Pliant Technology Expands Enterprise Flash Drive Family with New Cost-Effective MLC-based Storage Solutions

MILPITAS, Calif., Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Pliant Technology, developer of enterprise-class solid state storage devices designed to dramatically accelerate system and application performance while reducing IT costs, today announced the expansion of its Lightning product line with two new MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash storage devices. The Pliant Lightning LB 200M and Lightning LB 400M enterprise flash drives (EFD) are based on an advanced controller design and software architecture that delivers dramatic I/O performance and reliability improvements over existing SSD technology and low energy consumption in demanding enterprise computing environments.

"Pliant's new Lightning LB drives provide IT managers and OEMs with greater system design flexibility," said Greg Goelz, vice president of marketing, Pliant Technology. "These new drives are a great addition to Pliant's existing SLC product family, providing enterprise IT managers with higher capacities and lower dollar per gigabyte metrics, while still providing the level of enterprise-class reliability and endurance not previously available with any other MLC solution on the market today."

The Lightning EFD Product Family

Pliant Lightning LB MLC NAND-based products are available in a 2.5-inch standard form factor, with capacities from 200GB to 400GB and a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface to integrate seamlessly into existing SAS enterprise storage and server systems, without requiring modifications to existing applications, operating systems or infrastructure. For real world workloads, they feature high sustained performance with input/output per second (IOPs) of >10K (LB 400M) and >8K (LB 200M) for 4KB 70/30 read/write with very low response times. These performance levels deliver very fast response times under heavy workloads and enable system designers to build high performance RAID storage solutions with multi-terabyte capacities in 1U and 2U configurations.

Pliant's Lightning EFD product family also includes the SLC (single level cell) NAND-based Lightning LB 150S (2.5-inch form factor with 150GB), as well as the Lightning LS 150S (150GB) and LS 300S (300GB) in 3.5-inch form factors.

All of Pliant's Lightning EFDs feature:

• Predictable performance profile across enterprise workloads with mixed read/write workloads, stability over time and during peak demands  
• Full duplex, fully independent, dual-port SAS interface for high performance and data reliability; wide port support for integrators needing to aggregate bandwidth from both SAS ports for the highest levels of throughput
• Write cache-less design eliminating data loss on power interruptions, delivering consistent performance across the widest range of workloads
• Unlimited writes with no restrictions limiting the frequency of writing over the lifetime
• Complete end-to-end data protection and reliability features:  including background Patrol Read and Memory Reclaim, extended ECC, triple-redundant ECC protected metadata, and support for the T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF) standard

New Lightning EFD Availability

The Pliant Lightning LB 200M and Lightning LB 400M are being delivered for OEM evaluation and qualification, and will be available via authorized channel partners in October 2010. The Lightning LS 300S, Lightning LS 150S and Lightning LB 150S are currently available.  Contact [email protected] for more information.

About Pliant Technology

Pliant Technology's Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs) are a new class of solid state storage devices that integrate seamlessly into enterprise information systems and dramatically improve performance, reliability, energy efficiency, and TCO.  Pliant's Lightning EFD family delivers breakthrough improvements over today's highest performing hard drive and SSD storage solutions for a range of data I/O intensive enterprise applications.  Pliant is based in Milpitas, Calif.  More information is available at www.plianttechnology.com, and on its blog, Enterprise Storage Sense.

SOURCE Pliant Technology