LSI Corporation today introduced the Nytro portfolio, a comprehensive family of solutions that combines PCIe flash technology with intelligent caching and management software to achieve accelerated application performance in datacenters and cloud environments.

The amount of data being stored and accessed worldwide is growing at an exponential rate, outpacing the ability of traditional storage architectures to keep up. This creates bottlenecks, throttling application performance and making it harder for companies to extract the full value from data. Nytro solutions allow datacenters to contend with massive data growth and speed the ability of databases and other applications to access data and provide real-time analytics and reporting."The integration of flash technology in enterprise system architectures is one of the most significant changes in recent computing history based on its ability to close the gap between compute and storage performance," said Gary Smerdon, senior vice president and general manager, Accelerated Solutions Division, LSI. "From cloud providers in mega datacenters to traditional enterprise and small-to-medium businesses, the Nytro portfolio brings the value of flash to the masses by offering customers the flexibility to choose the right solution to meet their specific application and budget requirements."

Nytro products help customers achieve:

- Up to 30x faster database transaction performance

- Over 4.0 GB per second sustained throughput to perform high-speed big data analysis

- Automatic, intelligent read and write caching of hot data to high-performance flash storage

- Significant power, cooling and physical footprint savings, reducing total cost of ownership

- Enterprise-class flash performance and reliability from LSI SandForce flash storage processors with DuraClass technology

- Simple, transparent application acceleration with minimal impact to existing IT infrastructure

- Broad compatibility with existing infrastructure through use of LSI SAS and MegaRAID drivers featuring extensive operating system and management support

The Nytro product portfolio includes:

- LSI Nytro WarpDrive Application Acceleration Cards - second-generation family of PCIe flash adapters for drop-in high performance and low latency to accelerate transactional application performance and response time. Nytro WarpDrive cards range in capacity from 200 GB to 3.2 TB of MLC or SLC flash memory, and combine the award-winning performance, reliability and energy efficiency of LSI SandForce flash storage processors with industry-leading LSI SAS controller ICs. A single Nytro WarpDrive card delivers the I/O performance of hundreds of hard disk drives while requiring significantly less power, cooling and physical space for a reduced total cost of ownership.

- LSI Nytro XD Application Acceleration Storage Solution - combines the LSI Nytro WarpDrive card with Nytro XD intelligent caching software for out-of-the-box application acceleration for storage area networks (SAN) and direct-attached storage (DAS) environments. The Nytro XD solution automatically and transparently caches frequently accessed data reads and writes to high-performance PCIe flash storage, reducing latency and delivering up to a 30x performance improvement over HDD-only storage systems. The result is optimized data I/O rates and faster system and application performance while using existing IT infrastructure for investment protection.

- LSI Nytro MegaRAID Application Acceleration Cards - provide simple and cost-effective acceleration of SAS-connected DAS storage by combining the proven RAID performance and data protection capabilities of LSI MegaRAID controllers with on-board flash and intelligent caching software. Nytro MegaRAID cards automatically move data between integrated flash storage and hard drives to blend high-performance and high-capacity storage without requiring expensive software tuning or rewrites.

- LSI Nytro Predictor Software Tool - provides an intelligent guide for choosing the right Nytro application acceleration solution. Nytro Predictor software helps IT managers and database administrators identify and analyze application "hot spots" of frequently used data to determine which applications can be accelerated and make recommendations on which LSI Nytro product is best-suited for their specific application requirements.

LSI Nytro in the industry

The LSI Nytro portfolio of flash storage products is capable of helping IBM System x servers deliver compelling application acceleration and intelligent data placement solutions for clients with IO-intensive workloads. The breadth of the LSI Nytro product portfolio covers a wide range of deployment scenarios to intelligently and seamlessly accelerate business applications and complement MegaRAID storage products offered by IBM.

According to Claude Lorenson, Director, SQL Server Product Management, Microsoft Corporation, "Through many technology generations, LSI and Microsoft have collaborated to bring the best storage solutions to the marketplace. Flash storage technologies such as the LSI Nytro portfolio of application acceleration products can be used to accelerate key business applications such as SQL Server 2012. The importance of these technologies will continue to grow with the enhancements that Microsoft will deliver with Windows Server '8.'"

Pricing and availability

LSI Nytro solutions are currently sampling with OEM customers, and are expected to be generally available beginning in the second quarter. Pricing for Nytro WarpDrive cards starts at a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $6,600 MSRP, pricing for Nytro XD solutions starts at $9,400 MSRP, and pricing for Nytro MegaRAID cards starts at $1,799 MSRP.