Sanrad Achieves 2TB of Flash

SANRAD announces a front-loadable, PCIe-connected flash module.

The module incorporates 8 parallel lanes of flash storage bridged to 8 lanes of PCIe gen 2 and comes in 1/2TB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.
 
"Our appliance delivers high-speed SAN acceleration at the lowest possible cost, due to our shared SAN caching over embedded flash," says Oded Ilan, SANRAD’s CEO. "With our approach to flash acceleration, the flash resource is shared among multiple servers, delivering the highest utilization per GB flash."

The front-panel installation allows for quick maintenance and upgradeability in the data center. It enables a pay as you grow approach, allowing customers to add PCIe flash modules on the fly or replace aging flash modules without opening the appliance, similar to the way HDDs are added to a server.

The flash modules are an integral part of the SANRAD V-Switch XL storage acceleration appliance, which delivers application-based SAN acceleration over embedded flash. SANRAD’s policy-based caching software uses the modules as a large cache to accelerate key applications in virtualized environments.

The modular design for both flash and networking enables the V-Switch XL to accommodate a density of 4TB of flash, together with 2x10GE networking and 2x8Gb FC, all in a 1U rackmount appliance. The 2U rackmount appliance accommodates five flash modules and one networking module, delivering 10TB of flash.

"In data centers and cloud environments, load distribution is not even across all compute nodes, and therefore introducing dedicated flash HBAs within every server is far from optimal," concludes Ilan. "By deploying high-speed SAN caching using flash and PCIe connectivity, a centrally located appliance can maximize flash by servicing multiple physical and virtual servers."