SanDisk FlashSoft for VMware vSphere

In early 2012 SanDisk, well-known manufacturer of flash memory products, acquired FlashSoft. Like a number of other companies in the virtualization storage space, FlashSoft has several different products designed to use SSD and flash memory to cache storage I/O. They have specific products for Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and clones). They also have a product for VMware environments, SanDisk FlashSoft 3.1 for VMware vSphere.

Caching your Application, OS, or Storage

There is a new set of tools available for Caching up and down the stack which we covered within Caching through out the Stack, however in reality where is the best place to cache data for your application and what are the ramifications of using such a cache. Recently, we had a caching problem, actually two of them. Both caused by the same thing, a lack of full understanding about what was being cached. For any application, the best way to cache is to cache in memory as close to the application stack as possible, which in our stack could be within the application, the OS, or even a hypervisor based disk cache. However, which does your application actually use?