IMATION DELIVERS A COMPELLING COST-EFFECTIVE SOLUTION TO EXPENSIVE STORAGE SYSTEMS WITH DATACORE READY NEXSAN E-SERIES STORAGE ARRAYS

Nexsan E-Series storage arrays coupled with the SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software provide powerful and cost-effective storage infrastructure for Microsoft, VMware, Oracle and other virtualized environments

“The combined DataCore SANsymphony-V and Nexsan E-Series solution allows IT administrators to create the optimal virtualized storage architecture on highly reliable, proven Nexsan E-Series hardware,” said Mike Stolz, vice president of marketing and technical services for Imation’s Nexsan solutions.

Download Solution Brief:  Nexsan delivers efficient storage virtualization solution with DataCore

Real World Customer Example: United Arab Shipping Company uses DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software and Nexsan storage arrays

Mike Stolz continues “Without virtualization, storage and compute capacity are often wasted in application-specific silos. In a virtualized environment, hardware resources can be pooled and optimized from heterogeneous devices, which significantly improves flexibility for the IT administrator.”  

Imation (NYSE:IMN), a global data storage and information security company, announced that its Nexsan™ E-Series™ storage arrays have been certified as DataCore Ready. When combined with the DataCore SANsymphony-V storage virtualization platform, the solution offers data centers rapid ROI through significant improvements in data availability, agility, performance and flexibility.

The integrated solution offers users a variety of benefits, including:

Performance – Using Nexsan E-Series arrays as a high-performing storage foundation, SANsymphony-V further increases performance by supporting RAM caches of up to a terabyte to dramatically accelerate reads and writes. SANsymphony-V also automatically rebalances loads due to hotspots to further improve response and throughput.

Efficient provisioning – The Nexsan E-Series system allows IT professionals to mix-and-match SAS, SATA and solid state drives. SANsymphony-V then provisions virtual disks as required to support different types of workloads. Granular thin provisioning and automated capacity reclamation gives administrators more options for improving efficiency.

Auto-tiering – SANsymphony-V continuously analyzes what blocks of data need higher I/O throughput and automatically assigns those blocks to the appropriate storage tier. Throughout this automated process, priority workloads like SQL databases can be given preference to fast storage including flash, while cooler data or lower prioritized workload data can be moved to lower-cost drives. E-Series storage arrays deliver virtually unlimited flexibility for configuring storage tiers according to capacity, performance and price characteristics, and the solution enables multiple tiers to be configured in a single Nexsan E-Series system or across other existing storage hardware.

Business continuity – By keeping data in two physically separate locations at the same time with the help of synchronous mirroring, the combined solution prevents storage from becoming a single point of failure for stretched cluster configurations. Imation and DataCore offer an appealing alternative to very expensive storage arrays. Disaster recovery scenarios also are supported by enabling asynchronous replication across distant sites.

Migration – Storage investments risk creating more complexity and islands of incompatible devices. DataCore SANsymphony-V and Nexsan E-Series work together to pool existing storage assets, eliminating risk of incompatibility and improving ROI across the entire infrastructure. Also, DataCore SANsymphony-V fully virtualizes data from the underlying hardware, enabling migration of data from legacy systems to Nexsan E-Series with minimal or no interruption to running workloads.

“DataCore and Imation have a long-standing history of collaboration as evidenced by numerous joint customers worldwide who leverage our solutions as a part of their storage architectures,” said Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development at DataCore. “Nexsan E-Series storage arrays combined with SANsymphony-V offer IT departments a highly efficient blueprint for optimizing IT resources and maximizing the effective value of storage investments.”

For the complete announcement, please see:  Imation News Release

DataCore at Cebit 2014 showcases new solutions and the many advantages of DataCore’s Software-defined Storage platform

DataCore’s latest SANsymphony-V platform is being demonstrated and displayed at one of the world's largest IT exhibits at Cebit in Germany; DataCore's booth is within the “Virtualisation & Storage Forum“ (hall 2, booth A44). 

Visitors are being shown the recently announced Fujitsu DataCore Storage Virtualisation Appliance (SVA), a turnkey bundled solution that combines the best capabilities of both companies. The new SVA systems will initially be available in Germany starting this month and will be launched in additional European countries during Q2.
For more information: Fujitsu DataCore Storage Virtualisation Appliance (SVA)

Additionally, DataCore has also introduced its next release of DataCore Virtual Desktop Server (VDS) with new enhancements and pricing that make it simple to deploy cost-effective and easy to use virtual desktop environments.

For more information: http://www.datacore.com/products/Product-Archive/VDS.aspx 

What’s the future of the data center? What about Software-defined Storage?

 

                

 

As detailed in a recent article on Wikibon, “Data centers are at the center of modern software technology, serving a critical role in the expanding capabilities for enterprises.” Data centers have enabled the enterprise to do much more with much less, both in terms of physical space and the time required to create and maintain mission-critical information.

 

But the technology surrounding the data center is positioned to evolve even more dramatically, in terms of conception, configuration, and utilization. More importantly, the technologies surrounding the data center will both have an impact and be impacted over time. Towards the end of last year, Gartner identified eight areas to consider when developing a data center strategy that balances cost, risk and agility. We wanted to take that analysis further, reaching out to thought leaders across the enterprise technology space, for their perspectives on the future of data center technology.

DataCore CEO on the traditional Storage Model is Broken

George Teixiera, President, DataCore Software The traditional storage model is broken. Behavior has shifted and disrupted how businesses buy storage as they can no longer afford to rip out the old and throw more costly new hardware at their problems. Instead they are seeking smart automated software that runs on lower cost hardware and optimizes their existing investments and provides the agility to easily add new technologies non-disruptively. Bottom-line, the path to a software-defined data center where users gain freedom of hardware choice and control of their resources is inevitable and that means storage must also be software-defined.

Mr. Teixeira creates and executes the overall strategic direction and vision for DataCore Software. Mr. Teixeira co-founded the company and has served as CEO and President of DataCore Software since 1998.

Full story: What’s the future of the data center? The big list of thought leadership perspective

CeBIT 2014: DataCore takes centre stage at the "Virtualisation & Storage Forum" and showcases real-world Software Defined Storage

DataCore, the leader in software-defined storage, has unveiled its plans for this year’s Cebit event. Over the last 12 months there has been an increasing volume of software-defined storage announcements, marketing hype and promises made – ironically most coming from traditional storage hardware vendors. DataCore will cut through this hype by showcasing real-world customer examples and highlighting successful use cases and the many innovations and features that have resulted from more than 16 years’ experience in delivering advanced storage virtualisation platforms. DataCore’s  SANsymphonyTM-V platform will be demonstrated and displayed within the “Virtualisation & Storage Forum“ (hall 2, booth A44) organised by distributor, Arrow ECS. Visitors will also be updated on the recently announced Fujitsu DataCore Storage Virtualisation Appliance (SVA), a turnkey bundled solution that combines the best capabilities of both companies. Additionally, DataCore will introduce its next release of DataCore Virtual Desktop Server (VDS) with new enhancements and pricing that make it simple to deploy cost-effective and easy to use virtual desktop environments.

DataCore has a proven track record in delivering software-defined storage (SDS) solutions to more than 10,000 customer sites successfully over the last 16 years. DataCore’s SDS platform optimises and spans all the popular vendor brands and types of storage including flash memory running locally on servers, disk subsystems running over storage networks and even cloud storage. It complements and optimises VMware and Microsoft virtual server and desktop offerings. Most importantly, DataCore’s SANsymphony-V allows businesses to decouple their storage hardware choices from software making hardware buys highly cost-efficient. Businesses are able to free themselves from their dependence on specific hardware manufacturer's feature sets and lock-ins, making it easy to shop and get the best pricing and cost savings when refreshes, upgrades or new purchases have to be done. The software also improves productivity by centralising storage management, adding ultra-high availability capabilities for data protection and dramatically improving performance.

Increasingly modern data centres have adopted the SDS approach to cope with growth, gain agility and to protect and extend the useful life of their existing storage investments. SDS allows new technologies and innovations to be easily incorporated when needed. DataCore offers the industry’s most powerful and comprehensive auto-tiering capability, ’heat maps’ to identify performance bottlenecks, advanced continuous data protection and self-learning ‘in-memory’ performance acceleration caching technologies. Please stop by the stand and speak to the DataCore experts, who will inform and help educate visitors on the latest state of technology as well as provide guidance and outlooks on the future developments.

Test drive the new turnkey Fujitsu DataCore storage virtualization appliances
DataCore and Fujitsu will formerly launch the new line of jointly integrated and tested, high-performance Fujitsu DataCore SVAstorage virtualisation appliances powered by DataCore’s ground breaking SANsymphony-V software platform and Fujitsu’s most advanced PRIMERGY server technology at Cebit 2014.

Additionally, at the show, DataCore will also unveil the latest release of the DataCore VDS 2.1 software, which provides cost-effective virtual desktops for any enterprise. In addition to supporting Windows Server 2012 R2, DataCore VDS will also now support a dual Primary-/Standby-Mode that makes a dedicated hot standby host unnecessary and this greatly increases the availability and usage of the installation. VDI clones can be set up and maintained for each host with a DataCore VDS console. In addition, the licensing model has been revamped and further simplified.

"The hype and the real need around software-defined storage has been acknowledged and promoted by even the major hardware manufacturers who see this movement and the trend to commoditization as inevitable. This validates our approach and confirms to us and to our customers located at more than  10,000 sites worldwide that we have been on the right technology track for over 15 years - with the difference that our software actually spans the wide range of storage, flash and cloud systems and makes hardware dependency a thing of the past. DataCore delivers cost savings, flexibility and efficiency advantages of a  SDS approach to the benefit of the customer", said Stefan von Dreusche, Director Central Europe at DataCore Software."

DataCore is offering free tickets to CeBIT 2014 (Hanover, Germany (March 10th – 14th) at http://www.vs-forum.com/cebit_ticket.html. Please select “DataCore” in the vendor menu and schedule an appointment. You will receive an electronic ticket by e-mail after registration.

To arrange a press briefing with DataCore executives at the "Virtualisation & Storage Forum" (CeBIT, Hall 2 / A40), please contact your local KPR Global partner.