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<title><![CDATA[FlashSoft Team]]></title>
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<title><![CDATA[FlashSoft CEO to Present at Server Design Summit]]></title>
<link>http://flashsoft.com/flashsoft-ceo-present-server-design-summit</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:18:16 EST</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[FlashSoft Corporation, the Flash Virtualization™ company, today announced that FlashSoft Founder and CEO Ted Sanford will present “Why Your Next Server Will Have a Solid State Cache” in a tutorial on Increasing Storage Performance at the Server Design Summit. The event is being held at the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California, November 29-30, 2011. In his session, Sanford will explain how and why a solid state cache will rapidly become a standard component for almost any server, as well as the implications for business and technology strategy.
Solid state, non-volatile memory—“flash” memory—has driven a revolution across consumer technologies: cameras, phones, music players, printers and tablets. Now, as large-capacity flash devices with high-speed interfaces are ready for use inside servers, the technology will have a similar impact on enterprise computing. This year, a number of technology firms, including leading manufacturers of solid state devices, have announced plans to provide flash-based caching capabilities for servers. Even storage systems vendor EMC announced a server-tier flash device, dubbed “Project Lightning,” to extend its storage technology to the server.
FlashSoft is recognized as the early leader in shipping commercial software technology that enables flash memory to serve as a persistent read-write cache for server input-output (IO). FlashSoft software can employ any SSD or Flash PCIe card to eliminate IO latency that constrains the scalability and performance of enterprise applications, databases and virtualization environments. By delivering real-world solutions to customers and supporting business-critical production environments since early this year, FlashSoft has gained a unique perspective on the potential for server-tier flash. The session at Server Design Summit will address questions including:
• Four key drivers for flash memory as a cache in a server
• Why flash memory makes this the “jet age” for servers
• Three technologies most impacted by this change
• Future directions: next steps and new horizons
“The Server Design Summit is a great opportunity to compare notes with experts about the dramatic changes that are coming to the storage industry,” said Sanford of FlashSoft. “It’s great to be speaking with industry colleagues who share a vision for the positive impact that flash can bring to servers and storage, and the impact within the technology industry and beyond.”
Attendees at the Server Design Summit are invited to join Ted and his fellow presenters at the following tutorial:
• Title: Increasing Storage Performance
• Speakers:
○ Ted Sanford, CEO, FlashSoft
 “Why Your Next Server Will Have an SSD Cache”
○ Adrian Proctor, VP Marketing, Viking Technology
 “Maximizing Performance and Space Efficiencies Using New Technologies”
○ Andy Mills, CEO, Enmotus
 “High Performance MicroTiering for Server DAS Storage”
○ Esther Spanjer, Director SSD Technical Marketing, SMART Modular
 “SSD Help Make Server Response Time Dreams Come True”
○ Scott Stetzer, VP Technical Mktg, STEC
 “Storage Level Caching – Déjà vu All Over Again”
• Date/Time: Tuesday, November 29; 10:00–11:20 a.m. Pacific time
Attendees at the Server Design Summit are also invited to meet members of the FlashSoft team at the “Beer, Pizza and Chat with the Experts” open session on Tuesday evening from 7:30–9:00 p.m. Members of the FlashSoft technology team will be at the “Application Acceleration” discussion table to meet attendees interested in examining real-world use cases in which enterprise flash has been implemented to improve performance and scalability of enterprise applications and virtualization platforms.
For more information, please visit www.flashsoft.com, e-mail info@flashsoft.com, get an RSS feed on the blog http://www.flashsoft.com/blog, and follow the company on Twitter @FlashSoftCorp.
Related News
• FlashSoft Introduces FlashSoft SE 2.0 for Windows and Linux; http://ow.ly/6OPp7
• FlashSoft Introduces Application Acceleration Solution for VMware Environments; http://ow.ly/7tABW
About FlashSoft
FlashSoft™ Corporation provides software solutions for Flash Virtualization™ that eliminate IO latency to increase application performance, increase VM capability and relieve overhead on storage systems. Its Active Data Management technology uses sophisticated algorithms to observe IO and cache hot data on server-tier SSD. FlashSoft delivers its solutions directly to customers and in partnership with leading providers of flash memory technology, computing infrastructure and IT solutions. For more information, visit www.flashsoft.com.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[FlashSoft Introduces FlashSoft SE 2.0]]></title>
<link>http://flashsoft.com/flashsoft-introduces-flashsoft-se-20</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 06 Oct 2011 19:51:26 EDT</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[FlashSoft™ Corporation, the Flash Virtualization™ Company, today announced FlashSoft SE 2.0, its next major software release to enable enterprise SSD or flash PCIe as a persistent read-write cache in the server. FlashSoft SE 2.0 accelerates server performance from 3x to 10x and supports concurrent workloads 3x to 5x greater for applications running on Windows and now Linux operating systems.
Bottom line: The use of flash memory inside the server to provide a cache that can eliminate IO latency represents a fundamental shift in enterprise computing architecture.
As CPU speeds and memory power have increased over the years, IO performance — the speed at which servers can access data and write new data — has not kept pace, a problem commonly known as the “IO bottleneck.” This IO bottleneck is the greatest obstacle to many of the most important computing trends today: virtualization, big data analytics, real-time context-aware computing, and others. Because caching on server-tier flash can economically increase both server performance and concurrent workload by eliminating the IO bottleneck, server-tier flash-based caching is one of the most important new trends in server and storage architecture today.
FlashSoft shipped FlashSoft SE, its first commercially available software for flash-based, server-tier caching, in June 2011 followed by a second product, FlashSoft SE-V, in August 2011 to accelerate performance for applications running on virtual machines on the VMware ESX platform. With this release, FlashSoft SE 2.0 extends the benefits of its solution to Linux-based applications, which often have critical IO requirements. Overall, FlashSoft SE 2.0 provides over 800 feature enhancements to increase performance, manageability and resiliency.
“The most important advances in this release — support for Linux, the larger cache size, an improved GUI for real-time access to operations and data, and many others — came from direct feedback from our customers,” said Ted Sanford, co-founder and CEO of FlashSoft. “As we delivered our software to customers and partners for evaluation and production use over the course of this year, our end users’ feedback has helped us define the most critical requirements for flash-based caching in the server. This release is a significant step forward for caching on enterprise flash because it incorporates our experience applying our software to real-world IT challenges.”
Accelerates Performance of Linux Servers
With a platform-independent core caching engine, FlashSoft SE 2.0 can be implemented on a variety of operating systems. In this release, the product is available for the Linux operating system as well as Windows Server. Demand for IO acceleration on Linux is very strong due to the large number of enterprise applications managing large data sets, performing near real-time analysis for a variety of industries, and processing information for online access in massive volumes. Beta testing for FlashSoft SE 2.0 for Linux has shown dramatic performance benefits to applications running on Oracle and MySQL databases.
Larger Cache Size – Up to One Terabyte
Some of the greatest IO latency challenges are found in applications that must access and process terabytes of data. Enterprise SSDs and PCIe flash cards have grown as large as 1TB. To support these new flash devices, FlashSoft SE 2.0 supports a maximum cache size four times larger than before. The optimal cache size depends on the application being accelerated and the structure of its data, but an effective cache is often as small as one tenth the size of the accelerated volume, so FlashSoft SE 2.0 can accelerate applications managing as much as 10TB of active data or more.
Improved Resiliency and High Availability Through SSD RAID Management
FlashSoft SE has always supported the use of SSDs in RAID1 configuration to provide an essential safeguard for data integrity. FlashSoft SE 2.0 builds on that ability with a new SSD RAID management feature that detects a failing SSD, automatically issues an alert, and switches the cache to pass-through mode so that no data is written to an SSD lacking a redundant backup.
Over 60 Operational Statistics and Management Functions Accessible Through New GUI
FlashSoft SE 2.0 provides a completely redesigned GUI, providing runtime data and statistics through the Windows Management Interface (WMI) API. Administrators have control over management functions and can observe a wide range of data in real time to insure their cache is working properly and providing the maximum benefit. FlashSoft SE 2.0 operational statistics can also be incorporated into any systems management tool that supports the WMI API.
Hundreds of Improvements, Large and Small
In total, FlashSoft SE 2.0 delivers over 800 improvements and feature enhancements. Some changes are easy to see, such as the streamlined installation and product registration process. Others are deep below the surface, such as optimizations to read caching algorithms within the core caching engine. Together, these improvements make FlashSoft SE 2.0 a significant advance in the state of the art for server-tier, flash-based caching.
Improved Performance on Virtual Machines
Introduced in August during VMworld, FlashSoft SE-V is a custom package of FlashSoft SE designed to accelerate multiple virtual servers running on the same VMware ESX host. With the release of FlashSoft SE 2.0, FlashSoft SE-V will also be upgraded to version 2.0, with support for virtual servers running both Linux and Windows.
Pricing and Availability
Both the Windows and Linux versions of FlashSoft SE 2.0 are currently in beta testing. The final releases will be available for evaluation and purchase later this month. Pricing begins at $2,000 and is based on the number of servers accelerated and types of SSDs employed.
For more information, please visit www.flashsoft.com, e-mail info@flashsoft.com, get an RSS feed on the blog http://www.flashsoft.com/blog, and follow the company on Twitter @FlashSoftCorp.
About FlashSoft
FlashSoft™ Corporation provides software solutions for Flash Virtualization™ that eliminate IO latency to increase application performance, increase VM capability and relieve overhead on storage systems. Its Active Data Management technology uses sophisticated algorithms to observe IO and cache hot data on server-tier flash SSD and PCIe devices. FlashSoft delivers its solutions directly to customers and in partnership with leading providers of flash memory technology, computing infrastructure and IT solutions. For more information, visit www.flashsoft.com.]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[FlashSoft Introduces Application Acceleration Solution for VMware Environments]]></title>
<link>http://flashsoft.com/flashsoft-introduces-vmware-solution.html</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:33:10 EDT</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[FlashSoft™ Corporation, the Flash Virtualization™ Company, today announced the immediate commercial availability of FlashSoft SE-V, the company’s solution for accelerating application performance on Windows Server in virtual machine environments based on VMware vSphere® 5. The new solution is based on FlashSoft SE, the company’s software that enables enterprise flash as a server-tier cache, and is already used today in numerous business-critical production environments. Today FlashSoft brings the same performance benefits to applications running on virtual machines (VMs) based on the VMware ESXi™ software platform. The solution is available for free evaluation through a 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program: http://bit.ly/mz7R53.
Enterprise IT sees virtualization as a key to agility and value in computing infrastructure, and enterprise flash memory is a key to enabling applications to deliver necessary performance when running in virtual servers. However, as enterprise flash hardware continues to get larger and faster, it’s become apparent that a key requirement for enterprise flash is the software that enables flash memory to work as a high-performance read-write cache in the server. This “tier minus one” cache based on enterprise flash eliminates the IO bottlenecks that restrict the performance and capacity of enterprise applications, especially when running in virtual servers.
FlashSoft SE-V is designed specifically for Windows Server instances running on VMs supported by the VMware ESXi platform. In performance tests, a standard OLTP application suite based on MS-SQL was accelerated by more than 3X — the same kind of performance acceleration that FlashSoft SE provides in non-virtual server environments.
“The core of FlashSoft SE-V is based on our proven FlashSoft SE product, so it delivers the same degree of performance and reliability that our customers enjoy with our current product,” said Ted Sanford, founder and CEO of FlashSoft. “Now IT managers can apply flash memory to enhance application performance in virtual machines based on the VMware platform.”
Performance Report, User Guide and Video Available
To introduce the FlashSoft Solution for VMware environments, FlashSoft is providing a set of technical bulletins for IT administrators, including:
• “Accelerating Application Performance on Virtual Machines” – this guide provides an overview of the solution architecture and provides the result of several performance tests to demonstrate the solution’s ability to enhance application performance on the VMware platform: http://www.flashsoft.com/flashsoft-SE-V-performance-report
• “User’s Guide to FlashSoft SE on VMware” – this guide gives step-by-step instructions for the installation and configuration of the FlashSoft software in a VMware environment and provides practical guidance on performance optimization.
• “See For Yourself” video – Hosted on the FlashSoft website, this brief video provides a side-by-side performance comparison of applications running in VMs: http://www.flashsoft.com/videos.html
In addition, FlashSoft is extending its 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program to its VMware solution. Due to the unique evaluation requirements of VMware environments, the evaluation program for VMware software will allow FlashSoft SE to be installed on multiple VMs on a single host server.
Both FlashSoft SE and FlashSoft SE-V offer technical advantages including:
• Provides a persistent read-write cache in the compute tier.
• Compatible with any SSD: SATA, SAS or PCIe.
• Requires no modifications to data, applications or storage; the SSD-based cache is completely transparent to the server and storage infrastructure.
• Automatically tunes over 60 operational parameters to support specific SSD architectures and application types.
• Minimal server overhead; optimized metadata management and cache design enable 100MB of server memory to manage 1TB of flash, utilizing only 5% of CPU.
Pricing and Availability
FlashSoft SE-V for Windows Server/VMware is available for evaluation and purchase now. To learn more about the 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program, visit http://bit.ly/mz7R53. The new FlashSoft SE-V product is licensed for use in multiple Windows Server VMs running on a single VMware server. License cost is based on the number of virtual machines on the server and the SSD or PCIe flash card used to host the cache.
For more information, please visit www.flashsoft.com, e-mail info@flashsoft.com, get an RSS feed on the blog http://www.flashsoft.com/blog, and follow the company on twitter @FlashSoftCorp. The FlashSoft Technical Community site is now available at http://tech.flashsoft.com.
About FlashSoft
FlashSoft™ Corporation provides software solutions for Flash Virtualization™ that eliminate IO latency to increase application performance, increase VM capability and relieve overhead on storage systems. Its Active Data Management technology uses sophisticated algorithms to observe IO and cache hot data on server-tier SSD. FlashSoft delivers its solutions directly to customers and in partnership with leading providers of flash memory technology, computing infrastructure and IT solutions. For more information, visit www.flashsoft.com.]]></description>
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