Seoul, April 28, 2015 – SanDisk (www.sandisk.co.kr, Country Manager for Korea Jin-woo Kim), a global leader in flash storage, has launched the next-generation Fusion ioMemory™ PCIe Application Accelerator. This product dramatically improves system performance while supporting data center consolidation and reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Utilizing SanDisk's next-generation NAND flash and comprised of Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) data access acceleration software, the new Fusion ioMemory PCIe Application Accelerator delivers both performance and cost-effectiveness.

John Scaramuzzo, Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage Solutions at SanDisk, stated, “Fusion-io technology, first introduced eight years ago, fundamentally changed expectations for data center performance and is now used as a standard for evaluating all other PCIe products. The combination of Fusion-io memory technology, SanDisk’s vertically integrated NAND flash technology, SanDisk’s engineering capabilities, and a diverse portfolio of SATA and SAS SSDs will provide customers with unrivaled flexibility, performance, scalability, quality, and value. This will help solve the data center challenges facing our customers.”

A recently published Gartner report states that “interest in PCIe technology is growing due to the proliferation of server virtualization technology, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and in-memory computing applications, as well as the increasing demand for real-time analytics”[1]. Currently, over 250,000 Fusion I/O memory products are widely used by more than 7,000 customers.

Used by DataLogix, Rackspace's ObjectRocket, Pandora, Santa Monica City College, ServiceNow, TransUnion, the University of Michigan, and the University of Victoria, it demonstrates that it is a safe and proven choice for business-critical data centers.

The Fusion ioMemory portfolio offers a variety of form factors, ranging from PCIe cards to mezzanine storage for HP and Cisco blade servers. Each card product is optimized for mixed-use or read-intensive workloads and can be used with SanDisk's recently announced next-generation FlashSoft caching software. This software reduces I/O latency in VMware vSphere®, Windows Server®, and Linux environments. This allows customers to further accelerate enterprise applications.

Ravi Pendekanti, Vice President of Dell Server Solutions, stated, “Dell has always strived to provide customers with solutions that offer enterprise-level reliability and availability,” adding, “By adding high-performance storage devices such as Fusion ioMemory PCIe accelerators to Dell’s PowerEdge portfolio, we provide solutions that enable customers to overcome any challenging problems they may encounter while operating enterprise IT systems.”

Accelerating the point of value creation for customer applications

Fusion ioMemory PCIe cards provide a solution to the biggest challenge in data center computing: reducing the time and infrastructure required to extract data from traditional HDD-based storage systems. By simplifying the data access process, Fusion ioMemory cards elevate system performance to the next level, realizing higher customer satisfaction not only with established databases such as Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and MySQL, but also with emerging database technologies like Spark, Redis, and MongoDB. For example, using Fusion ioMemory allows customers to accelerate search or e-commerce applications and reduce the time required to generate database reports by more than one-ninth.[2]

Chris Lalonde, CEO and co-founder of Object Rocket, stated, “Our stack is optimized to accelerate MongoDB in every aspect. For this very reason, we are introducing the fastest storage systems, such as PCIe application accelerators, into our platform.” “Because all applications must receive the best service regardless of instance size,” they stated, adding, “We are improving our customers’ transactions per second through the high performance of the Fusion ioMemory PCIe Application Accelerator and maintaining more consistent performance without the common problems or difficulties associated with shared cloud environments.”

By reducing the volume of the entire hardware and software itself, as well as other equipment required to run core applications, customers can experience more than three times[3] the data center integration effect.

Allan Leinwand, Vice President and CTO of Cloud Platform and Infrastructure at ServiceNow, stated, “ServiceNow’s core focus is on providing a single, integrated IT workflow and management system based on a single record system,” adding, “SanDisk and Fusionio provide exceptional technical capabilities and high expertise in solid-state storage and flash technology, leveraging decades of innovative technological prowess.” "ServiceNow stated, 'By leveraging such excellent PCIe solutions, enterprise CIOs are creating successful business value together through the ServiceNow Enterprise Cloud.'"

The features of the newly updated Fusion I/O Memory Application Accelerator portfolio are as follows.

l SX350 and SX300 Series – Available in capacities from 1.25TB to 6.4TB, the SX350 and SX300 series provide a cost-effective and highly efficient solution for read-intensive workload environments such as web hosting, data mining, large-scale data processing, content caching, 3D animation, and CAD/CAM.

l PX600 Series – Available in capacities from 1TB to 5.2TB, the PX600 Series is optimally designed for handling mixed workloads such as virtualization, databases, business intelligence, and real-time financial data processing.

l Mezzanine Series – Available for the latest HP Gen9 and Gen8 blade systems and Cisco UCS B Series blade servers, the SanDisk Mezzanine Series delivers superior performance and density that surpasses hard disk systems, designed for virtualization environments. Using Mezzanine cards increases the number of virtual machines supported per server and improves the processing speed of database mining and business intelligence applications, thereby reducing costs and time.

l FlashSoft Bundles – A newly released bundle product that combines the advantages of Fusion I/O Memory flash hardware and cache software into a single solution. This allows evaluation, installation, and support to be easily performed regardless of the operating system or architecture.

All newly released Fusion ioMemory cards feature twice the random read performance of the previous ioDrive 2 generation due to improved durability. Additionally, the VSL update enables direct memory access, minimizing processing latency and maximizing application processing.[4]

The newly released Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerator portfolio is available for immediate purchase and can also be obtained through SanDisk Commercial Business Channel Partners, which are responsible for the retail distribution of SanDisk data center hardware and software. For more information regarding purchasing, please contact SanDisk Korea (Main number: 02-6718-4600).

Further details regarding Fusion ioMemory PCIe devices are available at the SanDisk booth (#1767) within the Interop Las Vegas expo, held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center from April 28 to 30. Alternatively, additional information on the new Fusion ioMemory products can be found at www.sandisk.com/enterprise, the SanDisk IT Blog, and via YouTube videos. You can also register to watch the webinar taking place on May 12 at 8:30 AM Pacific Time. The following infographic provides an overview of Fusion ioMemory's history of innovation and its advantages for data center infrastructure.

Infographic: http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/Image/Story_of_ioMemory.pdf