QLogic Makes Flash Server Cards a Shared Resource

Making good on a promise from 2012, QLogic today announced the availability of the QLogic FiberCache 1000 Series adapter, a Fibre-channel adapter for storage area networks (SANs) that turns server-side Flash cards into a shared resource.

IT organizations have been increasingly deploying Flash server cards to boost application performance. But without some way to share access to those cards, each card winds up being dedicated to a single application.

Cameron Brett, director of solution marketing for QLogic, says the new QLogic adapter essentially creates a universal driver that turns any Flash server card into a resource that can be accessed by multiple applications.

As one of the first products to emerge from a Mount Rainier development project that QLogic initiated last year, Brett says the goal is to logically extend Flash memory across a cluster of servers. This allows IT organizations to significantly boost the performance of SANs using Flash memory on a server without requiring them to rewrite applications to take advantage of emerging in-memory computing platforms.

To help drive adoption, a dual-port 8Gb Fibre Channel FabricCache QLE10000 version of the adapter also comes bundled with an enterprise ultra-low-latency, high-performance SLC PCIe flash card. In the case of an Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) deployment, QLogic claims the new adapter will not only increase response times by 82 percent, but calls to disks will drop as much as 87 percent thanks to the deployment of shared cache on the Flash server card.

There’s no doubt that Flash memory is transforming the performance attributes of enterprise applications. The challenge facing IT organizations now is how to best deploy a technology that may be getting less expensive by the day, but still represents a considerable investment in a resource that is best cost-justified across as many applications as possible.