Friday, 23 October 2009

New Capabilities for DataCore SANmelody

New Capabilities for DataCore SANmelody
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/software/datacore-sanmelody-30
Aimed at SMBs eager to upgrade their disk subsystems and storage network infrastructure

Thursday, 22 October 2009

DataCore Video - 6 years old - content applies

DataCore Video - 6 years old - content applies
Take a look at the following video from DataCore Software created over 6 years ago, the content in this clip is more relevant today that ever. It demonstrates how far ahead DataCore Software was at that time and shows that their core ...DataCore SANmelody tunes - http://sanmelody.blogspot.com/

Saturday, 17 October 2009

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Powerful new capabilities in latest virtualization release from DataCore Software.

Powerful new capabilities in latest virtualization release from DataCore Software.
http://www.it-director.com/sme/news_release.php?rel=13724

...The new features are aimed at small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that are eager to upgrade their disk subsystems and storage network infrastructure, but fear the broad business disruptions that such changes typically bring.
The new features, now shipping, in SANmelody 3.0 enable:

Non-disruptive Substitution - Replace storage arrays in the background.
Copies the contents of a designated storage array (or individual drive) to the unit that will replace it while applications continue to use the logical volumes. The new array (or drive) transparently takes over once it matches the contents of the original drives so that the older drives can be taken offline without impacting users.

Redundant Pathing - Configure network paths between storage virtualization nodes.
These paths may be diversely routed to ensure that if one primary network connection is broken or taken offline, synchronous mirroring between nodes will continue uninterrupted over the alternate connection.

Prioritized Recovery - Prioritize resynchronization of mirrored disks.
Ensures that the most critical, volumes are resynchronized first when a node or its storage is taken off-line during an upgrade or unplanned outage.

Group Snapshot and Clone Command - Synchronize online snapshots across inter-dependent volumes.
Coordinates multiple snapshots to occur at the same time across a group of related volumes. This ensures point-time synchronization of file systems and application data that reside on different disks. It ensures that clones created on new equipment are an exact replica of their predecessor.

Content Migration - Relocate Active Drives into Virtual Storage Pool.
Enables existing drives formatted with NTFS, Unix, Linux and other file systems to be incorporated into the SANmelody storage pool. These physical drives are first un-mounted from the application servers where they were once active, and reconnected behind a SANmelody node. The SANmelody node will then act as an intermediary between the application server and these drives. To take full advantage of SANmelody advanced virtualisation features, their contents may be copied to virtual disks using snapshots or synchronous mirroring. The relocated drives can then be wiped clean and included in the physical storage pool as additional capacity, or they may be decommissioned.

FCoE Connectivity - Access Fibre Channel storage pool via the LAN switching infrastructure.
Application servers and other storage consumers can access SANmelody nodes equipped with Fibre Channel SAN connections using their Ethernet Network Interface Cards (NICs). This capability takes advantage of the new Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol and FCoE-compliant switches.

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

DataCore Software Introduces New Offering, Targets VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Customers

http://virtualization.com/news/2009/10/10/datacore-software-introduces-new-offering-targets-vmware-vsphere-microsoft-hyper-v-and-citrix-customers/
....DataCore has packaged several promotions that are now available to virtualization solution advisors and resellers. These promotions will enable partners to reap the rewards and benefits of having DataCore storage virtualization solutions in their arsenal of product offerings. They include:+Academic programs offering 50% educational discounts+A 1TB Starter SAN Software Promotion for Business Continuity & DR+Special government programs and discounts

Saturday, 10 October 2009

Storage virtualization in Universities and Education around the world

DataCore Software announced new SAN software packages and promotions for academic institutes that deliver price savings of up to 50% and highlighted a host of educational institutions around the world that have already deployed storage virtualisation using its SANmelody and SANsymphony solutions.
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/business/datacore-ww-customers-in-education
“Most educational enterprises want enterprise-class storage networking functionality but have to settle for a lot less, since they do not have the budgets to implement these solutions due to the high costs and complexity that is involved – especially for fault-tolerant, auto recovery storage systems needed to protect and support virtual server environments,” stated George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software.

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

FCoE Is Ready, Is It Time to Care?

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/ipstorage/features/article.php/3841266

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has been a much-hyped technology, but adoption rates haven't yet lived up to the propaganda.According to Seamus Crehan, an analyst at Dell'Oro Group, only about 10,000 FCoE ports shipped in 2008. While that number is predicted to reach 1 million in 2011, it will still be outgunned by Fibre Channel by a factor of 10 to one.That said, FCoE isn't a technology to ignore...

However, Alexander Nier, product manager for DataCore Software, cautions that an understanding of the underlying technology is a must or implementation headaches will crop up."Don't confuse FCoE with a freshly paved road where everything goes better just because it's new," said Nier. "FCoE is a complementary technology rather than a replacement for existing products. The main prep work is to understand if somebody may or may not benefit from using FCoE."

To his mind, if you are a happy camper today, there is probably no need to switch gear. As FCoE is still in the early stages of adoption, he wouldn't encourage anyone to switch if the technology they have in place is satisfactory. FCoE's primary intention, after all, is to consolidate back-end cabling by using the same physical media (Ethernet cable) for multiple transportation streams in parallel."If the back-end cabling of your server racks looks like a mess, and each server has a bunch of fiber optic and network cables connected to it, you're probably a good candidate," said Nier.