines, their applications and to the storage infrastructure, no policy changes are required for VM management, backup or compliance.

The solid-state cache used with FlashSoft software can be up to 2 terabytes (TB) in size, and multiple solid-state devices can be combined in any RAID configuration or logical volume manager.

FlashSoft requires 140 megabytes (MB)4 of system memory, and FlashSoft memory requirements do not increase with the acceleration of additional VMs.

The new FlashSoft product for use in virtual machine environments is available now and may be purchased for $3,900 MSRP (USD) per server from SanDisk. FlashSoft for Linux ($3,500) and Windows ($3,000) are currently available from SanDisk.