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SanDisk® Introduces New All-Flash Reference Architectures and Enhanced Portfolio of Certified Flash Products for VMWare Virtual SAN™ 6
[August 27, 2015]

SanDisk® Introduces New All-Flash Reference Architectures and Enhanced Portfolio of Certified Flash Products for VMWare Virtual SAN™ 6


SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), a global leader in flash storage solutions, today unveiled three new reference architectures for VMWare Virtual SAN™ 6 utilizing solid state drives (SSD) and Fusion ioMemory™ PCIe application accelerators. When coupled with VMware Virtual SAN 6, SanDisk's (News - Alert) PCIe and SSD-based solutions allow customers to deploy business critical applications, databases, virtual desktops and other IT workloads with less effort, while gaining exceptional performance on VMware's hyper-converged and cost-effective VMware Virtual SAN software-defined storage infrastructure.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150827005336/en/

"SanDisk is addressing the challenges of latency and cost efficiency in the data center with our all-flash VMware Virtual SAN reference architectures, which allow customers to expand the workloads they can run on all-flash and hybrid-flash storage at significantly lower costs," said John Scaramuzzo, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions, SanDisk. "These new solutions are prime examples of how SanDisk continues to collaborate with VMware. We look forward to working with our mutual partners to help customers experience the significant benefits of the flash-transformed, software-defined data center."

By using SanDisk flash-based offerings with VMware solutions, customers are able to consolidate IT footprint, while increasing application quality of service (QoS), deriving huge benefits from server virtualization and virtual desktops. For example, SanDisk customers have already been able to: increase support for concurrent users by 3X2; increase virtual desktop density by 4X3; reduce power and cooling by 16X1; and, achieve 40X4 faster report generation. Now with software-defined storage, according to Gartner (News - Alert), by 2017 one-third of midmarket organizations will deploy VMware Virtual SAN for at least 30 percent of their total storage capacity5. Businesses cannot afford for mission-critical applications to be sluggish. These VMware validated reference architectures for business critical applications, databases and desktop virtualization will allow customers to deploy with confidence, while lowering storage TCO by up to 50 percent6.

"Flash is a key enabler for software-defined storage, allowing customers to get high performance and reliability out of their IT infrastructure," said Charles Fan, senior vice president and general manager, Storage and Availability, VMware. "Together, VMware and SanDisk are making it easier for customers to accelerate the performance of their applications and fully experience the benefits of software-defined storage."

The new reference architectures utilizing SanDisk SATA, SAS (News - Alert) and PCIe application accelerator solutions with VMware Virtual SAN to be demonstrated at VMworld® 2015 include:

  • Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) Solution with All-Flash Virtual SAN
    This new 4-node reference architecture utilizes SanDisk's 4TB Optimus MAX™ - the industry's highest capacity SSD that is certified for Virtual SAN 67 - on a Lenovo (News - Alert) System x3650 M5 server platform. In a performance test conducted by SanDisk, Lenovo, VMware, and Avago, all-flash 4-node configuration delivered 3.08 million New Orders per Minute (NOPMs) and 14.1 million transactions per minute (TPMs) using eight virtual machines executing Microsoft (News - Alert) SQL Server Standard Edition. The HammerDB performance tuning and benchmarking tool was used to run a 5000 Warehouse TPC-C like workload.8
  • VMware Horizon® Virtual Desktop and Applications Solution with All-Flash Virtual SAN
    SanDisk co-led the development of this virtual desktop infrastructure reference architecture utilizing SanDisk's Lightning® Gen. II SSDs and Dell R730 G13 servers. This solution was tested to run 800 Horizon 6 Desktops on a starter 4-node cluster with VMware, Avago and Brocade. The solution fuels VMware Horizon® 6 virtual desktops and applications at a significantly lower TCO when compared to traditional HDD-based storage solutions. Similarly, when tested, a starter 4-node configuration deployed 24 desktops per minute in a boot storm situation, bringing up 850 desktops in 35 minutes. This is the industry's first 800 virtual desktop solution running on an end-to-end 12G all-flash VSAN Cluster.9
  • Horizon Virtual Desktop Solution with Hybrid VMware Virtual SAN
    This is a referencearchitecture tested in conjunction with HP and VMware, utilizing HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 servers and SanDisk's high performance Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerators for caching in a hybrid VMware Virtual SAN cluster. In a performance test conducted using VMware Horizon 6.1, the View Planner benchmarking and workload generator with a 3-node cluster, the solution delivered fast application performance and response times to support the maximum number of virtual desktops with all responses under the recommended performance thresholds.



A video by SanDisk and VMware executives on these new solutions is available here. Further details on these reference architectures are also provided in a series of blogs by SanDisk, VMware and other partners' site. For more information on the role of flash in VMware Virtual SAN environments, check out this webinar. Additional details on SanDisk's solutions for virtualization and virtual desktop infrastructures can be found on company's website or enterprise blog. For information on Fusion ioMemory PCIe application accelerators, SanDisk Optimus MAX 4TB SSDs and SanDisk Lightning Gen. II 12 gb/s SAS SSD, visit http://www.sandisk.com/enterprise/.

SanDisk at VMworld 2015


To learn more and experience the power of the flash-accelerated, software-defined data center, please visit SanDisk in booth #1920 during VMworld, taking place at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, August 30-September 3, 2015. You can join Serge Shats for session STO5704 on "Using Virtual Data Services for IO Acceleration in vSphere," taking place on Monday, August 31, from 12:30 - 1:30 PM; panel session VAPP5737 with industry experts such as Tarkan Maner and Rawlinson Rivera on Software Defined Storage, from 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM on Tuesday, September 1; or our two Solution Exchange sessions on Wednesday, September 2: FlashSoft 1:50 - 2:10 PM and All Flash Virtual SAN from 3:20 PM - 3:40 PM; and session STO5157 on "Running Business Critical Applications with VMware All Flash Virtual SAN" on Thursday, September 3 from 12:00PM to 1:00PM. SanDisk will also be showcasing its newest FlashSoft software solution during Tech Field Day Extra with Stephen Foskett taking place on Tuesday afternoon from 3:30-4:30pm. SanDisk's Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and General Manager of Enterprise Solutions, Sumit Sadana, will be speaking at Nexenta's OpenSDx Summit at 9:35 AM on Thursday, September 3. You can also see SanDisk solutions at work in our technology partner booths including: VMware, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Nexenta, CloudByte, Tegile, SIOS, Supermicro and Maxta. For more details on SanDisk's presence and solutions for VMworld, visit: http://www.sandisk.com/events/vmworld-us/.

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 27 years, SanDisk has expanded the possibilities of storage, providing trusted and innovative products that have transformed the electronics industry. Today, SanDisk's 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. SanDisk's consumer products are available at hundreds of thousands of retail stores worldwide. For more information, visit www.sandisk.com.

© 2015 SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved. SanDisk, Fusion ioMemory, Optimus MAX, Lightning, and others are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware, Horizon and Virtual SAN are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

This news release contains references and links to third-party websites. SanDisk is not responsible for and cannot control those websites.

1 Based on performance tests conducted by SanDisk, Lenovo, VMware and Avago using HammerDB and SQL Server Database. Performance results may vary according to system architecture, configurations and applications.

2 TekSouth - USAF Data Warehouse Case Study

3 VMware Fast Track 2.0 Validated Reference Architecture: White Paper

4 Quaker Maid Customer Case Study

5 "Gartner Predicts 2015: Midmarket CIOs Must Shed IT Debt to Invest in Strategic Initiatives,' Gartner Research, October 2014.

6 VMware Virtual SAN 6.0 Data Sheet

7 Capacity verified using VMware HCL for Virtual SAN 6.

8 Performance results may vary according to system architecture, configurations and applications.

9 VMware Horizon View and All Flash Virtual SAN Reference Architecture Document


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