LSI Nytro Flash Accelerator Cards With SQL Server 2014 Buffer Pool Extension

LSI Corporation announced that its Nytro flash accelerator cards have been tested to help amplify the performance of SQL Server 2014.

The development efforts between LSI and Microsoft Corp. bring together technologies to help businesses overcome I/O bottlenecks, accelerate SQL Server 2014 database transactions and extract the full value from data.

Nytro flash cards are also being utilised in conjunction with the new SQL Server 2014 Buffer Pool Extension to provide the low latency, high throughput and reliability required to fully enable the benefits offered by BPE technology.

“SQL Server 2014 enables customers to build mission-critical applications and big data solutions using high-performance, in-memory technology,” said Tiffany Wissner, director product marketing, SQL server product marketing, Microsoft. “By using SQL Server 2014 with LSI Nytro cards, our joint customers can achieve the performance requirements of their most demanding workloads in the cloud.”

“Microsoft tested LSI Nytro flash cards as a core component of SQL Server 2014 development, which is a strong endorsement of the performance and reliability of Nytro technology,” said Jas Tremblay, VP marketing, datacenter solutions group, LSI. “Through our strategic relationship with Microsoft, we’re helping customers achieve the highest application performance for their most intensive I/O workloads.”  

Microsoft tested Nytro cards for SQL Server 2014 development efforts to meet the performance demands required to tune and optimise its features. Nytro cards satisfy Microsoft’s standards for building and testing SQL Server 2014 with the end result of customer satisfaction and confidence knowing that critical and data-intensive workloads can achieve low response times with a high-performance and reliable solution.

Microsoft is also utilising Nytro flash cards to enable the benefits offered by the SQL Server 2014 Buffer Pool Extension feature. BPE provides database administrators with the option to increase transaction performance by utilising non-volatile, NAND flash-based storage in order to extend the buffer pool size. The BPE feature functions as a level two (L2) cache, with the main buffer pool functioning as a level one (L1) cache. For workloads that consist primarily of frequently accessed reads, SQL Server 2014 will automatically transfer these data pages to the (L2) cache as necessary.

A simple alter server configuration command is used to specify the location and size of the file for the BPE feature. Nytro flash cards help to accelerate SQL Server 2014 workloads by placing this file on the Nytro card, improving transaction performance for read-intensive workloads when database working sets no longer fit into the main buffer pool (L1) cache.  
 
The Nytro product portfolio of PCIe flash accelerators are designed to deliver performance, reduced latency and a low CPU burden for the demanding database applications and I/O-intensive workloads.

The products are available from select OEMs and through the LSI worldwide network of distributors, integrators and VARs.
 
More information on LSI Nytro and SQL Server 2014 solutions