Calling All Performance Junkies and Application Acceleration Addicts — LSI Nytro MegaRAID Controllers are Here!

Posted on October 10, 2012 by psadmin

Ok, show of hands, how many of us have been bogged down by data transfer or application performance bottlenecks

Sound familiar?!  Hmmm…seems like we’ve all got a place in our infrastructure where we could use a few extra IOPS.

LCI Nytro MegaRAIDThere are lots of solutions in the marketplace to accelerate IO, everything from pure SSD storage (expensive!!!) to software acceleration. We’ve tested almost everything out there and have finally found a product that provides a good balance of price, performance, and ease of use — the LSI Nytro MegaRAID acceleration card.

LSI has been top dog in the PCI RAID controller market for some time, and has gradually gotten further and further into the accelerated storage market. These guys are serious. (Heck, they bought an entire company (SandForce) – just to give their accelerated solutions a better edge!) Up to this point, their products have centered around very high-end SSD acceleration, or caching software. However, with the launch of the LSI Nytro MegaRAID acceleration card, we now have a solution that provides great performance, at a price point that is much more palatable than the pure-SSD solutions currently on the market.

Why do we like it so much? First off, it’s a Hybrid storage product. The main bulk of the storage is still spinning-disk, but the acceleration comes from extremely fast flash storage. This keeps the cost down, while accelerating most workloads. Second, this is a fully-integrated solution. RAIDed spinning disks and SSD storage are married to caching software, all in the same device. The result is a seamless solution. This approach greatly simplifies deployments and ensures that everything works together as intended, with the best possible performance.

So how are we integrating this great piece of tech at Pogo? You can give almost any Pogo Linux rack mount server or Linux-based Pogo Storage managed appliance a major-league performance and acceleration boost with LSI Nytro MegaRAID. Lower latencies? Yes! Alleviating bottlenecks? Yes! What’s not to like?!

Ok, speeds and feeds time. Here are just some of the cool features of the Nytro MegaRAID:

  • Flash Performance – Embedded SandForce® flash storage processors with DuraClass™ technology directly on the card
  • Intelligent Acceleration – Next-generation read-and-write caching software
  • 6Gb/s SAS+SATA Advantage – Low-profile PCIe 3.0 card with support for 6Gb/s connectivity for SAS-connected devices
  • Flash Performance – On-board LSI SandForce® flash storage processors
  • Enterprise Data Protection – LSISAS2208 Dual-Core SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) with 800MHz PowerPC® with comprehensive GUI and CLI RAID management

Watch the video below to get a better idea of what’s possible when you combine world-class flash with a RAID controller. In a nutshell, you get a) better system and application performance – in some cases, up to 47X over traditional solutions that utilize only spinning HDD media; b) more intelligent application acceleration; and c) enhanced data protection and reliability from the RAID-on-Chip you already know and love!

Got questions about configuring a system? Just drop us an email or give us a call at (888) 828-7646.