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LSI Corporation is announcing that its LSI Nytro flash accelerator cards have been successfully tested in helping boost the performance of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2014 operating system. This cooperative effort between LSI and Microsoft combines technologies to assist businesses in overcoming I/O bottlenecks, accelerate database transactions, and achieve additional value from their data. LSI’s Nytro flash cards will also be paired with Microsoft’s new SQL Server 2014 Buffer Pool Extension (BPE) feature to fully enable the benefits of BPE technology — low latency, high throughput and improved reliability.
Microsoft utilized LSI’s Nytro cards for its further development efforts with SQL Sever 2014, seeking the performance demands needed to optimize and tweak its features. The Nytro cards have been proven to satisfy Microsoft’s criteria for building and testing SQL Server 2014, resulting in high customer satisfaction and increased confidence in the ability of critical and/or data intensive applications being able to achieve low response times, higher performance and increased reliability.
According to Tiffany Wissner, Director Product Marketing, SQL Server Product Marketing at Microsoft, “SQL Server 2014 enables customers to build mission-critical applications and big data solutions using high-performance, in-memory technology. By using SQL Server 2014 with LSI Nytro cards, our joint customers can achieve the performance requirements of their most demanding workloads in the cloud.”
Microsoft will also be using Nytro flash cards to further enable the SQL Server 2014 Buffer Pool Extension feature and its benefits. Buffer Pool Extension gives database administrators the ability to boost transaction performance by using non-volatile, NAND flash memory-based storage to extend buffer pool size. Microsoft’s BPE feature acts as a level two (L2) cache, while the main buffer pool functions as the level one (L1) cache. With tasks that consist mainly of frequently accessed reads, SQL Server 2014 automatically transfers such data pages to the (L2) cache when necessary.
Utilizing a simple “alter server configuration” command specifies the size and location of the BPE file. The Nytro flash cards will help accelerate SQL Server 2014’s workloads by placing the BPE file on the Nytro card, resulting in improved transaction performance for read-intensive workloads where the data set no longer fits into the main buffer pool (L1) cache.
Jay Tremblay, Vice President of Marketing for the Datacenter Solutions Group at LSI, states that “Microsoft tested LSI Nytro flash cards as a core component of SQL Server 2014 development, which is a strong statement of the performance and reliability of Nytro technology. Through our strategic relationship with Microsoft, we’re helping customers achieve the highest application performance for their most intensive I/O workloads.”
LSI’s extensive Nytro product portfolio of PCIe flash accelerator cards are designed to achieve high performance, low latency, and reduced CPU burden for workloads that are I/O intensive, and for demanding database applications. Nytro products are available through select LSI OEM partners, and through LSI’s global network of integrators, distributors and VARs. For more information on LSI Nytro and SQL Server 2014 solutions, please click here. To view LSI’s press release in its entirety, please click here.