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Tuesday, 18 January 2011
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Monday, 17 January 2011
SANsymphony 7.0 Selected as 2010 Products of the Year finalists for Storage Management
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid5_gci1525938,00.html
Many will look back on 2010 as the year of big storage acquisitions, but the wheeling and dealing was only part of the story. Data storage vendors turned out a slew of ingenious enterprise data storage products to address some of the key issues users have been grappling with in their storage shops.
From nearly 200 entries, the judges of Storage magazine's and SearchStorage.com's 2010 Products of the Year awards have selected and announced their finalists.
Storage management tools: 2010 Products of the Year finalists
Jan 2011 | Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com Contributors
Here are the eight finalists in the storage management tools category in Storage magazine's and SearchStorage.com's 2010 Products of the Year competition. The category covers storage resource management (SRM) and SAN management software, performance monitoring, file systems, volume management, virtualization software and security software. Finalists are listed below.
DataCore Software Corp. SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualization software adds non-stop high availability (HA) to let users do maintenance, upgrades and expansion, and address system failures without disrupting applications. Also new are support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), "advanced site recovery' (ASR) to enable IT shops to fail over physical and virtual servers to multiple remote and branch offices, and efficient space reclamation for thinly provisioned storage.
Friday, 7 January 2011
The Next Big Industry Push is VDI
Check out the latest post form Jon Toigo at: http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=3264
…One of the problems I have been detecting in the literature is the same issue we saw in server virtualization: the gotchas of hidden cost. In addition to software and operating system licensing fee structures, the industry will need to sort out the enabling software for virtualizing desktops themselves. But the really big cost is — you guessed it — storage.
I have read with amusement and disdain the papers by leading storage hardware vendors stating that, from a storage cost perspective, you can stand up 5000 desktop images on their array for a fraction of what a physical desktop costs. They usually tout $100 desktops versus $400 physical PCs. Big cost savings there, right?
Not really. The reason why they use 5000 virtual PCs to achieve their groundbreaking cost reductions is that it is the only way they can amortize their box of disk drives and value add software. NOBODY IS GOING TO VIRTUALIZE 5000 DESKTOPS!!!
Sorry for shouting. I guess there are some companies out there with that many PCs. However, the truth is that VDI will likely advance incrementally — tens or maybe a couple of hundred PCs at a time. This is especially true at the outset of the trend, with early adopters and experimenters.
So, the truth of most of these claims that 5000 desktop images can be stored for a quarter of the price of an equal number of physical PCs is quite self serving — and, more importantly, falls apart in the real world.
The question shouldn’t be how many VDIs can I stack up to amortize my storage investment, it should be, how much cost can I take out of distributed desktops if I virtualize a few dozen? The benchmarks of the EMCs, NetApps, et al never go there.
But DataCore Software does. In case you missed their announcement today, here’s the news — at least the preliminary bits that were released today.
My friends at DataCore have just completed what I regard as the first meaningful benchmark on the cost of desktop virtualization from a storage hosting perspective. I like what Ziya, George, Bettye and the gang have done — a lot! In fact, I thought it was important enough to fly down there with a camera and shoot a video interview on the subject. They have posted the videos to their site but I will be placing them at the C-4 Summit in Cyberspace by end of week.
Here is an extract of what I just wrote about it for Storage Magazine in the Netherlands…
Late 2010 saw a succession of “proof of concept” papers coming from the storage brand name vendors touting cost models for VDI that were a fraction of the acquisition price of physical PCs. One three-letter vendor boasted that a 5000 PC environment could be effectively hosted on its storage array for roughly $50 US per box.
Once you get past the wow factor, however, you quickly realize that the storage vendor’s benchmark is rather self-serving. The benchmark ignores the cost of desktop OS and application software licensing, hypervisor licensing, server hardware, network enhancements, and storage cabling requirements to focus narrowly on the cost per VDI using the vendor’s storage gear. Moreover, a business will need to stack up a full 5000 virtual PCs in order to amortize the cost of the storage rig and achieve the cost-per-virtual-desktop advanced by the vendor.
Truth be told, virtually no one is going to virtualize 5000 desktops all at once – not even the large insurance companies or government research labs that actually have desktops in those numbers. It is more likely that companies will tread cautiously when pursuing a desktop virtualization strategy, virtualizing only a handful of machines at a time so that the real cost and efficacy of the strategy can be clarified. Until that happens, buying a huge EMC, IBM, HDS, etc. storage rig to support 5000 virtual PCs at sub-$100 each will not return its investment. In fact, companies pursuing this course will likely find out the hard way that the easiest path to doubling or tripling desktop computing costs is to virtualize their desktops on expensive infrastructure.
I wish everyone would read CTO Ziya Aral of DataCore Software’s wonderful benchmark on VDI and storage. His goals were not to amortize a specific storage rig (DataCore sells storage virtualization that works just as well with Joe’s JBODs as it does with VMAX or USP). He wanted simply to understand the capacity and performance requirements for desktop virtualization – especially in the 100 to 500 virtual machine range that will be much more common in the real world.
DataCore Software demonstrated pretty persuasively, and without trying terribly hard, that you could stand up that range of VDIs on a virtualized storage platform for about $35 per desktop. They also discovered that the low cost could be maintained as you grew infrastructure using storage and servers configured as part of a star topology – stars later serving as a building block for scaling. That price included all of the redundancy and failover capabilities touted as “enterprise class” hosting by the brand name storage rig vendors – leveraging only the secret sauce of DataCore read/writable snap shots created from virtualizing underlying storage.
There were many non-intuitively-obvious findings in DataCore’s research that I will only summarize here. For one, a Microsoft Windows 7 machine will boot in less than 198K of memory – so there is no real advantage to throwing a ton of RAM at the system. For another, most desktops require very little physical storage: so, when you begin doing VDI, you need to stop thinking as though you are deploying a physical PC with parameters dictated by “boundary conditions” (i.e., configuring according to what the most data intensive application or user might require in terms of storage capacity).
Bottom line: DataCore’s benchmark proves that it doesn’t require an overpriced “enterprise class” storage rig to virtualize desktops in a cost-effective way. All that it really requires is common sense and storage virtualization software, preferably from DataCore Software, which [will shortly release a new and revamped version of its flagship storage virtualization wares].
We are off to a great start in 2011. Maybe DataCore’s research will cajole the hardware guys to get real about their cost estimation around VDI. For now, a sub-$35 price tag is pretty compelling.
…One of the problems I have been detecting in the literature is the same issue we saw in server virtualization: the gotchas of hidden cost. In addition to software and operating system licensing fee structures, the industry will need to sort out the enabling software for virtualizing desktops themselves. But the really big cost is — you guessed it — storage.
I have read with amusement and disdain the papers by leading storage hardware vendors stating that, from a storage cost perspective, you can stand up 5000 desktop images on their array for a fraction of what a physical desktop costs. They usually tout $100 desktops versus $400 physical PCs. Big cost savings there, right?
Not really. The reason why they use 5000 virtual PCs to achieve their groundbreaking cost reductions is that it is the only way they can amortize their box of disk drives and value add software. NOBODY IS GOING TO VIRTUALIZE 5000 DESKTOPS!!!
Sorry for shouting. I guess there are some companies out there with that many PCs. However, the truth is that VDI will likely advance incrementally — tens or maybe a couple of hundred PCs at a time. This is especially true at the outset of the trend, with early adopters and experimenters.
So, the truth of most of these claims that 5000 desktop images can be stored for a quarter of the price of an equal number of physical PCs is quite self serving — and, more importantly, falls apart in the real world.
The question shouldn’t be how many VDIs can I stack up to amortize my storage investment, it should be, how much cost can I take out of distributed desktops if I virtualize a few dozen? The benchmarks of the EMCs, NetApps, et al never go there.
But DataCore Software does. In case you missed their announcement today, here’s the news — at least the preliminary bits that were released today.
My friends at DataCore have just completed what I regard as the first meaningful benchmark on the cost of desktop virtualization from a storage hosting perspective. I like what Ziya, George, Bettye and the gang have done — a lot! In fact, I thought it was important enough to fly down there with a camera and shoot a video interview on the subject. They have posted the videos to their site but I will be placing them at the C-4 Summit in Cyberspace by end of week.
Here is an extract of what I just wrote about it for Storage Magazine in the Netherlands…
Late 2010 saw a succession of “proof of concept” papers coming from the storage brand name vendors touting cost models for VDI that were a fraction of the acquisition price of physical PCs. One three-letter vendor boasted that a 5000 PC environment could be effectively hosted on its storage array for roughly $50 US per box.
Once you get past the wow factor, however, you quickly realize that the storage vendor’s benchmark is rather self-serving. The benchmark ignores the cost of desktop OS and application software licensing, hypervisor licensing, server hardware, network enhancements, and storage cabling requirements to focus narrowly on the cost per VDI using the vendor’s storage gear. Moreover, a business will need to stack up a full 5000 virtual PCs in order to amortize the cost of the storage rig and achieve the cost-per-virtual-desktop advanced by the vendor.
Truth be told, virtually no one is going to virtualize 5000 desktops all at once – not even the large insurance companies or government research labs that actually have desktops in those numbers. It is more likely that companies will tread cautiously when pursuing a desktop virtualization strategy, virtualizing only a handful of machines at a time so that the real cost and efficacy of the strategy can be clarified. Until that happens, buying a huge EMC, IBM, HDS, etc. storage rig to support 5000 virtual PCs at sub-$100 each will not return its investment. In fact, companies pursuing this course will likely find out the hard way that the easiest path to doubling or tripling desktop computing costs is to virtualize their desktops on expensive infrastructure.
I wish everyone would read CTO Ziya Aral of DataCore Software’s wonderful benchmark on VDI and storage. His goals were not to amortize a specific storage rig (DataCore sells storage virtualization that works just as well with Joe’s JBODs as it does with VMAX or USP). He wanted simply to understand the capacity and performance requirements for desktop virtualization – especially in the 100 to 500 virtual machine range that will be much more common in the real world.
DataCore Software demonstrated pretty persuasively, and without trying terribly hard, that you could stand up that range of VDIs on a virtualized storage platform for about $35 per desktop. They also discovered that the low cost could be maintained as you grew infrastructure using storage and servers configured as part of a star topology – stars later serving as a building block for scaling. That price included all of the redundancy and failover capabilities touted as “enterprise class” hosting by the brand name storage rig vendors – leveraging only the secret sauce of DataCore read/writable snap shots created from virtualizing underlying storage.
There were many non-intuitively-obvious findings in DataCore’s research that I will only summarize here. For one, a Microsoft Windows 7 machine will boot in less than 198K of memory – so there is no real advantage to throwing a ton of RAM at the system. For another, most desktops require very little physical storage: so, when you begin doing VDI, you need to stop thinking as though you are deploying a physical PC with parameters dictated by “boundary conditions” (i.e., configuring according to what the most data intensive application or user might require in terms of storage capacity).
Bottom line: DataCore’s benchmark proves that it doesn’t require an overpriced “enterprise class” storage rig to virtualize desktops in a cost-effective way. All that it really requires is common sense and storage virtualization software, preferably from DataCore Software, which [will shortly release a new and revamped version of its flagship storage virtualization wares].
We are off to a great start in 2011. Maybe DataCore’s research will cajole the hardware guys to get real about their cost estimation around VDI. For now, a sub-$35 price tag is pretty compelling.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Interesting Technologies that could come of age in 2011. Storage Virtualization Software #1
http://www.storagetopics.com/2011/01/interesting-technologies-that-could.html
In my last blog I noted that the promise of the New Year encourages a flurry of predictions each trying to foretell next year’s technology winners and losers. Just as with New Year’s resolutions, I have tried to avoid engaging in this end of year ritual despite my last blog that may have created a contrary impression...To me interesting predictions are those that reach beyond the safety of conservatism. Being bullish is risky but what is the point of predicting the obvious. So in the spirit of sticking myself out there on the proverbial limb my selection of technologies to watch in 2011 are; Storage Virtualization Software, Cloud Storage Gateways and Autonomic Software Architectures.
#1. Storage Virtualization Software: Not what is traditionally thought of as storage virtualization; for example HP’s EVA or a 3Par array. Storage virtualization software is a hardware independent software product, designed to deliver storage virtualization that replicates the many advantages VMware, Microsoft’s HyperV and Citrix et al has delivered to the server world.
How? By looking at what is traditionally consider to be platform based controller functions and physical storage virtualization as a portable software program that is abstracted from the physical layer and hence hardware independent. Very interesting concept and one that I anticipate will generate some interesting responses from the traditional storage vendors.
Companies to watch; DataCore, a 10+ year old company that could have a break out year in 2011, and for those interested in content addressable storage, Caringo.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
The Software Advantage for Storage Virtualization: DataCore Software Sets the Stage for Virtualization Leadership in 2011
DataCore Software, an early pioneer and now a leading provider of software-based virtualization solutions empowering storage, today highlighted what it considers points of emphasis for 2011 in terms of furthering the promise of virtualization.
The promise of virtualization will be further realized this year. Software-based storage virtualization will take its rightful place by making storage anonymous within virtual infrastructures. Equally important, a number of trends, strategic drivers and software architectures will emerge to make a new level of flexibility and scale both practical and cost-effective to achieve. The most significant driver will be the simple realization that only a software-based infrastructure can truly deliver the necessary advantages to make virtualization and Clouds a reality because software can abstract itself from device specific limitations, provide portability across platforms, and endure beyond the life of underlying hardware platforms that come and go over time.
Compelling Benefits: The "Software Advantage" and Anonymous Storage
According to DataCore Chairman and Co-founder Ziya Aral, "The entire storage virtualization angle was real simple - abstract yourself from the hardware. DataCore was founded on the belief that storage controllers in general and storage virtualization in particular were essentially ‘software programs.' For us, virtualization was driven by a very simple need to make a portable software program to do disk storage and run it on any platform."
This sentiment is both echoed and further emphasized by DataCore's President, CEO and Co-founder George Teixeira, "From a business standpoint, the total cost of ownership and the payback on investment of a pure ‘software infrastructure,' where you pay once for intelligent software to manage, protect and get more from your storage assets - as they come and go from generation to generation and brand to brand - is a value proposition that is as compelling as it is inevitable."
Bottom-line: A software based storage virtualization infrastructure can live within the same abstraction level as virtual servers and virtual desktops and bring along the same type of benefits that we have seen from these movements in regards to making storage hardware brands largely irrelevant - or anonymous - to users and applications, therefore simplifying management, removing storage task complexity, speeding up response and provisioning times and increasing overall utilization and flexibility.
The "software advantage" becomes more obvious when you consider the many scenarios it works in and the many shapes it takes and will take in the future. Because DataCore software is portable, it can run on a virtual machine (VM) or on a multitude of physical servers. It not only virtualizes and manages storage, but can coexist along with the server hypervisor in the virtualization layer, providing many possibilities to solve real world and real budget challenges. Hardware simply can't do that.
Software-based storage virtualization has been lauded as a "game changer" in a number of reports, including: InformationWeek's ‘Storage Anonymous' Cover Story.
DataCore's Future Directions for Storage Virtualization
"The whole idea of DataCore and our vision was that if you could move the software program from the constraints and boundaries of the physical platforms and take it to a modern programming environment, then it would be possible to do with software what had been done manually to that point - that's storage virtualization," explains Aral.
Virtual desktops (vDesktops) are an excellent example that highlights the need for a new model for storage. The major challenge for vDesktops is that SANs are often implemented with large and costly storage controllers and complex external storage networks. While these have the advantage of achieving reasonable scalability, they introduce a very large threshold cost to virtual desktop implementations. To overcome this high capital cost burden, hardware vendors typically tout the economics of deploying several thousand vDesktops. The real problem in this case is not in scaling up to "thousands" of vDesktops but in scaling them down to practical configurations. It barely needs mentioning that this must occur without radically spiking costs at the low end and also without forgoing the SAN feature set which assures portability, availability, and data redundancy. Otherwise, the very benefits of vDesktops are compromised.
DataCore has done extensive benchmarking to understand the economics of vDesktops and has been able to configure high-availability configurations supporting a few hundred instead of "thousands" of vDesktops, and at a cost per desktop of less than one tenth of what was previously reported. In addition, new topologies allow the scaling of such configurations to "thousands" if that is what is required. Based on these initial findings, DataCore will make a significant impact on removing storage costs as a primary barrier to virtual desktop deployments. DataCore will be posting a series of Virtual Desktops Benchmark Reports in 2011.
Virtual desktops have one element in common with the other major computing movement of our day: cloud computing. Both technologies promise to deploy very large numbers of "machines" of the same class. This creates the opportunity to present one additional level of virtualization and to "divide and conquer" the problem which is otherwise daunting for its scale. What if, instead of attempting to manage hundreds or thousands of virtual machines discretely, one could divide them into arbitrary groups or sub-units and then manage a far smaller number of sub-units? This will also be the future direction of our work, impacting not only vDesktops and cloud computing but also the organization of storage itself.
Stay tuned to DataCore in 2011 for more details.
Learn More - Supporting Materials
Ziya Aral discusses: The DataCore Product Vision, Virtual Desktops and Benchmark Findings.
George Teixeira shares his "Perspectives on the Shifting Economies of Storage Virtualization Software, Private Clouds and Virtual Desktops" - DataCore CEO Perspectives: 2011.
The promise of virtualization will be further realized this year. Software-based storage virtualization will take its rightful place by making storage anonymous within virtual infrastructures. Equally important, a number of trends, strategic drivers and software architectures will emerge to make a new level of flexibility and scale both practical and cost-effective to achieve. The most significant driver will be the simple realization that only a software-based infrastructure can truly deliver the necessary advantages to make virtualization and Clouds a reality because software can abstract itself from device specific limitations, provide portability across platforms, and endure beyond the life of underlying hardware platforms that come and go over time.
Compelling Benefits: The "Software Advantage" and Anonymous Storage
According to DataCore Chairman and Co-founder Ziya Aral, "The entire storage virtualization angle was real simple - abstract yourself from the hardware. DataCore was founded on the belief that storage controllers in general and storage virtualization in particular were essentially ‘software programs.' For us, virtualization was driven by a very simple need to make a portable software program to do disk storage and run it on any platform."
This sentiment is both echoed and further emphasized by DataCore's President, CEO and Co-founder George Teixeira, "From a business standpoint, the total cost of ownership and the payback on investment of a pure ‘software infrastructure,' where you pay once for intelligent software to manage, protect and get more from your storage assets - as they come and go from generation to generation and brand to brand - is a value proposition that is as compelling as it is inevitable."
Bottom-line: A software based storage virtualization infrastructure can live within the same abstraction level as virtual servers and virtual desktops and bring along the same type of benefits that we have seen from these movements in regards to making storage hardware brands largely irrelevant - or anonymous - to users and applications, therefore simplifying management, removing storage task complexity, speeding up response and provisioning times and increasing overall utilization and flexibility.
The "software advantage" becomes more obvious when you consider the many scenarios it works in and the many shapes it takes and will take in the future. Because DataCore software is portable, it can run on a virtual machine (VM) or on a multitude of physical servers. It not only virtualizes and manages storage, but can coexist along with the server hypervisor in the virtualization layer, providing many possibilities to solve real world and real budget challenges. Hardware simply can't do that.
Software-based storage virtualization has been lauded as a "game changer" in a number of reports, including: InformationWeek's ‘Storage Anonymous' Cover Story.
DataCore's Future Directions for Storage Virtualization
"The whole idea of DataCore and our vision was that if you could move the software program from the constraints and boundaries of the physical platforms and take it to a modern programming environment, then it would be possible to do with software what had been done manually to that point - that's storage virtualization," explains Aral.
Virtual desktops (vDesktops) are an excellent example that highlights the need for a new model for storage. The major challenge for vDesktops is that SANs are often implemented with large and costly storage controllers and complex external storage networks. While these have the advantage of achieving reasonable scalability, they introduce a very large threshold cost to virtual desktop implementations. To overcome this high capital cost burden, hardware vendors typically tout the economics of deploying several thousand vDesktops. The real problem in this case is not in scaling up to "thousands" of vDesktops but in scaling them down to practical configurations. It barely needs mentioning that this must occur without radically spiking costs at the low end and also without forgoing the SAN feature set which assures portability, availability, and data redundancy. Otherwise, the very benefits of vDesktops are compromised.
DataCore has done extensive benchmarking to understand the economics of vDesktops and has been able to configure high-availability configurations supporting a few hundred instead of "thousands" of vDesktops, and at a cost per desktop of less than one tenth of what was previously reported. In addition, new topologies allow the scaling of such configurations to "thousands" if that is what is required. Based on these initial findings, DataCore will make a significant impact on removing storage costs as a primary barrier to virtual desktop deployments. DataCore will be posting a series of Virtual Desktops Benchmark Reports in 2011.
Virtual desktops have one element in common with the other major computing movement of our day: cloud computing. Both technologies promise to deploy very large numbers of "machines" of the same class. This creates the opportunity to present one additional level of virtualization and to "divide and conquer" the problem which is otherwise daunting for its scale. What if, instead of attempting to manage hundreds or thousands of virtual machines discretely, one could divide them into arbitrary groups or sub-units and then manage a far smaller number of sub-units? This will also be the future direction of our work, impacting not only vDesktops and cloud computing but also the organization of storage itself.
Stay tuned to DataCore in 2011 for more details.
Learn More - Supporting Materials
Ziya Aral discusses: The DataCore Product Vision, Virtual Desktops and Benchmark Findings.
George Teixeira shares his "Perspectives on the Shifting Economies of Storage Virtualization Software, Private Clouds and Virtual Desktops" - DataCore CEO Perspectives: 2011.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
DataCore Software: 2011 Perspectives on the Shifting Economies of Storage Virtualization Software, Private Clouds and Virtual Desktops
"The business return on investment of a pure ‘software infrastructure,' where you pay once for intelligent software to manage, protect and get more from your storage assets - as they come and go from generation to generation and brand to brand - is a value proposition that is as compelling as it is inevitable."- George Teixeira, President and CEO, DataCore Software
Read the top 5 predictions for 2011 from DataCore Software at: http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/12/16/datacore-2011-perspectives-on-the-shifting-economies-of-storage-virtualization-software-private-clouds-and-virtual-desktops.aspx
Read the top 5 predictions for 2011 from DataCore Software at: http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/12/16/datacore-2011-perspectives-on-the-shifting-economies-of-storage-virtualization-software-private-clouds-and-virtual-desktops.aspx
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Top 10 Ways to Reduce Storage Costs - Software Based Storage Virtualization
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/management/article.php/3908676/Top-10-Ways-to-Trim-Storage-Costs.htm
Software Virtualization
There are many ways to virtualize storage. In some cases, the vendor suggests throwing away old hardware to buy a brand new virtualization array. A cheaper way is to leave legacy disk in place and incorporate it into a shared storage pool using software-based virtualization.
“With software-based storage virtualization, you can take full advantage of disk resources already in place before you spend any money on additional capacity,” said Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software.
Software Virtualization
There are many ways to virtualize storage. In some cases, the vendor suggests throwing away old hardware to buy a brand new virtualization array. A cheaper way is to leave legacy disk in place and incorporate it into a shared storage pool using software-based virtualization.
“With software-based storage virtualization, you can take full advantage of disk resources already in place before you spend any money on additional capacity,” said Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
InformationWeek Landmark Report on Storage Virtualization: How To Break Free From Tier 1 SAN Vendors
We've all grown comfortable with the server virtualization model, where you buy intelligent software and run your choice of hardware. Why should storage be any different? It shouldn't, and a number of vendors are providing the means to finally sever this bond. By offering flexible, standards-based storage virtualization and management software that will run on any x86 platform, DataCore, FalconStor and others extend a tantalizing promise: Pay once for intelligent software and run it on the hardware of your choice. Get the software virtualization layer in place, and the possibilities are endless...
http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228000296
http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228000296
Monday, 29 November 2010
Top 10 ways to trim storage costs
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/management/article.php/3908676/Top-10-Ways-to-Trim-Storage-Costs.htm
Software Virtualization
There are many ways to virtualize storage. In some cases, the vendor suggests throwing away old hardware to buy a brand new virtualization array. A cheaper way is to leave legacy disk in place and incorporate it into a shared storage pool using software-based virtualization.
“With software-based storage virtualization, you can take full advantage of disk resources already in place before you spend any money on additional capacity,” said Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software.
Software Virtualization
There are many ways to virtualize storage. In some cases, the vendor suggests throwing away old hardware to buy a brand new virtualization array. A cheaper way is to leave legacy disk in place and incorporate it into a shared storage pool using software-based virtualization.
“With software-based storage virtualization, you can take full advantage of disk resources already in place before you spend any money on additional capacity,” said Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Virtualization Review SuperCast: The Time to Virtualize Storage is NOW!
In this FREE supercast event, now available on demand, learn why storage virtualization is quickly moving from nice-to-have to need-to-have status and how to successfully deploy and optimize virtual environments.
Title: The Time to Virtualize Storage is NOW
Keynote: Jon Toigo, CEO Toigo Partners International, Chairman Data Management Institute
Storage expert Jon Toigo is a columnist for Enterprise Systems and contributing writer for Virtualization Review. He is a consultant, blogger and author of 15 books on business technology, disaster recovery and data storage.
Join industry leaders for a free supercast designed to help you understand the growing need and value of virtualized storage, as well as tips and strategies for implementation and optimization.
Featured Presentations include:
Secrets to 100% Uptime in a Virtualized Environment by DataCore
Title: The Time to Virtualize Storage is NOW
Keynote: Jon Toigo, CEO Toigo Partners International, Chairman Data Management Institute
Storage expert Jon Toigo is a columnist for Enterprise Systems and contributing writer for Virtualization Review. He is a consultant, blogger and author of 15 books on business technology, disaster recovery and data storage.
Join industry leaders for a free supercast designed to help you understand the growing need and value of virtualized storage, as well as tips and strategies for implementation and optimization.
Featured Presentations include:
Secrets to 100% Uptime in a Virtualized Environment by DataCore
Monday, 22 November 2010
Virtualization Begets Virtualization: Extending Efficiency and Business Agility
Interesting article:
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/08/virtualization-begets-virtualization-extending-efficiency-and-business-agility/
Storage virtualization is often combined with server virtualization. Storage virtualization (functionality that takes multiple storage systems and treats those devices as a single, centrally-managed pool of storage) provides an additional opportunity to reduce IT costs and optimize efficiency—especially as server virtualization proliferates. ESG research indicates that among current server virtualization users, 86% report they have storage virtualization initiatives as a top spending priority over the next 12 to 18 months. The combination often amplifies the benefits of both forms of virtualization: lowering costs, improving resource utilization, increasing availability, simplifying upgrades, and enabling scalability.
As organizations become more comfortable with one form of virtualization, they don’t have to make great intellectual or philosophical leaps in order to grasp the concept of virtualizing other data center domains. Oftentimes, IT organizations undertaking complete data center refresh initiatives have virtualization as top of mind and would look to extract all possible efficiencies in one fell swoop by deploying virtualization in multiple technology areas.
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/08/virtualization-begets-virtualization-extending-efficiency-and-business-agility/
Storage virtualization is often combined with server virtualization. Storage virtualization (functionality that takes multiple storage systems and treats those devices as a single, centrally-managed pool of storage) provides an additional opportunity to reduce IT costs and optimize efficiency—especially as server virtualization proliferates. ESG research indicates that among current server virtualization users, 86% report they have storage virtualization initiatives as a top spending priority over the next 12 to 18 months. The combination often amplifies the benefits of both forms of virtualization: lowering costs, improving resource utilization, increasing availability, simplifying upgrades, and enabling scalability.
As organizations become more comfortable with one form of virtualization, they don’t have to make great intellectual or philosophical leaps in order to grasp the concept of virtualizing other data center domains. Oftentimes, IT organizations undertaking complete data center refresh initiatives have virtualization as top of mind and would look to extract all possible efficiencies in one fell swoop by deploying virtualization in multiple technology areas.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Educational Institutions of All Sizes Benefit from DataCore Virtualization Software at the Heart of Their Virtualization Infrastructure
For more information, contact a DataCore partner for details or go to http://www.datacore.com/education .
Schools and universities worldwide are using DataCore storage virtualization software to complement their server and/or desktop virtualization projects
The education sector continues to beat a path to DataCore as the cornerstone of a virtualized infrastructure. “DataCore has been an excellent solution that enabled us to virtualize our new and existing storage solutions on the back-end while keeping a single interface and single management point for managing all of our different SAN environments,” states Dustin Fennell, vice president of IT and CIO, Scottsdale Community College. “Beyond this, we have attained better performance with DataCore and we now have the benefit of high-availability.”
DataCore’s software solutions enable the data centers and IT departments within educational institutions to better manage and maximize storage capacity and leverage existing hardware to protect and serve storage assets to Microsoft, VMware and Citrix virtual servers and desktops.
Moreover, because DataCore cares about education and sees it as a strategic investment for the future, it therefore provides qualified academic institutions with access to special promotional offers and extra discounts of up to 50% on DataCore virtualization software packages: http://www.datacore.com/education .
Educational institutions of all sizes are embracing DataCore’s software-based approach to storage virtualization in order to enable them to overcome storage-related funding roadblocks, downtime and performance issues. A sampling of the very newest institutions in the US to embrace DataCore at the heart of their virtualization infrastructures are: American River College, Arizona State University, Bellarmine University, Berkshire School, Capital Community College, Louisburg College, Midwestern University, Mount Anthony Middle School, NY Network, Notre Dame Academy, Rogue Community College, North Star Charter School, Sacramento City College, Scottsdale Community College, Shenandoah School Corporation, Spalding University, University of California San Francisco, Three Rivers Community College, Utica College, Virginia Wesleyan College, Wittenberg University, and others.
In addition to these newer customers, in the USA a host of educational organizations have already deployed storage virtualization using DataCore’s SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ solutions. These include Auburn University, Daytona Beach Community College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Los Rios Community College District, Midway College, Mount St. Mary’s University, Sullivan University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M University at Kingsville, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Illinois, University of Utah - Education Network, University of Utah, School of Medicine, and many, many more – spanning the globe and spanning all levels of education.
The needs of IT departments that support educational institutions can suffer from the same shortfall that every other IT department can: a virtualization project that stops at servers and desktops and therefore misses an important component – storage. “In a K-12 setting, if the school districts are not looking at virtualization, they are cutting their legs out from under themselves,” states Steve Gumm, IT director, Barren County Schools.
Oxford University –
“The DataCore and VMware solution allows us to plug in and support storage and virtual servers as and when we need; ultimately DataCore provides a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend.”- Jon Hutchings, Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS).
Read full case study: Storage Virtualization at Oxford University
Schools and universities worldwide are using DataCore storage virtualization software to complement their server and/or desktop virtualization projects
The education sector continues to beat a path to DataCore as the cornerstone of a virtualized infrastructure. “DataCore has been an excellent solution that enabled us to virtualize our new and existing storage solutions on the back-end while keeping a single interface and single management point for managing all of our different SAN environments,” states Dustin Fennell, vice president of IT and CIO, Scottsdale Community College. “Beyond this, we have attained better performance with DataCore and we now have the benefit of high-availability.”
DataCore’s software solutions enable the data centers and IT departments within educational institutions to better manage and maximize storage capacity and leverage existing hardware to protect and serve storage assets to Microsoft, VMware and Citrix virtual servers and desktops.
Moreover, because DataCore cares about education and sees it as a strategic investment for the future, it therefore provides qualified academic institutions with access to special promotional offers and extra discounts of up to 50% on DataCore virtualization software packages: http://www.datacore.com/education .
Educational institutions of all sizes are embracing DataCore’s software-based approach to storage virtualization in order to enable them to overcome storage-related funding roadblocks, downtime and performance issues. A sampling of the very newest institutions in the US to embrace DataCore at the heart of their virtualization infrastructures are: American River College, Arizona State University, Bellarmine University, Berkshire School, Capital Community College, Louisburg College, Midwestern University, Mount Anthony Middle School, NY Network, Notre Dame Academy, Rogue Community College, North Star Charter School, Sacramento City College, Scottsdale Community College, Shenandoah School Corporation, Spalding University, University of California San Francisco, Three Rivers Community College, Utica College, Virginia Wesleyan College, Wittenberg University, and others.
In addition to these newer customers, in the USA a host of educational organizations have already deployed storage virtualization using DataCore’s SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ solutions. These include Auburn University, Daytona Beach Community College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Los Rios Community College District, Midway College, Mount St. Mary’s University, Sullivan University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M University at Kingsville, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Illinois, University of Utah - Education Network, University of Utah, School of Medicine, and many, many more – spanning the globe and spanning all levels of education.
The needs of IT departments that support educational institutions can suffer from the same shortfall that every other IT department can: a virtualization project that stops at servers and desktops and therefore misses an important component – storage. “In a K-12 setting, if the school districts are not looking at virtualization, they are cutting their legs out from under themselves,” states Steve Gumm, IT director, Barren County Schools.
Oxford University –
“The DataCore and VMware solution allows us to plug in and support storage and virtual servers as and when we need; ultimately DataCore provides a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend.”- Jon Hutchings, Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS).
Read full case study: Storage Virtualization at Oxford University
Monday, 11 October 2010
DataCore Software Fuels Growth, Adds Key Virtualization Industry Veterans to Scale Channel Operations as New Partners "Catch the Storage Virtualization Wave"
http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/10/08/datacore-software-fuels-growth-adds-key-virtualization-industry-veterans-to-scale-channel-operations-as-new-partners-catch-the-storage-virtualization-wave.aspx
DataCore Software, today announced that the company has continued to attract top talent from VMware and Citrix in key executive positions to fuel growth and to take the company to the forefront of the virtualization market space. DataCore has hired Dan Hascall as the new Vice President of Americas Sales, promoted Martin Clancy to the position of Chief Financial Officer, and appointed Johan Vanhaeren as the new regional director covering the Benelux countries.
“With over 6,000 customers worldwide and nearly 20,000 licenses shipped, we are tapping the wave of virtualization that has spread from servers and desktops to storage,” comments George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. “Storage virtualization software, like its server and desktop virtualization cousins, is all about software that lives beyond the life of storage devices that come and go over time, making users’ storage investments better and more economical. Adding these industry veterans to our management team comes as we prepare an even more aggressive push to the reseller community and to virtualization users. We are hiring experienced virtualization industry leaders to fuel our growth as storage virtualization takes center stage and becomes more and more mainstream – both in the enterprise and in the Cloud.”
Widely recognized as the software leader in storage virtualization, DataCore has continued its double digit growth despite recessionary times. DataCore’s software solutions enable data centers and IT departments to better manage, consolidate and maximize storage capacity as well as to leverage existing hardware in order to protect and serve storage assets to VMware, Microsoft and Citrix virtual servers and desktops.
DataCore Doubles North America Sales Team; Hires Dan Hascall, New Vice President of Sales for the Americas
Building for growth in North America, in 2010 DataCore has doubled its North America sales team and hired Dan Hascall, formerly of VMware, to lead it as the new Vice President of Americas Sales. Hascall came to VMware in 2006 and helped develop VMware’s channel model and was responsible for the company’s Western Channel region. “DataCore is well-positioned for major success in both the network and Cloud computing models,” states Hascall. “And my question to users is simply ‘Why haven’t you virtualized your storage?’ Virtualization applies equally well to servers, desktops and storage. With DataCore, the move to storage virtualization is painless and partners can offer real value and strategic business agility to their customers. DataCore storage virtualization is the critical foundation that makes it easy for customers to move along the virtualization journey.”
Finance & Operations Expertise with a Channel Mindset: DataCore Promotes Martin Clancy to Chief Financial Officer
Martin Clancy has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer at DataCore Software. Clancy came to DataCore from Citrix Systems, a marquee virtualization vendor with a blue-chip reseller community and an extraordinarily channel-oriented mindset. In his twelve years with Citrix, Clancy served in a variety of financial and operations roles, the last one being Senior Director, Finance & Product Operations for the Desktop Division.
“DataCore is seeing a lot of growth and the numbers are compelling,” notes Clancy. “The appetite for virtualization technologies stems from the fact that these technologies give organizations that use them freedom. But from the perspective of CFO, I look at the tangible business benefits that virtualization brings, and they are incredibly persuasive on the storage-side. Virtualizing storage resources means that institutions are not locked in to a particular storage vendor and therefore gain greater purchasing power; they can avoid downtime, planned or unplanned; improve the performance of storage devices; mix current storage devices with newly purchased equipment; and, most importantly, stay within a budget.”
Worldwide Momentum in the Channel: DataCore Hires New Director of the Benelux Region
DataCore has also appointed Johan Vanhaeren, based in Belgium, as director for the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) region. Vanhaeren was the former country manager for Citrix in the Benelux region. “Just like its storage virtualization and desktop virtualization counterparts, DataCore storage virtualization software is changing the way resellers, solution providers and virtualization administrators manage and deploy virtualization projects and Clouds,” said Vanhaeren. “And this adoption is worldwide in its scope. The virtualization phenomenon knows no boundaries.”
Adds Teixeira, “More companies and institutions of all sizes are experiencing first-hand the power that comes from embracing DataCore’s software-based approach to storage virtualization, which includes achieving the highest degree of availability, flexibility and openness for their storage. We will continue to build our leadership team and company to help bring the benefits of DataCore storage virtualization to customers worldwide, helping them to evolve their current storage environments to attain the added benefits of virtualization.”
DataCore Software, today announced that the company has continued to attract top talent from VMware and Citrix in key executive positions to fuel growth and to take the company to the forefront of the virtualization market space. DataCore has hired Dan Hascall as the new Vice President of Americas Sales, promoted Martin Clancy to the position of Chief Financial Officer, and appointed Johan Vanhaeren as the new regional director covering the Benelux countries.
“With over 6,000 customers worldwide and nearly 20,000 licenses shipped, we are tapping the wave of virtualization that has spread from servers and desktops to storage,” comments George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. “Storage virtualization software, like its server and desktop virtualization cousins, is all about software that lives beyond the life of storage devices that come and go over time, making users’ storage investments better and more economical. Adding these industry veterans to our management team comes as we prepare an even more aggressive push to the reseller community and to virtualization users. We are hiring experienced virtualization industry leaders to fuel our growth as storage virtualization takes center stage and becomes more and more mainstream – both in the enterprise and in the Cloud.”
Widely recognized as the software leader in storage virtualization, DataCore has continued its double digit growth despite recessionary times. DataCore’s software solutions enable data centers and IT departments to better manage, consolidate and maximize storage capacity as well as to leverage existing hardware in order to protect and serve storage assets to VMware, Microsoft and Citrix virtual servers and desktops.
DataCore Doubles North America Sales Team; Hires Dan Hascall, New Vice President of Sales for the Americas
Building for growth in North America, in 2010 DataCore has doubled its North America sales team and hired Dan Hascall, formerly of VMware, to lead it as the new Vice President of Americas Sales. Hascall came to VMware in 2006 and helped develop VMware’s channel model and was responsible for the company’s Western Channel region. “DataCore is well-positioned for major success in both the network and Cloud computing models,” states Hascall. “And my question to users is simply ‘Why haven’t you virtualized your storage?’ Virtualization applies equally well to servers, desktops and storage. With DataCore, the move to storage virtualization is painless and partners can offer real value and strategic business agility to their customers. DataCore storage virtualization is the critical foundation that makes it easy for customers to move along the virtualization journey.”
Finance & Operations Expertise with a Channel Mindset: DataCore Promotes Martin Clancy to Chief Financial Officer
Martin Clancy has been promoted to Chief Financial Officer at DataCore Software. Clancy came to DataCore from Citrix Systems, a marquee virtualization vendor with a blue-chip reseller community and an extraordinarily channel-oriented mindset. In his twelve years with Citrix, Clancy served in a variety of financial and operations roles, the last one being Senior Director, Finance & Product Operations for the Desktop Division.
“DataCore is seeing a lot of growth and the numbers are compelling,” notes Clancy. “The appetite for virtualization technologies stems from the fact that these technologies give organizations that use them freedom. But from the perspective of CFO, I look at the tangible business benefits that virtualization brings, and they are incredibly persuasive on the storage-side. Virtualizing storage resources means that institutions are not locked in to a particular storage vendor and therefore gain greater purchasing power; they can avoid downtime, planned or unplanned; improve the performance of storage devices; mix current storage devices with newly purchased equipment; and, most importantly, stay within a budget.”
Worldwide Momentum in the Channel: DataCore Hires New Director of the Benelux Region
DataCore has also appointed Johan Vanhaeren, based in Belgium, as director for the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) region. Vanhaeren was the former country manager for Citrix in the Benelux region. “Just like its storage virtualization and desktop virtualization counterparts, DataCore storage virtualization software is changing the way resellers, solution providers and virtualization administrators manage and deploy virtualization projects and Clouds,” said Vanhaeren. “And this adoption is worldwide in its scope. The virtualization phenomenon knows no boundaries.”
Adds Teixeira, “More companies and institutions of all sizes are experiencing first-hand the power that comes from embracing DataCore’s software-based approach to storage virtualization, which includes achieving the highest degree of availability, flexibility and openness for their storage. We will continue to build our leadership team and company to help bring the benefits of DataCore storage virtualization to customers worldwide, helping them to evolve their current storage environments to attain the added benefits of virtualization.”
Friday, 8 October 2010
Citrix Synergy 2010: DataCore Virtualization Software Improves Availability and Performance While Overcoming the High Capital and Operational Costs of Storage for Virtual Desktops
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=16289
At Citrix Synergy 2010 in Berlin, DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualization, is highlighting how joint Citrix and DataCore customers have benefited from performance gains, improved availability and cost efficiencies resulting from virtualizing their desktops, servers and storage. DataCore delivers a cost-effective storage infrastructure for Citrix Virtual Servers and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) by avoiding the need to “rip and replace” existing storage and SANs, thereby avoiding large, upfront capital expenses and greatly reducing ongoing operational costs.
“For more than two decades, Citrix Systems has been deploying virtualization solutions. This experience pays off; with our continuous advancements in desktop and server virtualization, we are making this technology accessible to a broad customer base,” says Jens Luebben, Managing Director Germany and Area Vice President Central Europe at Citrix Systems Inc. “After having successfully launched Citrix Technology Alliance last year, we continue to work joint projects with DataCore that have been proven in practice. Together with storage virtualization partners like DataCore, we want to use Citrix Synergy 2010 to respond to the most pressing questions about virtualization.”
Virtual Desktop Infrastructures along with Citrix XenServer, XenDesktop and XenApp require failsafe and centralized storage solution, but in many cases this is jeopardized due to the high costs involved. With DataCore's storage virtualization, users can easily create cost-effective "shared" storage for virtual servers and desktops from new and existing storage capacities. Customers benefit from investment protection, higher capacity utilization, better performance and affordable, high availability storage.
By virtualizing disk storage devices from different brands and vendors, DataCore™ software eliminates incompatibilities across generations, models and manufacturers and maximizes the joint value of these resources. Thus, storage-related disruptions, bottlenecks and financial hurdles which threaten virtualization projects, can be eliminated. This reduces costs, minimizes risks and increases productivity.
Virtualization is Three-Dimensional: Efficiency Impacts Desktops, Servers and Storage
Many successful installations with Citrix and DataCore worldwide illustrate the three-dimensional virtualization spanning desktops, servers and storage. Clemens Albrecht, Head of IT at Plakanda Management AG, a service provider of outdoor advertising in Switzerland, says, “We are very pleased with our decision to implement a virtualization strategy with Citrix and DataCore. With the combination of SANmelody™ and the Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials we benefit from having dynamic storage management, reduced administration and long-term cost savings.”
German hospital Muldental is also relying on a virtual infrastructure based on Citrix and DataCore. “Virtualization with DataCore and Citrix has reduced our hardware and software costs, simplified the administration and provided the flexibility for responding to requests quickly and efficiently. We can import updates for hundreds of identical desktops in a few minutes, or set up a special server such as one for the endoscopy department. DataCore's storage virtualization software ensures that our IT is continuously operating. A fact that we greatly depend on,” says Thomas Enderlein, IT Manager at Muldental.
See more information on effective storage solutions for Citrix with DataCore Software at http://www.datacore.com/solutions/govirt-citrix.asp .
At Citrix Synergy 2010 in Berlin, DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualization, is highlighting how joint Citrix and DataCore customers have benefited from performance gains, improved availability and cost efficiencies resulting from virtualizing their desktops, servers and storage. DataCore delivers a cost-effective storage infrastructure for Citrix Virtual Servers and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) by avoiding the need to “rip and replace” existing storage and SANs, thereby avoiding large, upfront capital expenses and greatly reducing ongoing operational costs.
“For more than two decades, Citrix Systems has been deploying virtualization solutions. This experience pays off; with our continuous advancements in desktop and server virtualization, we are making this technology accessible to a broad customer base,” says Jens Luebben, Managing Director Germany and Area Vice President Central Europe at Citrix Systems Inc. “After having successfully launched Citrix Technology Alliance last year, we continue to work joint projects with DataCore that have been proven in practice. Together with storage virtualization partners like DataCore, we want to use Citrix Synergy 2010 to respond to the most pressing questions about virtualization.”
Virtual Desktop Infrastructures along with Citrix XenServer, XenDesktop and XenApp require failsafe and centralized storage solution, but in many cases this is jeopardized due to the high costs involved. With DataCore's storage virtualization, users can easily create cost-effective "shared" storage for virtual servers and desktops from new and existing storage capacities. Customers benefit from investment protection, higher capacity utilization, better performance and affordable, high availability storage.
By virtualizing disk storage devices from different brands and vendors, DataCore™ software eliminates incompatibilities across generations, models and manufacturers and maximizes the joint value of these resources. Thus, storage-related disruptions, bottlenecks and financial hurdles which threaten virtualization projects, can be eliminated. This reduces costs, minimizes risks and increases productivity.
Virtualization is Three-Dimensional: Efficiency Impacts Desktops, Servers and Storage
Many successful installations with Citrix and DataCore worldwide illustrate the three-dimensional virtualization spanning desktops, servers and storage. Clemens Albrecht, Head of IT at Plakanda Management AG, a service provider of outdoor advertising in Switzerland, says, “We are very pleased with our decision to implement a virtualization strategy with Citrix and DataCore. With the combination of SANmelody™ and the Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials we benefit from having dynamic storage management, reduced administration and long-term cost savings.”
German hospital Muldental is also relying on a virtual infrastructure based on Citrix and DataCore. “Virtualization with DataCore and Citrix has reduced our hardware and software costs, simplified the administration and provided the flexibility for responding to requests quickly and efficiently. We can import updates for hundreds of identical desktops in a few minutes, or set up a special server such as one for the endoscopy department. DataCore's storage virtualization software ensures that our IT is continuously operating. A fact that we greatly depend on,” says Thomas Enderlein, IT Manager at Muldental.
See more information on effective storage solutions for Citrix with DataCore Software at http://www.datacore.com/solutions/govirt-citrix.asp .
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Wall Street Journal Blog: When Consolidation Fosters Innovation -6 Companies worth Watching includes DataCore Software
6 Companies to Watch, check the list: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/09/29/when-consolidation-fosters-innovation-among-start-ups/
Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing for the storage virtualization firm DataCore Software Corp., says “our pitch to buyers is, whoever they buy their storage infrastructure from, we can help them maximize the value of that infrastructure.”
Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing for the storage virtualization firm DataCore Software Corp., says “our pitch to buyers is, whoever they buy their storage infrastructure from, we can help them maximize the value of that infrastructure.”
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Fujitsu and DataCore Software Partner for Virtualized Storage
eWeek Storage Report: Fujitsu, DataCore Partner for Virtualized Storage
One could say that Fujitsu as a company is a bit cautious about change and in choosing its partners. But that would be a massive understatement.
Being cautious in international business is undoubtedly a very good thing. Note that Fujitsu is one of the world's true IT powerhouses.
However, good quality, second-generation storage virtualization has been available and used in production by many enterprises for more than four years. Companies like Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, NetApp and a slew of others already have snapped up their own such suppliers and incorporated their wares into their catalogs.
Thus it is indeed news that Fujitsu now has a storage virtualization software partner. On Sept. 9 it was announced that Fujitsu has validated DataCore storage virtualization software to run on its storage arrays and servers.
Thus, the two will produce high-end Fujitsu Eternus and Primergy systems featuring DataCore SANsymphony and make them available immediately through local channel partners.
DataCore said the combination enables easy real-time provisioning of storage within cloud infrastructures. DataCore's secret sauce also adds high availability, making it possible to move data and virtual machines as needed, where needed in a cloud storage architecture.
The new systems will at first become available this fall in Europe -- Austria, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom....
One could say that Fujitsu as a company is a bit cautious about change and in choosing its partners. But that would be a massive understatement.
Being cautious in international business is undoubtedly a very good thing. Note that Fujitsu is one of the world's true IT powerhouses.
However, good quality, second-generation storage virtualization has been available and used in production by many enterprises for more than four years. Companies like Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, NetApp and a slew of others already have snapped up their own such suppliers and incorporated their wares into their catalogs.
Thus it is indeed news that Fujitsu now has a storage virtualization software partner. On Sept. 9 it was announced that Fujitsu has validated DataCore storage virtualization software to run on its storage arrays and servers.
Thus, the two will produce high-end Fujitsu Eternus and Primergy systems featuring DataCore SANsymphony and make them available immediately through local channel partners.
DataCore said the combination enables easy real-time provisioning of storage within cloud infrastructures. DataCore's secret sauce also adds high availability, making it possible to move data and virtual machines as needed, where needed in a cloud storage architecture.
The new systems will at first become available this fall in Europe -- Austria, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom....
Friday, 17 September 2010
VMworld 2010: DataCore Showcased Why Its Storage Virtualization and Stretch High-Availability Software Eliminates Business Outages that Jeopardize Cloud Computing
At VMworld 2010 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center, DataCore showcased how fundamental software-based storage virtualization is to cloud computing.
The Mirazon Group's Chief Technical Architect Barry Martin states:
"Cloud computing platforms demand unprecedented uptime due to server and storage consolidation. DataCore's high-availability approach provides zero downtime. This is a tremendous advantage."
Storage Virtualization and Stretch HA Software for Non-stop Clouds
DataCore is blazing a trail by developing storage virtualization software that is a game-changer in terms of how resellers, solution providers as well as companies considering virtualization deployments manage and deploy virtualization projects and Clouds. The game-changer is that by deploying DataCore in a stretch high-availability (HA) configuration, DataCore delivers fault-tolerance that virtually eliminates storage-related outages that jeopardize business continuity and plague virtualization and consolidation initiatives.
"The DataCore Software stretch high-availability solution delivers seamless, enterprise-class business continuity, data resiliency, and high performance at an affordable price tag," states Aaron Schneider, principal and co-founder, Helixstorm, Inc. "Your applications, virtual servers and virtual desktops and VM migrations continue to run non-stop despite back-end storage changes, failures or reconfigurations. Bottom-line, you get a true high-availability, shared storage solution that automatically protects your data and your virtual machines right out-of-the box just by deploying the virtual storage software in two locations."
DataCore in the Cloud: Achieve the Highest Degree of Availability, Flexibility and Openness for Your Storage
Host.net knows intuitively that storage virtualization software is priority one. "Any cloud computing platform, just like any virtualization deployment, needs to have portable software as its building blocks," notes Jeffrey Slapp, vice president of virtualization services, Host.net. "We chose DataCore in the core design of our virtual private data center (vPDC) platform alongside VMware and Cisco because it delivers the very best storage virtualization component."
DataCore storage virtualization software is virtualizing the storage aspect of an all-virtual private data center (vPDC) platform developed by Host.net. Host.net delivers private cloud computing services for companies ranging from SMEs to large enterprises, utilizing a true software-based approach for the greatest flexibility. Check out the Case study here: Host.Net Case Study on Why Host.net Chose DataCore?
Contain Costs, Avoid Risks, Boost Productivity and Extend the Life of IT Investments with DataCore Software
Even though server and desktop virtualization and consolidation have garnered much of the virtualization press to date, now the real focus of concern is turning from how to virtualize and consolidate servers and desktops to how can we do more to mitigate the risk that results from consolidation. The key concerns being, "How do I insulate my business applications from storage related failures and disruptions that can severely impact virtual machine images and data that are key to running the business?" and "How good is my high-availability, disaster recovery and shared storage solutions?"
DataCore addresses these concerns with proven software deployed in thousands of customer sites around the world. DataCore's software virtualizes disks across pools of tiered storage devices enabling users to provision, share, reconfigure, migrate, replicate, expand or upgrade without slowdowns or downtime. Simply put, DataCore:
+Complements your storage and makes it more reliable, faster and better.
+Works across unlike & incompatible storage devices.
+Eliminates storage-related disruptions, bottlenecks and funding roadblocks that jeopardize virtualization and cloud deployments.
DataCore partner Andy Judge, founder and CEO of Miami-based Grove Networks, encapsulates the value DataCore brings as follows, "DataCore storage virtualization software gives our clients cost savings and flexibility that is not achievable with storage hardware alone. It takes hardware to a higher level - serving as a hardware and productivity 'enhancer' that pays dividends over the short and long term."
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Fujitsu maximises flexibility of storage architectures with DataCore storage virtualisation
Sean Haffey, product marketing manager Unix and Storage at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, says: “By combining our server and storage solutions with DataCore software, customers benefit from storage consolidation in various usage scenarios. We deliver complete storage pool architectures customised to our customers’ ever-changing needs - via a single source.”
http://www.sns-uk.co.uk/news_full.php?id=15628
Fujitsu announces the validated integration of its datacentre storage and server systems with DataCore storage virtualisation software, helping to minimise the risks for enterprises switching to virtualised storage pool architectures. The pre-tested and qualified solution with Fujitsu ETERNUS and PRIMERGY with DataCore SANsymphony is available immediately.
The tighter integration of Fujitsu ETERNUS DX disk storage systems and PRIMERGY X86 tower, blade and rack servers with DataCore’s storage virtualisation software offers enterprises a powerful storage solution that is flexible and easy-to-manage. The reliable and secure disk storage systems integrate well with host operating systems, multi-vendor servers, network infrastructures and back-up solutions.
To minimise the potential risks of permanent data loss, Fujitsu’s ETERNUS DX disk storage systems already provide many redundant components. DataCore adds an independent storage virtualisation layer to further optimise the availability of storage. It ensures an uninterruptible operation of storage systems in case a failover is necessary. DataCore SANsymphony™ provides the ability to mirror data over distances between storage systems with active/active access.
Adding the DataCore virtualisation layer gives customers the ability to scale multiple independent ETERNUS DX systems. The advantage is that the ETERNUS DX can act as one global storage pool that can be expanded virtually to any size far beyond the capacity of each single storage unit. Thanks to Fujitsu and DataCore, customers can now distribute data in their storage infrastructure in real-time, therefore removing any Single Point of Failure, and making it possible to move the data to every storage device in flexible storage pool architecture in real-time for highest availability.
Sean Haffey, product marketing manager Unix and Storage at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, says: “By combining our server and storage solutions with DataCore software, customers benefit from storage consolidation in various usage scenarios. We deliver complete storage pool architectures customised to our customers’ ever-changing needs - via a single source.”
Christian Hagen, vice president EMEA & Americas at DataCore Software said: “Combined Fujitsu and DataCore solutions enable joint customers to easily build powerful, extremely fast and reliable virtual storage infrastructures. By qualifying SANsymphony for Fujitsu ETERNUS and PRIMERGY systems, DataCore and Fujitsu assure a pre-tested environment for dynamic storage on demand concepts optimised for storage pool architectures. This solution is built on our long term success with Fujitsu based installations in the field. It now opens up the channel for Fujitsu resellers and customers to benefit from this combined qualified infrastructure working perfectly together.”
Fujitsu Maximizes Business Continuity and Flexibility of Cloud Storage Architectures with DataCore
IT Director: http://www.it-director.com/channels/distribution/news_release.php?rel=19981
Storage Technology Solutions: http://storagetechnologysolutions.blogspot.com/2010/09/fujitsu-maximizes-business-continuity.html
Virtual Strategy Magazine: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Press-Releases/Fujitsu-Maximizes-Business-Continuity-and-Flexibility-of-Cloud-Storage-Architectures-with-DataCore.html
VMblog: http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/09/09/fujitsu-maximizes-business-continuity-and-flexibility-of-cloud-storage-architectures-with-datacore-storage-virtualization.aspx
HPC in the Cloud: http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/offthewire/Fujitsu-Maximizes-Business-Continuity-and-Flexibility-of-Cloud-Storage-Architectures-with-DataCore-Storage-Virtualization-102529414.html
DABCC: http://www.dabcc.com/channel.aspx?id=208 and http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=15983
Data Storage Connections: http://www.datastorageconnection.com/article.mvc/DataCore-Software-Fujitsu-Maximizes-Business-0001?atc~c=771+s=773+r=001+l=a
Computer Technology Review: http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9121:fujitsu-maximizes-business-continuity-improves-flexibility-of-cloud-storage-architectures-with-datacore-storage-virtualization&catid=232:disaster-recovery&Itemid=2701196
http://www.sns-uk.co.uk/news_full.php?id=15628
Fujitsu announces the validated integration of its datacentre storage and server systems with DataCore storage virtualisation software, helping to minimise the risks for enterprises switching to virtualised storage pool architectures. The pre-tested and qualified solution with Fujitsu ETERNUS and PRIMERGY with DataCore SANsymphony is available immediately.
The tighter integration of Fujitsu ETERNUS DX disk storage systems and PRIMERGY X86 tower, blade and rack servers with DataCore’s storage virtualisation software offers enterprises a powerful storage solution that is flexible and easy-to-manage. The reliable and secure disk storage systems integrate well with host operating systems, multi-vendor servers, network infrastructures and back-up solutions.
To minimise the potential risks of permanent data loss, Fujitsu’s ETERNUS DX disk storage systems already provide many redundant components. DataCore adds an independent storage virtualisation layer to further optimise the availability of storage. It ensures an uninterruptible operation of storage systems in case a failover is necessary. DataCore SANsymphony™ provides the ability to mirror data over distances between storage systems with active/active access.
Adding the DataCore virtualisation layer gives customers the ability to scale multiple independent ETERNUS DX systems. The advantage is that the ETERNUS DX can act as one global storage pool that can be expanded virtually to any size far beyond the capacity of each single storage unit. Thanks to Fujitsu and DataCore, customers can now distribute data in their storage infrastructure in real-time, therefore removing any Single Point of Failure, and making it possible to move the data to every storage device in flexible storage pool architecture in real-time for highest availability.
Sean Haffey, product marketing manager Unix and Storage at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, says: “By combining our server and storage solutions with DataCore software, customers benefit from storage consolidation in various usage scenarios. We deliver complete storage pool architectures customised to our customers’ ever-changing needs - via a single source.”
Christian Hagen, vice president EMEA & Americas at DataCore Software said: “Combined Fujitsu and DataCore solutions enable joint customers to easily build powerful, extremely fast and reliable virtual storage infrastructures. By qualifying SANsymphony for Fujitsu ETERNUS and PRIMERGY systems, DataCore and Fujitsu assure a pre-tested environment for dynamic storage on demand concepts optimised for storage pool architectures. This solution is built on our long term success with Fujitsu based installations in the field. It now opens up the channel for Fujitsu resellers and customers to benefit from this combined qualified infrastructure working perfectly together.”
Fujitsu Maximizes Business Continuity and Flexibility of Cloud Storage Architectures with DataCore
IT Director: http://www.it-director.com/channels/distribution/news_release.php?rel=19981
Storage Technology Solutions: http://storagetechnologysolutions.blogspot.com/2010/09/fujitsu-maximizes-business-continuity.html
Virtual Strategy Magazine: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Press-Releases/Fujitsu-Maximizes-Business-Continuity-and-Flexibility-of-Cloud-Storage-Architectures-with-DataCore.html
VMblog: http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/09/09/fujitsu-maximizes-business-continuity-and-flexibility-of-cloud-storage-architectures-with-datacore-storage-virtualization.aspx
HPC in the Cloud: http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/offthewire/Fujitsu-Maximizes-Business-Continuity-and-Flexibility-of-Cloud-Storage-Architectures-with-DataCore-Storage-Virtualization-102529414.html
DABCC: http://www.dabcc.com/channel.aspx?id=208 and http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=15983
Data Storage Connections: http://www.datastorageconnection.com/article.mvc/DataCore-Software-Fujitsu-Maximizes-Business-0001?atc~c=771+s=773+r=001+l=a
Computer Technology Review: http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9121:fujitsu-maximizes-business-continuity-improves-flexibility-of-cloud-storage-architectures-with-datacore-storage-virtualization&catid=232:disaster-recovery&Itemid=2701196
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Latest Videos on DataCore Storage Virtualization Software - Why I use DataCore: Host.net; DataCore CEO at VMworld
Why I use DataCore: Host.net:
DataCore CEO Talks Virtualization at VMworld
http://www.siliconangle.tv/video/storage-tiering-and-flash-performance-george-teixeira-talks-virtualization-tiered-storage-and-/
Saturday, 4 September 2010
VMworld 2010: DataCore Showcases Why Its Storage Virtualization and Stretch High-Availability Software Eliminates Business Outages that Jeopardize Cloud Computing
At VMworld 2010 being held in San Francisco at the Moscone Center this week, DataCore is showcasing how fundamental software-based storage virtualization is to cloud computing.
The Mirazon Group's Chief Technical Architect Barry Martin states:
"Cloud computing platforms demand unprecedented uptime due to server and storage consolidation. DataCore's high-availability approach provides zero downtime. This is a tremendous advantage."
Storage Virtualization and Stretch HA Software for Non-stop Clouds
DataCore is blazing a trail by developing storage virtualization software that is a game-changer in terms of how resellers, solution providers as well as companies considering virtualization deployments manage and deploy virtualization projects and Clouds. The game-changer is that by deploying DataCore in a stretch high-availability (HA) configuration, DataCore delivers fault-tolerance that virtually eliminates storage-related outages that jeopardize business continuity and plague virtualization and consolidation initiatives.
"The DataCore Software stretch high-availability solution delivers seamless, enterprise-class business continuity, data resiliency, and high performance at an affordable price tag," states Aaron Schneider, principal and co-founder, Helixstorm, Inc. "Your applications, virtual servers and virtual desktops and VM migrations continue to run non-stop despite back-end storage changes, failures or reconfigurations. Bottom-line, you get a true high-availability, shared storage solution that automatically protects your data and your virtual machines right out-of-the box just by deploying the virtual storage software in two locations."
DataCore in the Cloud: Achieve the Highest Degree of Availability, Flexibility and Openness for Your Storage
Host.net knows intuitively that storage virtualization software is priority one. "Any cloud computing platform, just like any virtualization deployment, needs to have portable software as its building blocks," notes Jeffrey Slapp, vice president of virtualization services, Host.net. "We chose DataCore in the core design of our virtual private data center (vPDC) platform alongside VMware and Cisco because it delivers the very best storage virtualization component."
DataCore storage virtualization software is virtualizing the storage aspect of an all-virtual private data center (vPDC) platform developed by Host.net. Host.net delivers private cloud computing services for companies ranging from SMEs to large enterprises, utilizing a true software-based approach for the greatest flexibility. Check out the Case study here: Host.Net Case Study on Why Host.net Chose DataCore?
Contain Costs, Avoid Risks, Boost Productivity and Extend the Life of IT Investments with DataCore Software
Even though server and desktop virtualization and consolidation have garnered much of the virtualization press to date, now the real focus of concern is turning from how to virtualize and consolidate servers and desktops to how can we do more to mitigate the risk that results from consolidation. The key concerns being, "How do I insulate my business applications from storage related failures and disruptions that can severely impact virtual machine images and data that are key to running the business?" and "How good is my high-availability, disaster recovery and shared storage solutions?"
DataCore addresses these concerns with proven software deployed in thousands of customer sites around the world. DataCore's software virtualizes disks across pools of tiered storage devices enabling users to provision, share, reconfigure, migrate, replicate, expand or upgrade without slowdowns or downtime. Simply put, DataCore:
+Complements your storage and makes it more reliable, faster and better.
+Works across unlike & incompatible storage devices.
+Eliminates storage-related disruptions, bottlenecks and funding roadblocks that jeopardize virtualization and cloud deployments.
Visit DataCore Customers and Partners Onsite at VMworld 2010 [Booth #1607]
Numerous DataCore customers, including Host.net and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, who have deployed DataCore along with top DataCore solution providers will be onsite at DataCore's VMworld booth [#1607] and are available and standing by to answer questions, highlight best practices and explain the DataCore difference.
DataCore partner Andy Judge, founder and CEO of Miami-based Grove Networks, encapsulates the value DataCore brings as follows, "DataCore storage virtualization software gives our clients cost savings and flexibility that is not achievable with storage hardware alone. It takes hardware to a higher level - serving as a hardware and productivity 'enhancer' that pays dividends over the short and long term."
Thursday, 2 September 2010
VMworld 2010: American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Deploys DataCore Software in a Stretch, High-Availability Configuration with VMware to Ensure Uptime and Business Continuity
American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) www.ashp.org/ has implemented a new stretch cluster and stretch high-availability (HA) storage configuration based on DataCore storage virtualization software and VMware server virtualization software to ensure uptime and business continuity. This new, stretch, dual-node configuration was implemented by DataCore partner Helixstorm, Inc. and together, DataCore and VMware form an HA configuration that spans floors – serving as an industrial-strength production system with fault-tolerance.
The goal is to transition all of ASHP’s data onto the newly configured, fault-tolerant, virtualized environment. “I am now a believer in the software-based approach to high-availability and storage virtualization,” states Jack Spencer, vice president of operations and CIO at American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. “It was not intuitive until I actually saw it. But now that I have, I am no longer skeptical. Going forward, I will put the bulk of all the money earmarked for network storage into expanding the DataCore configuration as well as building in remote disaster recovery.”
Enterprise Scalability, Seamless Business Continuity, Data Resiliency and High Performance That Supports the ASHP Membership
ASHP has 35,000 individual members. The staff at ASHP itself comprises 210 people. All benefit from the uptime the virtualized environment provides, with DataCore at the heart of it all. “The DataCore Software stretch HA solution delivers enterprise scalability, seamless business continuity, data resiliency, and high performance for a cost-effective price tag when comparing it to traditional storage arrays,” states Aaron Schneider, principal and co-founder, Helixstorm, Inc. “The best part about it is that if ASHP lost a floor to power or critical disaster, the users would not experience an outage because of seamless I/O failover to the surviving node. You get high availability right out of the box just by deploying the virtual storage software in two locations.”
The New HA Configuration: DataCore + VMware Form an Industrial-Strength Production System with Fault-Tolerance
The two HA systems are stretched across two floors at ASHP using synchronous mirroring – thereby providing data redundancy. In total, the data pool – near-line and on-line – comprises sixty (60) terabytes at ASHP. Because ASHP publishes 500+ different publications, storage has always been a big requirement. Three years ago, ASHP became interested in the flexibility, ease-of-use, centralized management and reduced costs that DataCore’s software-based approach to managing and virtualizing their storage assets afforded. DataCore was not, however, ASHP’s first step into virtualization. Prior to DataCore, VMware was deployed at ASHP and the virtual machine (VM) farm has grown four-fold over five years.
“We designed and implemented a true highly available SAN solution,” states Eric Henry, CTO and co-founder, Helixstorm, Inc. “It’s a shared nothing environment, which means the disks do not share a backplane with the controllers like traditional arrays. ASHP has eliminated all single points of failure between the application servers and the storage controllers along with increasing the data resiliency by ‘stretching’ the SAN between two floors via redundant fiber channel connections for synchronous mirroring. You just can’t get any better business continuity than that!”
A Mission-Critical Solution and Configuration
Spencer extols the value-added utilities and features of SANmelody as well as its ease of use – chiefly its simplicity in terms of set-up and maintenance. “Trying to carve out a LUN on a big SAN is a true hassle,” explains Spencer. “Then trying to maintain and keep track of the different LUNs – just the maintenance of the configuration – is very complicated. Software-based SANmelody makes it simple. It is elegantly straightforward and simple in terms of removing labor-intensive aspects of SAN maintenance.”
Friday, 27 August 2010
Wimbeldon 2010: All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club takes advantage of DataCore virtualisation.
"With DataCore's SANsymphony solution running effectively, we have moved the Club's infrastructure into the next layer of availability and flexibility. It really has provided a cost-effective alternative that added needed flexibility to our traditional hardware approach." -Andrew Jones, IT Infrastructure & Security Analyst at All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
DataCore Software has announced that the prestigious All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, host of the world's most famous tennis tournament, Wimbledon, is using DataCore's SANsymphony as its storage backbone.
As one of the world's top sporting events, Wimbledon attracts the World's top tennis stars, along with tens of thousands of spectators and millions of viewers via television and the Internet. As such, you would expect there is a complex IT and support infrastructure that supports an IT population that swells from 200 to 6,000 users across a three-week period.
Running everything to do with IT security and data integrity is Andrew Jones, IT Infrastructure & Security Analyst at All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, who is one of seven from the IT Department responsible for the platforms and infrastructure that ensure the smooth running of critical operations at the Club.
Jones noted, "Our initial requirement was to reduce the costs of deploying and running our CCTV system. The system had a very high storage requirement - between 16-20 TBs as a monthly load which we then intended to overwrite - and this was even at a heavily compressed rate." Footage has also increased dramatically (for instance the new state-of-the-art Centre Court moving roof contains four cameras provide a birds-eye view on Centre Court proceedings). Andrew recognized that pools of data this large needed to be linked into the existing storage area network (SAN), but also recognized that this integration would provide management headaches and significant strain on the present SAN backbone of an IBM Fibre Channel SAN Storage 4300 solution. The IBM SAN was effective and provided great data mirroring, facilitating the VMware ESX server virtualisation, but the Club realized that to accommodate this level of generated data, it required a cost-effective, flexible storage solution for CCTV that would have otherwise entailed the purchase of numerous additional trays of disks.
DataCore's SANsymphony solution was identified as being able to address the Club's present and future needs; including critically the mammoth expansion on the network usage throughout the run-up, duration and immediately following the Championship. Previously the distinct peaks throughout June and July each year had to be facilitated by additional hardware, which then was effectively unused for the remainder of the year. In addition, the Club took the opportunity to tie-in an effective Disaster Recovery solution (including the implementation of a full-scale, offsite DR emergency center).
The DataCore proposal showed a staggering £15,000 immediate capital savings outlay compared to the alternative of allocating more disks to cope with demand. With such compelling financial and business benefits, the business case was easy to justify to the Board.
The flexibility of the proposal prompted the Club to place an order for three SANsymphony nodes in late 2008, which run on IBM servers and complement IBM standard DS3400 storage arrays. Two were housed in the separate Wimbledon data centers in a mirrored environment for failover purposes and it was proposed that the third would be housed at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton for full DR purposes.
One of the first noted effects of SANsymphony was the ease of administration. Previously the team had to manage five different interfaces at any one time, controlling everything from switches and storage arrays - to the iSCSI/FC management interfaces. With SANsymphony, Andrew noted, "Everything is now presented to the DataCore virtualisation servers, which through a drag and drop interface control all aspects of the SAN. From an administration perspective there is a lot less to monitor, control and manage."
Even without the full offsite DR plan being implemented, the Club has benefited from SANsymphony's automatic failover configuration. Ongoing building works around Centre Court at the Club entailed the brief loss of fibre connectivity. The resultant effect on the SAN was negligible. SANsymphony's auto-failover kicked in, simply switching the servers to the mirrored site and causing no loss of data or applications.
Full Scale DR in progress
The third SANsymphony server has been allocated to the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, some three miles away. This way, in the event of a dramatic loss of functionality (hosting the world's most prestigious tennis tournament means that security at the Club is treated very seriously), the third SANsymphony can provide asynchronous mirroring and snapshotting. This means that almost instantly - in a full scale disaster - the entire system can be back up and running with only a five minute lag in data availability.
Additional growth is now easy to provide
SANsymphony's scalable approach provides additional reassurance and room to grow. Adding more storage is now a question of simply purchasing additional licenses. Complex provisioning and rezoning of disks is a thing of the past. Moreover, as data storage grows and retained digital image sizes increase, the team is now confident that in the future they can instantly serve back large files such as video restore.
Andrew summarizes, "With DataCore's SANsymphony solution running effectively, we have moved the Club's infrastructure into the next layer of availability and flexibility. It really has provided a cost-effective alternative that added needed flexibility to our traditional hardware approach."
http://www.it-director.com/technology/applications/news_release.php?rel=18692
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Stop by and Visit DataCore Booth 1607 at VMworld - DataCore Storage Virtualization Software Makes Clouds Happy.
We look forward to seeing you at VMworld 2010.
Always Stays Up - Prevent storage-related disruptions. Keep your clouds running with DataCore's non-disruptive high-availability software.
Never Tied Down - Works across incompatible storage devices. Agile and not tied to specific storage arrays, vendors or devices which 'come and go' over time.
Highly Stretchable - Spans buildings and locations for 'Stretch HA' high-availability and recovery for VMs and data.
Lightning fast - Advanced Caching enables electronic memory speeds to accelerate your workloads and overcome I/O bottlenecks that impact virtual server and virtual desktop performance.
If you are attending VMworld and will be available on Sunday evening, please contact your local DataCore contact if you are available to attend the DataCore VMworld Welcome Reception at the Infusion Lounge in San Francisco from 7:00-10:00 PM.
Always Stays Up - Prevent storage-related disruptions. Keep your clouds running with DataCore's non-disruptive high-availability software.
Never Tied Down - Works across incompatible storage devices. Agile and not tied to specific storage arrays, vendors or devices which 'come and go' over time.
Highly Stretchable - Spans buildings and locations for 'Stretch HA' high-availability and recovery for VMs and data.
Lightning fast - Advanced Caching enables electronic memory speeds to accelerate your workloads and overcome I/O bottlenecks that impact virtual server and virtual desktop performance.
If you are attending VMworld and will be available on Sunday evening, please contact your local DataCore contact if you are available to attend the DataCore VMworld Welcome Reception at the Infusion Lounge in San Francisco from 7:00-10:00 PM.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
DataCore virtualizes FusionIO SSDs, HP storage arrays into SAN for NIEDAX GROUP
DataCore Case Study
DataCore Software has enabled the NIEDAX GROUP to combine traditional storage arrays, already installed, with new high-speed Solid State Disks (SSDs) to create a Storage Area Network (SAN) to meet their growing data center needs. DataCore virtualization software, combined with FusionIO NAND flash memory SSD technology, has achieved a new level of performance, high availability and energy efficiency, running in production at 100,000 IOPS and 600 MB/s (megabytes-per-second) of throughput, while consuming 15 Watts of energy versus 4000 Watts with hard disks alone.
The NIEDAX GROUP, an electrical installation manufacturer, needed to upgrade its systems to meet the growing demands of its ERP system which is based on Microsoft Dynamics. In addition they wanted to migrate their base of over 40 VMware VMs onto a more reliable SAN infrastructure. The major requirement, however, driven by the ERP requirements was for a new SAN storage solution that could deliver higher performance, capacity and availability than the existing hardware SAN.
NIEDAX utilized a consultancy firm to calculate and access its data requirements and found out that if it continued to use a traditional hardware SAN it would need to add and invest in at least another two storage systems, each with a minimum of 40 Fibre Channel disk drives, to achieve the required performance and high availability. This would be a significant investment and add to the ongoing space and energy costs – so alternatives were sought.
Having seen the value of using VMware for servers, NIEDAX wanted to know if there was virtualization solution that could do the same for their SAN storage. Additionally, it also had to meet the ERP performance requirements that were critical.
The company understood the value of virtualization – having evaluated the use of VMware ESX to virtualize a number of machines and realizing the benefits of going green by reducing power consumption and heating costs with servers. So, NIEDAX asked what they could do similarly for their storage. DataCore partner S&L Netzwerktechnik GmbH evaluated the requirements and then suggested and developed an alternative plan that could build on the company’s existing investment and reduce their ongoing costs.
The solution consisted of DataCore SANmelody 3.0 software providing virtualization, performance to accelerate caching software and high-availability mirroring across the pool of storage arrays and SSDs, integration of existing HP EVA Storage Array, integration and additional disks to the HP MSA Storage Arrays, and the addition of high-speed FusionIO SSDs with NAND flash memory to boost performance and lower overall energy requirements.
The DataCore SANmelody 3.0 virtualization software runs on standard servers and enables cost-effective high availability through synchronous mirroring to occur between the heterogeneous mix of SAN hardware. The DataCore solution facilitated NIEDAX GROUP using its existing hardware in combination with the required expansion and new SSDs in order to obtain higher performance and to grow capacity. In a similar manner to what VMware had done for their servers, DataCore virtualized and made their storage hardware more efficient and cost-effective.
“We are happy with our DataCore investment and we are benefiting from the many functional and financial benefits of putting it in use,” stated Oliver Bauer, Team Leader Administration / IT at NIEDAX GROUP. “The SAN now enables flexibility in administration, ease of expansion and the ability to dynamically allocate storage where and when we need it. DataCore caching accelerates overall performance and delivers a much higher data throughput. The software approach ensures the ease of transfer and the ability to use SAN-wide features on different hardware arrays and devices. Thus it is a very cost-effective way to mirror data. For our demanding ERP application, the fact that we could run FusionIO Solid State Disks under the DataCore virtualization and management solution was critical. We gained tremendous performance from adding FusionIO SSDs and overall we reduce energy and cooling costs.”
In terms of background, the demanding databases that support ERP systems, especially in manufacturing applications such as at the NIEDAX GROUP, often do not consume very large amounts of storage. Instead, however, they do require extremely high performance. With the Fusion IO NAND SSD flash memory technology in place, the NIEDAX GROUP was able to achieve 100,000 IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) and rates of 600 MB/s with only 15 Watt power consumption, when running in production. By comparison, if they had used conventional Fibre Channel storage disks alone to achieve these levels of performance, they would have consumed somewhere around 4,000 Watts.
"With the implementation of DataCore‘s virtualization storage software we were able to meet all of the customers technical requirements,” said Alwin Kohl, consultant at S&L Netzwerktechnik GmbH. “In addition, with the combination of DataCore’s virtualization software and FusionIO‘s SSD NAND flash memory we were able to protect NIEDAX’s current investments in their SAN and extend it – making it green and significantly reducing long-term costs for our customer.”
DataCore Software has enabled the NIEDAX GROUP to combine traditional storage arrays, already installed, with new high-speed Solid State Disks (SSDs) to create a Storage Area Network (SAN) to meet their growing data center needs. DataCore virtualization software, combined with FusionIO NAND flash memory SSD technology, has achieved a new level of performance, high availability and energy efficiency, running in production at 100,000 IOPS and 600 MB/s (megabytes-per-second) of throughput, while consuming 15 Watts of energy versus 4000 Watts with hard disks alone.
The NIEDAX GROUP, an electrical installation manufacturer, needed to upgrade its systems to meet the growing demands of its ERP system which is based on Microsoft Dynamics. In addition they wanted to migrate their base of over 40 VMware VMs onto a more reliable SAN infrastructure. The major requirement, however, driven by the ERP requirements was for a new SAN storage solution that could deliver higher performance, capacity and availability than the existing hardware SAN.
NIEDAX utilized a consultancy firm to calculate and access its data requirements and found out that if it continued to use a traditional hardware SAN it would need to add and invest in at least another two storage systems, each with a minimum of 40 Fibre Channel disk drives, to achieve the required performance and high availability. This would be a significant investment and add to the ongoing space and energy costs – so alternatives were sought.
Having seen the value of using VMware for servers, NIEDAX wanted to know if there was virtualization solution that could do the same for their SAN storage. Additionally, it also had to meet the ERP performance requirements that were critical.
The company understood the value of virtualization – having evaluated the use of VMware ESX to virtualize a number of machines and realizing the benefits of going green by reducing power consumption and heating costs with servers. So, NIEDAX asked what they could do similarly for their storage. DataCore partner S&L Netzwerktechnik GmbH evaluated the requirements and then suggested and developed an alternative plan that could build on the company’s existing investment and reduce their ongoing costs.
The solution consisted of DataCore SANmelody 3.0 software providing virtualization, performance to accelerate caching software and high-availability mirroring across the pool of storage arrays and SSDs, integration of existing HP EVA Storage Array, integration and additional disks to the HP MSA Storage Arrays, and the addition of high-speed FusionIO SSDs with NAND flash memory to boost performance and lower overall energy requirements.
The DataCore SANmelody 3.0 virtualization software runs on standard servers and enables cost-effective high availability through synchronous mirroring to occur between the heterogeneous mix of SAN hardware. The DataCore solution facilitated NIEDAX GROUP using its existing hardware in combination with the required expansion and new SSDs in order to obtain higher performance and to grow capacity. In a similar manner to what VMware had done for their servers, DataCore virtualized and made their storage hardware more efficient and cost-effective.
“We are happy with our DataCore investment and we are benefiting from the many functional and financial benefits of putting it in use,” stated Oliver Bauer, Team Leader Administration / IT at NIEDAX GROUP. “The SAN now enables flexibility in administration, ease of expansion and the ability to dynamically allocate storage where and when we need it. DataCore caching accelerates overall performance and delivers a much higher data throughput. The software approach ensures the ease of transfer and the ability to use SAN-wide features on different hardware arrays and devices. Thus it is a very cost-effective way to mirror data. For our demanding ERP application, the fact that we could run FusionIO Solid State Disks under the DataCore virtualization and management solution was critical. We gained tremendous performance from adding FusionIO SSDs and overall we reduce energy and cooling costs.”
In terms of background, the demanding databases that support ERP systems, especially in manufacturing applications such as at the NIEDAX GROUP, often do not consume very large amounts of storage. Instead, however, they do require extremely high performance. With the Fusion IO NAND SSD flash memory technology in place, the NIEDAX GROUP was able to achieve 100,000 IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) and rates of 600 MB/s with only 15 Watt power consumption, when running in production. By comparison, if they had used conventional Fibre Channel storage disks alone to achieve these levels of performance, they would have consumed somewhere around 4,000 Watts.
"With the implementation of DataCore‘s virtualization storage software we were able to meet all of the customers technical requirements,” said Alwin Kohl, consultant at S&L Netzwerktechnik GmbH. “In addition, with the combination of DataCore’s virtualization software and FusionIO‘s SSD NAND flash memory we were able to protect NIEDAX’s current investments in their SAN and extend it – making it green and significantly reducing long-term costs for our customer.”
Saginaw Intermediate School District Deploys a Flexible, Virtualized Cloud Infrastructure Using DataCore and VMware
DataCore Software announced that Saginaw Intermediate School District (ISD) has replaced a legacy SAN and embraced virtualization in its centralized data center built on DataCore, VMware and Xiotech. Moreover, Saginaw ISD’s VMware- DataCore-based cloud for servers and storage serves as both a centralized data center and a hosting service for the majority of school districts in the county.
Download the Case Study on Saginaw VMware and DataCore Cloud Computing
The implementation at Saginaw ISD is one that incorporates DataCore for storage virtualization, VMware for server virtualization, and Xiotech as the hardware platform providing the actual storage. DataCore’s SANmelody storage virtualization software powers two SANs that comprise DataCore software and Xiotech servers at two separate data centers, five miles apart, which are configured to mirror to each other. The data pool consists of 10 TBs on each end of the remote configuration.
Download the Case Study on Saginaw VMware and DataCore Cloud Computing
The implementation at Saginaw ISD is one that incorporates DataCore for storage virtualization, VMware for server virtualization, and Xiotech as the hardware platform providing the actual storage. DataCore’s SANmelody storage virtualization software powers two SANs that comprise DataCore software and Xiotech servers at two separate data centers, five miles apart, which are configured to mirror to each other. The data pool consists of 10 TBs on each end of the remote configuration.
"Our goal was to virtualize everything and have that supported by storage," states Jeff Johnson, Director of Technical Services, Saginaw Intermediate School District.
Saginaw ISD has deployed seven VMware ESX boxes in the VMware farm - all running on HP servers. These hosts service 35-40 VMs, which span everything from a utility machine running Windows XP - to five SQL servers. For replication purposes, the mirrored site has three ESX boxes that also make up the VMware cloud between the two sites. DataCore is at the heart of the virtualized infrastructure, powering the VMware cloud in Saginaw ISD’s virtual, private data center.
http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/07/27/saginaw-intermediate-school-district-deploys-a-flexible-virtualized-cloud-infrastructure-using-datacore-vmware-and-xiotech.aspx
http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/07/27/saginaw-intermediate-school-district-deploys-a-flexible-virtualized-cloud-infrastructure-using-datacore-vmware-and-xiotech.aspx
Monday, 9 August 2010
Total Wine Taps DataCore Software to Virtualise Storage. Challenge: Leveraging an Existing EMC SAN & Microsoft Hyper-V
http://www.it-director.com/business/change/news_release.php?rel=19117
Challenge: Leveraging an Existing EMC SAN & Microsoft Hyper-V:
Total Wine has seen enormous success in virtualizing the EMC storage area network (SAN) that was already deployed in its data center with DataCore storage virtualisation software. The impetus for bringing DataCore in to virtualise and manage the SAN was straightforward the SAN was running out of capacity and performance. "It got to the point where performance became an issue; we were out of disk space and could not add more disk array enclosures, unless we bought a new SAN," notes Todd Slan, director of technology, Total Wine. "So, the idea of a storage virtualisation solution like DataCore that enabled us to enhance our existing SAN solution and, at the same time, accelerate performance was the path we started down."
Total Wine evaluated adding to the EMC SAN or going with other storage hardware solutions such as LeftHand Networks, EqualLogic, as well as NetApp. However, in his role as Chairman of the Mid-Atlantic CIO Council for Microsoft, which serves as the executive advisory board, where he sits on the International Board, Slan was swayed to DataCore by another council member, who was a DataCore customer as well as partner. "DataCore and Microsoft partner The Asbury Group Integrated Technologies brought me into their data center and showed me how they solved an 80 terabyte problem with storage virtualization software from DataCore," adds Slan. "That, and the idea of not having to rip and replace our existing investment in storage devices, was enough to sell us on DataCore as the right solution for us as well."
According to David Herr, chief technology and security officer, The Asbury Group Integrated Technologies, "Virtual servers and desktops depend heavily on shared disks. Without them, system administrators cannot migrate virtual machines, fail-over workloads or start up sessions on a completely different desktop. That is where DataCore comes in."
Meeting Business Objectives Accommodating Growth and Meeting Performance Expectations:
The data pool that is now managed by DataCore totals 10 TBs. In terms of the user community, the 10 TBs are divided between 230 users at Total Wines Corporate Headquarters as well as employees working at the retail stores. For the corporate users, DataCore is providing the range of data, databases and servers you would expect to be relied on heavily in an office environment flat files, databases, Exchange, etc. For those working in the stores, the core line-of-business application that runs Total Wines entire business operations "back-ends" to a SQL database that sits on the DataCore SAN.
"For our stores we had two issues," explains Slan. "One was a growth issue. We took a database application that was serving 200 users in the corporate office and extended that to the field bringing an additional 1,500 users under that umbrella. A conventional SAN, not using virtualization, has pretty serious physical size limits and when you hit them, you hit them hard. DataCore solved this problem and we did not have to buy more hardware, re-provision disks or resize LUNs. Apart from the growth issue was the performance one. The performance issues associated with having 1,000 users hit a database as opposed to 200 are significantly different. We had to have a solution that enabled us to crank up the performance of those databases. DataCore virtualisation has delivered for us on the performance front as well."
Total Wine needed a way to grow, simultaneously, in terms of the size of the user community it supported, and in terms of performance. According to Slan, DataCore has given his team the best way to do this as well as the most cost-effective one. "With DataCore we are not wasting space as we had done in conventional SAN models," he explains. "That is what we had relied on before and we were essentially wasting fifty percent of our disk space."
One of the things Slan and his team really love about the storage virtualisation solution from DataCore is that it empowers them with flexibility. Today Total Wine has a mix of storage under management fiber channel, direct-attached and iSCSI. "DataCore does not tie us into any one storage model," Slan notes. "I don't need to buy fiber channel storage for everything, and DataCore accommodates that. I can buy lower cost storage. I can hang direct-attached SAS units off the back of the DataCore SAN and I do not have to pay the fiber channel costs because I dont need it."
The Total Virtualisation Environment Virtual Storage for Hyper-V
Total Wine has a significant investment in Microsoft Hyper-V for virtual servers and has deployed Hyper-V exclusively as its virtual server of choice. Total Wines data center in Maryland is approximately 50% virtualised. Currently, eight major systems or one-third of the virtual machines (VMs) in the virtualised infrastructure are now running on DataCore to virtualise and accelerate their storage. This will grow substantially in the next phase of the virtualisation deployment.
Initially, Total Wine deployed DataCore simply to achieve the inherent benefits of virtualisation for its EMC SAN, including better performance via DataCores mega caching functionality and increased capacity through its infrastructure-wide thin-provisioning technology. Slan and his team at Total Wine are now deploying a second DataCore license, to ensure high-availability and improve uptime. This summer, Total Wines DataCore virtualised-powered storage infrastructure will be fully redundant, whereby two mirrored SANs will safeguard the data guaranteeing uptime and fault-tolerance. This will also lay the groundwork for full disaster recovery (if needed), whereby at a later stage a third DataCore SAN can be added in a remote location and connected via remote or asynchronous replication.
Slan emphasizes that, in the retail world, sales margins are thin and resource utilization is crucial. "If we are under-utilizing our resources, then, in a sense, it is wasted money. In terms of resource utilization, we can get over 80% utilization of our storage investment with DataCore. Make no mistake about it the attraction to DataCore for us was that it is not a hardware device-based SAN solution. The software-based approach of DataCore was absolutely key for us. Hardware is hardware. The bottom-line for us is that DataCore allows us to do a lot of the things we already knew were possible in the virtualisation world, but with storage."
To access the Total Wine & More Case Study on implementing DataCore, EMC and Hyper-V, please go to: www.datacore.com/totalwine .
About Total Wine & More
Total Wine & More is the largest independent fine wine retailer in the country and is the only major fine wine company to operate in multiple states. As the preeminent fine wine store in each of its markets, Total Wine & More is the independent retailer of fine wine in the United States. For more, visit http://www.totalwine.com/ .
Challenge: Leveraging an Existing EMC SAN & Microsoft Hyper-V:
Total Wine has seen enormous success in virtualizing the EMC storage area network (SAN) that was already deployed in its data center with DataCore storage virtualisation software. The impetus for bringing DataCore in to virtualise and manage the SAN was straightforward the SAN was running out of capacity and performance. "It got to the point where performance became an issue; we were out of disk space and could not add more disk array enclosures, unless we bought a new SAN," notes Todd Slan, director of technology, Total Wine. "So, the idea of a storage virtualisation solution like DataCore that enabled us to enhance our existing SAN solution and, at the same time, accelerate performance was the path we started down."
Total Wine evaluated adding to the EMC SAN or going with other storage hardware solutions such as LeftHand Networks, EqualLogic, as well as NetApp. However, in his role as Chairman of the Mid-Atlantic CIO Council for Microsoft, which serves as the executive advisory board, where he sits on the International Board, Slan was swayed to DataCore by another council member, who was a DataCore customer as well as partner. "DataCore and Microsoft partner The Asbury Group Integrated Technologies brought me into their data center and showed me how they solved an 80 terabyte problem with storage virtualization software from DataCore," adds Slan. "That, and the idea of not having to rip and replace our existing investment in storage devices, was enough to sell us on DataCore as the right solution for us as well."
According to David Herr, chief technology and security officer, The Asbury Group Integrated Technologies, "Virtual servers and desktops depend heavily on shared disks. Without them, system administrators cannot migrate virtual machines, fail-over workloads or start up sessions on a completely different desktop. That is where DataCore comes in."
Meeting Business Objectives Accommodating Growth and Meeting Performance Expectations:
The data pool that is now managed by DataCore totals 10 TBs. In terms of the user community, the 10 TBs are divided between 230 users at Total Wines Corporate Headquarters as well as employees working at the retail stores. For the corporate users, DataCore is providing the range of data, databases and servers you would expect to be relied on heavily in an office environment flat files, databases, Exchange, etc. For those working in the stores, the core line-of-business application that runs Total Wines entire business operations "back-ends" to a SQL database that sits on the DataCore SAN.
"For our stores we had two issues," explains Slan. "One was a growth issue. We took a database application that was serving 200 users in the corporate office and extended that to the field bringing an additional 1,500 users under that umbrella. A conventional SAN, not using virtualization, has pretty serious physical size limits and when you hit them, you hit them hard. DataCore solved this problem and we did not have to buy more hardware, re-provision disks or resize LUNs. Apart from the growth issue was the performance one. The performance issues associated with having 1,000 users hit a database as opposed to 200 are significantly different. We had to have a solution that enabled us to crank up the performance of those databases. DataCore virtualisation has delivered for us on the performance front as well."
Total Wine needed a way to grow, simultaneously, in terms of the size of the user community it supported, and in terms of performance. According to Slan, DataCore has given his team the best way to do this as well as the most cost-effective one. "With DataCore we are not wasting space as we had done in conventional SAN models," he explains. "That is what we had relied on before and we were essentially wasting fifty percent of our disk space."
One of the things Slan and his team really love about the storage virtualisation solution from DataCore is that it empowers them with flexibility. Today Total Wine has a mix of storage under management fiber channel, direct-attached and iSCSI. "DataCore does not tie us into any one storage model," Slan notes. "I don't need to buy fiber channel storage for everything, and DataCore accommodates that. I can buy lower cost storage. I can hang direct-attached SAS units off the back of the DataCore SAN and I do not have to pay the fiber channel costs because I dont need it."
The Total Virtualisation Environment Virtual Storage for Hyper-V
Total Wine has a significant investment in Microsoft Hyper-V for virtual servers and has deployed Hyper-V exclusively as its virtual server of choice. Total Wines data center in Maryland is approximately 50% virtualised. Currently, eight major systems or one-third of the virtual machines (VMs) in the virtualised infrastructure are now running on DataCore to virtualise and accelerate their storage. This will grow substantially in the next phase of the virtualisation deployment.
Initially, Total Wine deployed DataCore simply to achieve the inherent benefits of virtualisation for its EMC SAN, including better performance via DataCores mega caching functionality and increased capacity through its infrastructure-wide thin-provisioning technology. Slan and his team at Total Wine are now deploying a second DataCore license, to ensure high-availability and improve uptime. This summer, Total Wines DataCore virtualised-powered storage infrastructure will be fully redundant, whereby two mirrored SANs will safeguard the data guaranteeing uptime and fault-tolerance. This will also lay the groundwork for full disaster recovery (if needed), whereby at a later stage a third DataCore SAN can be added in a remote location and connected via remote or asynchronous replication.
Slan emphasizes that, in the retail world, sales margins are thin and resource utilization is crucial. "If we are under-utilizing our resources, then, in a sense, it is wasted money. In terms of resource utilization, we can get over 80% utilization of our storage investment with DataCore. Make no mistake about it the attraction to DataCore for us was that it is not a hardware device-based SAN solution. The software-based approach of DataCore was absolutely key for us. Hardware is hardware. The bottom-line for us is that DataCore allows us to do a lot of the things we already knew were possible in the virtualisation world, but with storage."
To access the Total Wine & More Case Study on implementing DataCore, EMC and Hyper-V, please go to: www.datacore.com/totalwine .
About Total Wine & More
Total Wine & More is the largest independent fine wine retailer in the country and is the only major fine wine company to operate in multiple states. As the preeminent fine wine store in each of its markets, Total Wine & More is the independent retailer of fine wine in the United States. For more, visit http://www.totalwine.com/ .
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