Translate

Thursday 26 September 2013

Boston Ltd Introduces Igloo-DC Storage Servers Fully Integrated with DataCore Software’s Storage Virtualisation software, SANsymphony-V

Collaboration produces cost-effective, performance-boosted High Availability and Archiving Solutions, Out of the Box.

Boston Limited, a worldwide Systems Integrator and manufacturer of high-end servers, storage and workstations and DataCore Software, the premier provider of storage virtualisation software, have today announced a collaboration to develop a new series of out-of-the-box storage solutions based on DataCore's SANsymphony-V software defined storage virtualisation solution. The new Boston Igloo-DC systems, based on hardware from leading server manufacturer Supermicro, are configured to deliver high availability and high performance to entry level SMB and enterprise organisations across Europe.

"The blistering lab test results speak volumes on what can be delivered by this competitively priced Boston Igloo-DC cluster. Compared to traditional SAN products based only on hard disk technologies it provides a performance jump in an order of magnitude” comments Dan Johns, Head of Technical Services at Boston Limited.

All of Boston’s Igloo-DC solutions are certified as being DataCore Ready, out of the box, and come backed with impressive benchmarking results provided by Boston Lab’s onsite state-of-the-art testing facilities. In benchmark tests, the Boston Igloo-DC Storage Server has been shown to deliver more than 57,000 random read I/O operations per second or 11,000 random write operations per second by balancing the workload across the SSD pools of both nodes. Additionally, throughput of more than 2GB/s sequential read had been achieved through intelligent loading of clients to volumes on both nodes simultaneously, enabling the best use of the four 10GbE links available. Organisations, large and mid-sized, will benefit from the performance acceleration through self-adaptive caching; automated storage tiering; unified storage to enable SAN and NAS integration; continuous data protection; snapshots; analysis tools; synchronous mirroring; replication; capacity optimization (thin provisioning); resource virtualisation; centralized SAN management, and the ability to integrate easily into existing SAN environments.

Boston’s Igloo-DC Solutions is suitable for use in a variety of applications such as virtualisation, VDI, exchange or even SQL workloads; each integrated with the DataCore’s SANsymphony-V and they are available with choices of Fibre Channel, iSCSI or Infiniband connectivity.

Pricing for Boston Igloo-DC systems starts at 30,299Dollars. For more information please visit the website – http://www.boston.co.uk/partners/datacore.aspx.

Boston are one of many Systems Integrators taking advantage of the DataCore Ready Programme that identifies solutions trusted to strengthen SANsymphony™-V-based infrastructures. While DataCore solutions interoperate with common open and industry standard products, the ‘DataCore Ready’ designation ensures that these solutions have successfully executed a functional test plan and additional verification testing to meet a superior level of joint solution compatibility. Customers who leverage DataCore Ready offerings benefit from quality assurance, reduced risk and lower integration costs. The DataCore Ready logo helps customers quickly identify products and solutions that are optimized for SANsymphony-V.

"Boston Ltd are an established and trusted supplier of blade servers and storage solutions and carry a reputation for delivering reliable blistering performance. Together with DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage virtualisation solution, the combined Boston Igloo-DC solution comes tested and certified so the customer is fully assured of a high-quality solution.” says Pierre Aguerreberry, Director of EMEA Alliances at DataCore Software.

Thursday 19 September 2013

Independent Industry Analyst and ThinkTank, Jon Toigo, does whistle stop London tour to include DataCore UK Partners and Prospective Partners

Charasmatic Analyst treats Partners to view of the next generation Software Defined Data Centre at a DataCore hosted Breakfast Briefing at No 1 Lombard Street. 

Industry guru and Storage Thinktank, Jon Toigo, visits London on a whirlwind tour and advises DataCore new and existing Partners at a Breakfast Briefing in the City to be ready to deploy a software based overlay layer instead of provisioning extra hardware.  Straight off the plane, Jon delivers a compelling and sometimes lighthearted viewpoint on the state of the IT industry. Funniest line: "In a recession, management traditionally outsource IT. In truth, the relationship breaks down more quickly than a Britney Spears wedding – everyone wants out and quick."

Wednesday 18 September 2013

The quest for software-defined storage has branched three distinct approaches to storage virtualization...

From Enterprise Storage Forum -The Virtual San Buying Guide: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/san-nas-storage/virtual-san-buying-guide.html

“The quest for software-defined storage has branched three distinct approaches to storage virtualization; hypervisor-based, device-dependent, and agnostic, software-only,” states Steve Houck, COO DataCore Software. “vSAN is an example of hypervisor-based, EMC ViPR and IBM SVC are device-dependent, and DataCore SANsymphony–V is an example of software-only storage virtualization.”

DataCore has been in the virtual storage space for a long time. Its virtual SAN platform is called SANsymphony-V, which is hardware-agnostic storage virtualization software that abstracts and pools internal and external disks along with flash/SSDs. The company said thousands of data centers around the globe deploy DataCore.

Features include in-memory DRAM caching, auto-tiering, synchronous mirroring, asynchronous replication, thin-provisioning, snapshots, and CDP. Pricing for an HA (high-availability) cluster of 2 SANsymphony-V nodes is under $10,000, including 24x7 annual support.

“The SANsymphony-V platform is designed for mission-critical, latency-sensitive applications in companies large and small, where downtime is not tolerated,” said Steve Houck, COO, DataCore Software.

He believes that VMware vSAN takes advantage of inexpensive internal disk drives, which drives more customers, especially SAN-averse ones, to virtualize their apps. However, he added that it requires the use of more expensive flash memory, a minimum of three hosts, and doesn’t work on physical machine that are also be in the mix, or other hypervisors such as Microsoft Hyper-V.

SANsymphony-V, said Houck, is transparent to applications, so no code changes are necessary. It installs on a virtual machine in two or more nodes to create a tiered storage pool. The software can also run on dedicated x86 machines to offload all storage-intensive tasks from the application hosts

“The quest for software-defined storage has branched three distinct approaches to storage virtualization; hypervisor-based, device-dependent, and agnostic, software-only,” said Houck. “vSAN is an example of hypervisor-based, EMC ViPR and IBM SVC are device-dependent, and DataCore SANsymphony–V is an example of software-only storage virtualization.”

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Software Update Notice: VMware vSphere Plug-in v1.3 for SANsymphony-V released

The following software update is now generally available for download from the DataCore Software Customer Support website:

Software: VMware vSphere Plug-in
Version: 1.3 (Replaces version 1.2)
Enhancements: Several important bug fixes and support for Internet Explorer 10.0

To download the updated plug-in from the DataCore Software Customer Support website:
Go to Software Downloads and select the following options from the pull down menus when prompted:
Select a Product Line to View Related Software Downloads: SANsymphony-V
Select a Version: 9.0
Select Software: Plug-in: VMware vSphere Plug-in for SANsymphony-V

Please download the Release Notes for VMware vSphere 1.3 Plug-in from the same page for more details on the Fixes and Enhancements included in this update.

You may also download the updated plug-in from www.datacore.com
Select SOFTWARE > Closer Technical Look > DOWNLOADS & TEST DRIVE

http://www.datacore.com/Software/Closer-Look/software-downloads.aspx
Scroll down to VMware vSphere Management Plug-in for SANsymphony-V

The direct link to the download request form is:
http://pages.datacore.com/VMware-vCenter-Management-Plugin.html

Stop Fighting Your Storage Hardware! Win the Battle with DataCore Storage Virtualisation Software


Learn more at: http://www.datacore.com/International/Country/UK/stop-fighting-your-storage-hardware.aspx

Monday 16 September 2013

36 Reasons To Adopt DataCore Storage Virtualization and Software-defined Storage Architectures

Learn the Reasons Why 1000’s of Customers Have Chosen DataCore Software

“When asked for 10 reasons, I just couldn’t stop…”
–George Teixeira, CEO & President, DataCore Software

1. No Hardware Vendor Lock-In Enables Greater Buying Power
With DataCore, you gain the freedom to buy from any hardware vendor, and aren’t forced to pick and stick with one. This is a major advantage in negotiating your best deal and “right sizing” your purchase to buy what you need instead of what just one vendor has to offer. It’s easy to add, replace or migrate across storage platforms with a minimum of IT pain and best of all you can avoid disrupting users and business applications. Purchasing flexibility is a major advantage of a software-defined infrastructure.

2. Future-Proof Your Storage with Software-defined Flexibility; Be Ready for Whatever is Next
A flexible DataCore software defined storage infrastructure also lets you bring in new storage and new storage technologies non-disruptively, so you are ready for whatever comes next. Whether it is incorporating new flash storage or cloud storage into your infrastructure or gaining the competitive advantage that the next new storage innovation brings, your infrastructure is ready to bring it in and put it to work. On the other hand, hardware vendors have no interest in allowing you to bring in new technology to work with the storage you’ve have already purchased from them. Their reason for being is to sell you, each year, year after year, on ripping and replacing your last purchase from them with the newer model.

3. Get the Most from What You Already Own Before Buying More
Virtualization = Highly Efficient Utilization. Flexible and smart, DataCore virtualization software lets you optimize the utilization of your storage resources, extending the time to hardware refresh. This is another huge advantage over a hardware-defined infrastructure that forces you to over provision, oversize and buy more hardware to meet unknown demands before you have fully utilized what you already have. When you do buy new storage hardware, the DataCore advantage is that there is no waste—you can fully utilize what you buy so you buy only what you need.

Read more: Reasons and Benefits of Storage Virtualization and Software-defined Storage Architectures.

Monday 2 September 2013

The Register on DataCore Storage Virtualisation and VMware's new vSAN

"DataCore has its own Virtual SAN Appliance software, but this is enterprise class and has a vast array of SAN and related functionality built on top of it. VMware's vSAN is no contest in the markets that DataCore's SANsymphony is sold into."

Check out the full article by Chris Mellor from the Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/28/vmwares_vsan_bull_in_the_vsa_china_shop/