SanDisk Rolls Out Lightning PCIe Solid State Accelerator

SanDisk Corporation introduced Lightning PCIe Solid State Accelerator (SSA) cards designed to boost the performance of workstations and servers used in data centers, server farms and cloud computing environments.

They can be added to workstations and servers to provide balanced, predictable performance for enterprise applications, delivering the combination of speed, reliability and cost-savings. The cards provide rapid access to the most frequently used data and applications in order to more effectively manage heavy workloads. They are part of SanDisk’s growing portfolio of SSD solutions for the enterprise.

The new PCIe products from SanDisk address a variety of uses – from financial institutions analyzing and processing massive amounts of information around the clock; to social media and website providers whose customers demand a nearly instant response with every click of a mouse; to media content creators editing high-definition videos.

"SanDisk PCIe SSAs deliver balanced performance, speeding access to critical data in a simple and cost-effective way," said Greg Goelz, VP and GM, Enterprise Storage Solutions, SanDisk. "Enterprise businesses can now leverage a PCIe acceleration solution that combines SanDisk’s leading NAND flash memory technology and its innovative controller design to offer the enterprise-grade reliability and scalability that our customers depend on."

Lightning PCIe SSAs offer enterprise SSD technology and feature an controller using a parallel processing architecture to manage essential data protection and I/O functions. This results in balanced performance as data is accessed, with little impact on CPU loading and no need for additional, costly DRAM memory.

The Lightning PCIe SSAs also feature low power requirements and include an industry-standard driver that requires no additional software or system modification. The cards can be added to almost any computing system to deliver a solution for performance acceleration.

Several companies have already sampled SanDisk’s PCIe cards and experienced the benefits they can deliver. "The new Lightning Enterprise PCIe solid state accelerators from SanDisk provide us with the application acceleration we need to create more efficient workflows for a fraction of the cost of previously deployed solutions," said Ramy Katrib, founder and CEO of DigitalFilm Tree, company in defining and applying emerging ‘data centric’ technologies to creative workflows.

A caching option is available for Windows OSs by using SanDisk FlashSoft data caching software, which can be purchased separately. Data centers can support large server workloads by combining the Lightning PCIe SSA as an additional storage tier in conjunction with FlashSoft data caching software.

Based on the PCIe 2.0 interface, Lightning PCIe SSAs are installed into any four lane (x4) or greater PCIe slot, delivering enterprise performance and reliability for demanding data center and cloud computing applications. Incorporating a SanDisk controller, they offer low power requirements, a two million hour MTBF rate and a five year warranty.

SanDisk Lightning PCIe SSAs are available in 200GB and 400GB capacities. Up to five cards may be installed into a single system to provide up to 2TB of capacity.

Additional Detail and Features

• Response Times: Lightning PCIe products offer 245 microsecond average response times and sub-30 millisecond maximum response times reflecting performance gains in real-world applications running heavy workloads.
• Low Latency: They deliver 50 microsecond sustained read and write latency.
• Industry Standard Driver: Industry-standard drivers are integrated for use with major Windows, Linux and VMWare ESX environments. No additional system reconfiguration or software is needed.
• Low Power: They require 15 watts of power, eliminating special cooling requirements and resulting in additional savings.
• Bootable OS Drive Option: they are bootable devices which support multiple LUN).
• Enterprise Reliability Features: They include ‘background patrol read’ to check blocks of data on storage devices, capacitor backed cache (CBC) to protect against data loss without battery backup or supercapacitors, and a five-year limited warranty.

Pricing and Availability:
Lightning PCIe Enterprise SSAs will be available for purchase in 200GB (LP 206M) and 400GB (LP406M) capacities for $1,350 and $2,350 MSRP respectively at select authorized retailers in North America, including Avnet, CDW, Newegg.com and TigerDirect.com.