New Suite of Flash Technology Improves Real-Time Data Analysis

With a variety of business applications requiring more real-time analysis of data, financial services organizations are implementing technology that brings data in memory, rather than on a traditional storage device. To help answer the growing demand LSI Corporation, a provider of semiconductors and software that accelerates storage and networking in data centers and mobile networks, has introduced Nytro, a portfolio of solutions that combine PCIe flash technology with intelligent caching and management software to accelerate application performance in data centers and cloud environments.

"There is a huge gap between having data in traditional storage and in-memory analysis," said Steve Fingerhut, vice president of marketing, Accelerated Solutions Division at LSI during an interview with Wall Street & Technology. For example, data housed in-memory usually has latencies of 1-100 nanoseconds, according to LSI. Data on a storage device jumps to 10 milliseconds or even greater than 20 milliseconds, depending on the configuration.

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, according to LSI.

[Real-time data analysis now includes machine readable news and events. Read: Using Real-Time Events in Electronic Trading.]

According to LSI, Nytro can help customers achieve database transaction performance that is up to 30 times faster, over 4 GB of per second sustained throughput, intelligent read/write caching of data, and power, cooling and physical footprint savings.

The Nytro product portfolio includes:

LSI Nytro WarpDrive Application Acceleration Cards, which is a second generation family of PCIe flash adapters provides 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. According to LSI, a single Nytro WarpDrive card can deliver 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, a solution that combines LSI Nytro WarpDrive with Nytro XD intelligent caching software to deliver application acceleration for storage area networks (SAN) and direct-attached storage (DAS) environments. The Nytro XD solution 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, accruing to LSI.

LSI Nytro MegaRAID® Application Acceleration Cards, which provide acceleration of SAS-connected DAS storage by combining the RAID performance and data protection capabilities of LSI MegaRAID controllers with on-board flash and intelligent caching software. Nytro MegaRAID cards move data between integrated flash storage and hard drives to deliver a blend of high performance and high capacity storage without requiring software tuning or rewrites, according to LSI.

LSI Nytro Predictor Software Tool, which provides an intelligent guide for choosing the right Nytro application acceleration solution. Nytro Predictor identifies and analyzes application "hot spots" of frequently-used data to help IT managers and database administrators determine which applications can be accelerated and make recommendations on which LSI Nytro product will provide the most optimized benefits.

“The integration of flash technology in enterprise system architectures is one of the most significant changes in recent computing history, and one that provides the opportunity to close the gap between compute and storage performance,” said Gary Smerdon, senior vice president and general manager, Accelerated Solutions Division, LSI, in a statement. “From cloud providers in mega data centers 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.”

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 $6,6001, pricing for Nytro XD solutions start at $9,400 MSRP2, and pricing for Nytro MegaRAID cards starts at $1,699 MSRP3. More information is available on LSI's website. Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio