Article: DataCore Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) SoftwareSome approaches to high availability and disaster recovery require that an organization maintain a separate datacenter, DataCore’s approach is to utilize excess capacity in current datacenters. This approach is likely to be appealing to small to medium sized organizations that don’t have the luxury of maintaining a separate datacenter for disaster recovery...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1028
For more information on ASR, see:
http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_live.asp?date=05/11/2009
Friday, 10 July 2009
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
2009 Storage Awards - DataCore's SANmelody wins Green Solution of the Year
The 2009 UK Storage Awards were held in June, with DataCore up for no less than 6 finalist category nominations. DataCore won the Green Storage Solution of the Year for dramatic carbon reductions in space, power, cooling and asset re-utilisation gained from the consolidation and virtualisation project conducted with NCE Group, at the Open University.
Monday, 6 July 2009
FUJIFILM UK focuses on DataCore's SANmelody for Storage Virtualisation and Disaster Recovery
"Consolidation was becoming increasingly necessary to stem the pressure on the team having to backup, manage and ultimately move redundant servers." stated Manish Amriwala, Network and Desktop support team manager, FUJIFILM UK. "We needed a dedicated SAN and virtualised servers that would accommodate our growth and transition us from the restrictions of disk space provided by Direct Attached Storage."
After considering the results of a full cost of ownership report provided by DataCore partner Vcentral which predicted that FUJIFILM UK could have an effective, robust virtualised environment using only 2/3rd of the hardware whilst also providing a watertight Disaster Recovery solution, FUJIFILM UK adopted three DataCore SANmelody 2.0 Fibre Channel SANs running on HP ML370 G5 machines with 12 x 146Gb SAS disks on each machine. Two SANmelody servers act as identical mirrors in active mode; and one being located in a separate DR site 5 miles from the main datacentre connected using a 10Mb LAN Extension link. In this configuration, SANmelody robustly supports the four VMware servers and twelve virtual servers and applications running on the network and provides a full Disaster Recovery solution.
Rollout commenced since March 2008 and within 2 months all major applications were transferred onto the 12 virtual servers. The network carries 3,4 TB or 1.7TB mirrored of data with a further 50% expansion remaining available. Installation was a seamless and relatively painless process notes Manish, "Within just 2-3 hours we had an operational business continuity and disaster recovery solution up and running. Now maintenance and allocating storage is much easier - using SANmelody in a mirrored configuration, patches and new applications and servers can be easily uploaded; as one SANmelody box can be taken down without any interruption to business applications as the other SANmelody takes over"
Plus there have been notable financial benefits in terms of cost savings managing the new virtualised datacentre environment. The team have equated the reduction of costs for the entire virtualisation campaign to being that of around £50,000 - £80,00 per annum in terms of reduction of man days for management and maintenance.
http://www.it-analysis.com/news_release.php?rel=11956
After considering the results of a full cost of ownership report provided by DataCore partner Vcentral which predicted that FUJIFILM UK could have an effective, robust virtualised environment using only 2/3rd of the hardware whilst also providing a watertight Disaster Recovery solution, FUJIFILM UK adopted three DataCore SANmelody 2.0 Fibre Channel SANs running on HP ML370 G5 machines with 12 x 146Gb SAS disks on each machine. Two SANmelody servers act as identical mirrors in active mode; and one being located in a separate DR site 5 miles from the main datacentre connected using a 10Mb LAN Extension link. In this configuration, SANmelody robustly supports the four VMware servers and twelve virtual servers and applications running on the network and provides a full Disaster Recovery solution.
Rollout commenced since March 2008 and within 2 months all major applications were transferred onto the 12 virtual servers. The network carries 3,4 TB or 1.7TB mirrored of data with a further 50% expansion remaining available. Installation was a seamless and relatively painless process notes Manish, "Within just 2-3 hours we had an operational business continuity and disaster recovery solution up and running. Now maintenance and allocating storage is much easier - using SANmelody in a mirrored configuration, patches and new applications and servers can be easily uploaded; as one SANmelody box can be taken down without any interruption to business applications as the other SANmelody takes over"
Plus there have been notable financial benefits in terms of cost savings managing the new virtualised datacentre environment. The team have equated the reduction of costs for the entire virtualisation campaign to being that of around £50,000 - £80,00 per annum in terms of reduction of man days for management and maintenance.
http://www.it-analysis.com/news_release.php?rel=11956
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Oxford University Computing Services uses DataCore's SANmelody™ solution to provide storage for automated 'VM4 rent' virtual infrastructure.
http://www.it-director.com/technology/data_mgmt/news_release.php?rel=11646
Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) is implementing DataCore's SANmelody™ as the storage platform to sit behind their VM4 Rent service.
OUCS Network Systems Management Service (NSMS) provides high quality and cost effective IT services for all members of Oxford University by centrally operating, developing and supporting the University's primary computing infrastructure and services on a charge back basis across 25 colleges and 15 departments across many campuses throughout Oxford. As a department, NSMS' time is frequently spent supporting smaller departments with very limited IT resources.
To this end, NSMS is moving towards adoption of a totally self automated, self provisioning, web based virtualised model known internally as "VM4rent" by, in effect, renting Virtual Machines to their customers (Previously NSMS' data centre would provide storage services out across Fibre Channel SANs served by IBM/EMC direct attached storage). The infrastructure behind the VM4rent model includes two centralised VMware ESX 3.5 servers and virtualised storage through DataCore's SANmelody™, supporting VMware applications and seamlessly provisioning storage on demand. This virtualised computing on demand service is extremely useful for those departments who require a temporary service - such as a research project that has been granted funding for a year.
...Jon Hutchings, Senior Systems Engineer, OUCS Network Systems Management Service, notes of SANmelody, "The principles behind our VM4rent scheme are perfectly echoed and served by SANmelody; allowing us to plug in storage and support virtual servers as and when we need, ultimately providing a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend"
Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) is implementing DataCore's SANmelody™ as the storage platform to sit behind their VM4 Rent service.
OUCS Network Systems Management Service (NSMS) provides high quality and cost effective IT services for all members of Oxford University by centrally operating, developing and supporting the University's primary computing infrastructure and services on a charge back basis across 25 colleges and 15 departments across many campuses throughout Oxford. As a department, NSMS' time is frequently spent supporting smaller departments with very limited IT resources.
To this end, NSMS is moving towards adoption of a totally self automated, self provisioning, web based virtualised model known internally as "VM4rent" by, in effect, renting Virtual Machines to their customers (Previously NSMS' data centre would provide storage services out across Fibre Channel SANs served by IBM/EMC direct attached storage). The infrastructure behind the VM4rent model includes two centralised VMware ESX 3.5 servers and virtualised storage through DataCore's SANmelody™, supporting VMware applications and seamlessly provisioning storage on demand. This virtualised computing on demand service is extremely useful for those departments who require a temporary service - such as a research project that has been granted funding for a year.
...Jon Hutchings, Senior Systems Engineer, OUCS Network Systems Management Service, notes of SANmelody, "The principles behind our VM4rent scheme are perfectly echoed and served by SANmelody; allowing us to plug in storage and support virtual servers as and when we need, ultimately providing a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend"
Monday, 15 June 2009
Delivering Storage Virtualization into Private Clouds
http://www.oncloudcomputing.com/en/2009/06/datacore-software-announces-external-it-to-deliver-storage-virtualization-into-private-clouds/
"I was first exposed to DataCore at a Brian Madden conference," said Joseph Stedler, senior engineer and Dallas data center manager, External IT.
Stedler summarizes the value of a storage virtualization approach as follows, "I have worked with traditional SANs for eight years and have had firsthand experience with every major hardware SAN under the sun - EMC, HP, NetApp, etc." he said. "There are various, major drawbacks to hardware SANs. One is the fact that there is a single point of failure at the disk level. This is particularly the case when doing, for example, firmware upgrades - on the controllers, on the disks, on the shelves - whereby you have to take the SAN down to perform that task. The second most irksome characteristic of hardware SANs is their cost. These EMC SANs, these HP EVAs are inherently expensive, particularly during upgrade time."
The Value of DataCore: Uptime, Performance and Much More
"There are capabilities that DataCore brings to the table that I absolutely love," commented Stedler. "The concept of having two SANs as your one SAN environment is just elegantly simple. You have an 'A' side and a 'B' side." The beauty of this is that if you need to do hardware maintenance or firmware upgrades, an administrator can actually take down half of the SAN and still have the other half serving production traffic - completely uninterrupted. The second, major benefit of DataCore for External IT has to do with performance. "With DataCore, you will experience enormous performance gains," noted Stedler. "The performance that DataCore delivers is nothing short of awesome."
"I was first exposed to DataCore at a Brian Madden conference," said Joseph Stedler, senior engineer and Dallas data center manager, External IT.
Stedler summarizes the value of a storage virtualization approach as follows, "I have worked with traditional SANs for eight years and have had firsthand experience with every major hardware SAN under the sun - EMC, HP, NetApp, etc." he said. "There are various, major drawbacks to hardware SANs. One is the fact that there is a single point of failure at the disk level. This is particularly the case when doing, for example, firmware upgrades - on the controllers, on the disks, on the shelves - whereby you have to take the SAN down to perform that task. The second most irksome characteristic of hardware SANs is their cost. These EMC SANs, these HP EVAs are inherently expensive, particularly during upgrade time."
The Value of DataCore: Uptime, Performance and Much More
"There are capabilities that DataCore brings to the table that I absolutely love," commented Stedler. "The concept of having two SANs as your one SAN environment is just elegantly simple. You have an 'A' side and a 'B' side." The beauty of this is that if you need to do hardware maintenance or firmware upgrades, an administrator can actually take down half of the SAN and still have the other half serving production traffic - completely uninterrupted. The second, major benefit of DataCore for External IT has to do with performance. "With DataCore, you will experience enormous performance gains," noted Stedler. "The performance that DataCore delivers is nothing short of awesome."
Friday, 12 June 2009
NCE Scoop Best Storage Virtualisation Reseller in Northern Europe at DataCore Customer Conference
DataCore Software recently gathered partners, integrators and resellers to their annual European Storage Virtualisation Partner Conference at The Golden Tulip, LTU-Arena Duesseldorf. Concluding the Conference was a prestigous partner awards ceremony where NCE scooped the Best Storage Virtualisation Reseller in Northern Europe accolade, handed to them by Christian Hagen, WW VP Sales & Marketing, DataCore Software.
"The awards ceremony was the culmination of a successful and productive partner conference that focussed on maximising the opportunities and growth potential from storage virtualisation within the present economic climate." Commented Iris Hatzenbichler, marketing & operations manager EMEA in DataCore. "We provided our top partners with awards in recognition of the
growth of opportunities and their ongoing commitment to DataCore."
Throughout the conference, partners had briefings from technical gurus; sales experts and heard first hand about the additional revenue opportunities that the new versions of flagship solutions SANsymphony 7.0 and SANmelody 3.0 will provide the market. Additionally, complementary
vendors and distribution partners provided overviews of the market and unveiled additional areas of potential growth.
John Greenwood, Solution Sales Director, NCE commented, "It was really pleasing to receive the award. We have enjoyed a great relationship with DataCore for many years, so to receive 'Best Reseller' is an honour that will take pride of place." Matt Moss, NCE was at the event to receive the award.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
DataCore Unveils Advanced Site Recovery Solution for Virtual and Physical IT Infrastructures
DataCore Unveils Advanced Site Recovery Solution for Virtual and Physical IT Infrastructures
http://www.snseurope.com/snslink/news/news-full.php?id=11927%26result=datacore
Advanced Site Recovery (ASR): This new component of DataCore's comprehensive business continuity portfolio allows central IT organizations to cost-effectively spread disaster recovery (DR) responsibilities among several smaller sites. Furthermore, the solution makes no distinction between virtual and physical servers, unifying their restoration in a common, automated process. DataCore is also using the occasion to demonstrate how expanded 64-bit features in the newest releases of SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ benefit Microsoft users.
"The industry is conditioned to think of DR as a one-to-one proposition. They place unreasonable demands on a single recovery site, asking them to suddenly take over much larger workloads under very stressful conditions," argues James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software.
"But most organizations aren't structured that way. They look more like a hub and spoke, with smaller branches emanating from the central data center. For this reason, DataCore's Advanced Site Recovery distributes the disaster recovery workloads among these smaller entities, allowing each of them to accept a more manageable role in keeping the business going."
Distributed DR
DataCore's unique one-to-many approach fits well within the networking, computational and storage capacity constraints found in branch locations. And it also factors in staff and real estate limitations.
Same for Virtual and Physical Systems
As importantly, the solution is not confined to virtual servers. It operates identically with the many physical systems that make up large part of IT infrastructures today. Offering a congruent DR method for all of these environments eliminates catastrophic misalignments that plague divergent processes.
Central Site RestorationBuilt-in
DataCore's Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) software also addresses the rapid restoration of the central IT site from the widely dispersed branches through ongoing bi-directional replication. Other DR alternatives don't account for this critical aspect and end up prolonging the crippling effects of an outage long after the central machines could take over their original chores.
Universal Coverage for Heterogeneous Scenarios
ASR works whether the servers are purely physical, or have been virtualized with Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware or other popular hypervisors. Moreover, it supports the use of dissimilar storage devices between the data center and its branches. In contrast, lack of such heterogeneous features in competing, and much pricier, disk array-based replication products makes them unsuitable for many customers.
DataCore: Essential to Microsoft Hyper-V Configurations
DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from storage assets, making it an essential element of Microsoft Hyper-V configurations.The newest, 64-bit versions of DataCore's flagship SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions include advances in performance, migration, thin provisioning, and high-availability.
Among the new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 that will certainly serve to benefit the demanding needs of Microsoft users are large ‘mega caches' to accelerate SAN performance, non-stop high-availability, universal storage controllers that are Windows Server 2008-based, a simple and fast ‘Transporter' option, and ‘waste-free reclamation' of storage space.For more details on these newest versions of DataCore's high-performance storage solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/software2009.
ASR Availability and More Information
Advance Site Recovery implementation services will be available through DataCore ASR-certified implementation partners beginning end of June 2009.
http://www.snseurope.com/snslink/news/news-full.php?id=11927%26result=datacore
Advanced Site Recovery (ASR): This new component of DataCore's comprehensive business continuity portfolio allows central IT organizations to cost-effectively spread disaster recovery (DR) responsibilities among several smaller sites. Furthermore, the solution makes no distinction between virtual and physical servers, unifying their restoration in a common, automated process. DataCore is also using the occasion to demonstrate how expanded 64-bit features in the newest releases of SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ benefit Microsoft users.
"The industry is conditioned to think of DR as a one-to-one proposition. They place unreasonable demands on a single recovery site, asking them to suddenly take over much larger workloads under very stressful conditions," argues James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software.
"But most organizations aren't structured that way. They look more like a hub and spoke, with smaller branches emanating from the central data center. For this reason, DataCore's Advanced Site Recovery distributes the disaster recovery workloads among these smaller entities, allowing each of them to accept a more manageable role in keeping the business going."
Distributed DR
DataCore's unique one-to-many approach fits well within the networking, computational and storage capacity constraints found in branch locations. And it also factors in staff and real estate limitations.
Same for Virtual and Physical Systems
As importantly, the solution is not confined to virtual servers. It operates identically with the many physical systems that make up large part of IT infrastructures today. Offering a congruent DR method for all of these environments eliminates catastrophic misalignments that plague divergent processes.
Central Site RestorationBuilt-in
DataCore's Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) software also addresses the rapid restoration of the central IT site from the widely dispersed branches through ongoing bi-directional replication. Other DR alternatives don't account for this critical aspect and end up prolonging the crippling effects of an outage long after the central machines could take over their original chores.
Universal Coverage for Heterogeneous Scenarios
ASR works whether the servers are purely physical, or have been virtualized with Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware or other popular hypervisors. Moreover, it supports the use of dissimilar storage devices between the data center and its branches. In contrast, lack of such heterogeneous features in competing, and much pricier, disk array-based replication products makes them unsuitable for many customers.
DataCore: Essential to Microsoft Hyper-V Configurations
DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from storage assets, making it an essential element of Microsoft Hyper-V configurations.The newest, 64-bit versions of DataCore's flagship SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions include advances in performance, migration, thin provisioning, and high-availability.
Among the new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 that will certainly serve to benefit the demanding needs of Microsoft users are large ‘mega caches' to accelerate SAN performance, non-stop high-availability, universal storage controllers that are Windows Server 2008-based, a simple and fast ‘Transporter' option, and ‘waste-free reclamation' of storage space.For more details on these newest versions of DataCore's high-performance storage solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/software2009.
ASR Availability and More Information
Advance Site Recovery implementation services will be available through DataCore ASR-certified implementation partners beginning end of June 2009.
TechTarget UK: Retail Giant Co-op Jersey opts for low-cost DataCore Software SAN
UK Retail giant Co-Op opts for DataCore Software
http://searchstorage.techtarget.co.uk/news/article/0,289142,sid181_gci1357657,00.html
Co-Op Jersey has implemented DataCore Software's SANmelody software-based storage-area network (SAN) as shared storage to support a VMware-based server virtualisation project. The resulting iSCSI SAN -- which replaced existing direct-attached storage (DAS) -- runs on two IBM servers in which all disk writes are replicated instantly across the wide-area network to provide total redundancy.
"Downtime for maintenance and provisioning new servers isn't acceptable," said Don Le Clercq, IT manager at Co-Op Jersey. "To enable this, we have used a combination of two IBM servers along with DataCore's SANmelody to provide a synchronously mirrored high-availability architecture."
http://searchstorage.techtarget.co.uk/news/article/0,289142,sid181_gci1357657,00.html
Co-Op Jersey has implemented DataCore Software's SANmelody software-based storage-area network (SAN) as shared storage to support a VMware-based server virtualisation project. The resulting iSCSI SAN -- which replaced existing direct-attached storage (DAS) -- runs on two IBM servers in which all disk writes are replicated instantly across the wide-area network to provide total redundancy.
"Downtime for maintenance and provisioning new servers isn't acceptable," said Don Le Clercq, IT manager at Co-Op Jersey. "To enable this, we have used a combination of two IBM servers along with DataCore's SANmelody to provide a synchronously mirrored high-availability architecture."
Monday, 1 June 2009
SANmelody at the Co-Op Jersey is a Fairtrade for High Availability.
DataCore has announced that together with DataCore's trained and accredited partner, VirtualizeIT, they have installed SANmelody™ as the storage area network (SAN) virtual infrastructure at Co-Op Jersey's office and branch network. The Co-Op is one of the UKs largest retailers with over 2,500 recently refurbished food stores and supermarkets around the
“In a constantly trading retail business such as ours, availability of store and office data is paramount.” stated Don Le Clercq, IT Manager, Co-Op Jersey. Downtime for maintenance and provisioning new servers is not acceptable. To enable this, we have used a combination of two IBM servers along with DataCore’s SANmelody to provide a synchronously mirrored high availability architecture.”
The Co-Op moved from direct attached storage to virtualised storage 18 months after the retail giant adopted two physical servers running VMware’s ESX and now hosts 15 virtual servers running critical applications protected by SANmelody.
The Co-Op connected the two storage servers over their WAN where all disk write I/Os are replicated instantly - providing total redundancy. In this configuration an entire storage server can fail without impact on the SAN or ESX hosts.
“Co-Op
DataCore Ships 64-bit SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0; Advances in Performance, Migration, Thin Provisioning, and High-availability Improve Storage
http://webmail.datacore.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=10691
For more details on the newest versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony, access the following presentation: http://www.datacore.com/software2009.
‘Mega Cache’ for SAN performance, Simple & Fast ‘Transporter’ Option, ‘Waste-free Reclamation’ of Storage Space, and Non-Stop High-availability are now shipping
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced the general availability of the newest versions of its flagship SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions. SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 deliver SAN-wide performance boosts, radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for virtual server and virtual infrastructure users. Product highlights include x64 versions, a new “Transporter” feature allowing for conversion between the different flavors of physical and virtual servers, a pioneering, waste-free space reclamation capability for thin provisioning, and ground-breaking support for “mega caches” that deliver lightning-fast (electronic memory speed), storage performance.
For more details on the newest versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony, access the following presentation: http://www.datacore.com/software2009.
DataCore: Non-stop, Lightning Fast, Waste-Free Storage Solutions
“The x64 versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony materially improve performance, and utilization for virtual infrastructure shared storage especially through their ability to create very large memory-based caches,” said Jack Fegreus, CEO, openBench Labs, a Southborough, Mass.-based consultancy and product testing firm. “More importantly innovations such as the new Transporter continue to make DataCore a leader in simplifying and consolidating virtual infrastructure management, which is the most critical area for IT cost savings. DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach is the wave of the future for virtual infrastructure as integration increases between SANs and servers.”
Save More. Do More.
“DataCore is one of a few vendors that is answering user demand to do more with less. With solutions like this you can not only drive down capital [CapEX] costs while improving reliability you can also improve administrator and operational [OpEX] efficiency by centralizing storage operations to a single platform,” states George Crump, founder and senior analyst, Storage Switzerland.
DataCore solutions offer incredible value since they enable customers to enhance, optimize and consolidate their storage infrastructure and to get more productivity out of their existing systems. DataCore consolidates and optimizes storage resources by 60%, while greatly accelerating performance. For lightning-fast performance, DataCore enables memory speed caching to accelerate read/write access so more work can be accomplished in the same given time. Learn more about ROI and cost savings with DataCore at: http://www.datacore.com/costsavings.
New features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 include:
Lightning-fast, 64-bit “Mega Caches” Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are native 64-bit controller software with support for mega cache capacities, which is ideal for Database, Exchange and other I/O demanding applications “In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king,” commented James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software. “DataCore’s solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric.” The entire working set of a large number of virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide cache for unprecedented performance. Behind the cache, VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and other virtual server customers can grow their storage pools from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Non-stop, Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage Virtual Infrastructure
Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications. According to George Crump, “The result is that you can confidently take half of your storage infrastructure out-of-service for routine maintenance any time of day without suffering downtime. And of course, you can sustain a major storage hardware failure without disturbing users” (Excerpted from George Crump’s article “Are you serious about high availability?”). Link to full article: www.datacore.com/downloads/SeriousHA.pdf.
Waste-free, Efficient Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks and storage (independent of vendor brand name) rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. In the new releases, previously allocated or thinly provisioned space can be reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems no longer need it.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for either virtual or physical x86 and x64 platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support and Tighter Integration to VMware Virtual Center
DataCore’s “Transporter” time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems – eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions. A plug-in for VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure Client is a no-charge option that allows administrators to non-disruptively provision, share, clone, replicate and expand virtual disks among physical servers and VMs.
SANmelody and SANsymphony Make Non-stop High Availability Practical
DataCore does high-availability better – making business continuity and disaster recovery solutions practical.
Simple, fail-safe SAN data protection
Unique, automatic failover and failback
Priced right for Small and Mid-size Business
Full-featured, HA SAN software (Thin provisioning, Snapshots, Synchronous and Asynchronous Replication)
No-penalty upgradeability and a “future proofed” growth path
For more information, please go to http://www.datacore.com/SANpackages.
For more details on the newest versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony, access the following presentation: http://www.datacore.com/software2009.
‘Mega Cache’ for SAN performance, Simple & Fast ‘Transporter’ Option, ‘Waste-free Reclamation’ of Storage Space, and Non-Stop High-availability are now shipping
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced the general availability of the newest versions of its flagship SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions. SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 deliver SAN-wide performance boosts, radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for virtual server and virtual infrastructure users. Product highlights include x64 versions, a new “Transporter” feature allowing for conversion between the different flavors of physical and virtual servers, a pioneering, waste-free space reclamation capability for thin provisioning, and ground-breaking support for “mega caches” that deliver lightning-fast (electronic memory speed), storage performance.
For more details on the newest versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony, access the following presentation: http://www.datacore.com/software2009.
DataCore: Non-stop, Lightning Fast, Waste-Free Storage Solutions
“The x64 versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony materially improve performance, and utilization for virtual infrastructure shared storage especially through their ability to create very large memory-based caches,” said Jack Fegreus, CEO, openBench Labs, a Southborough, Mass.-based consultancy and product testing firm. “More importantly innovations such as the new Transporter continue to make DataCore a leader in simplifying and consolidating virtual infrastructure management, which is the most critical area for IT cost savings. DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach is the wave of the future for virtual infrastructure as integration increases between SANs and servers.”
Save More. Do More.
“DataCore is one of a few vendors that is answering user demand to do more with less. With solutions like this you can not only drive down capital [CapEX] costs while improving reliability you can also improve administrator and operational [OpEX] efficiency by centralizing storage operations to a single platform,” states George Crump, founder and senior analyst, Storage Switzerland.
DataCore solutions offer incredible value since they enable customers to enhance, optimize and consolidate their storage infrastructure and to get more productivity out of their existing systems. DataCore consolidates and optimizes storage resources by 60%, while greatly accelerating performance. For lightning-fast performance, DataCore enables memory speed caching to accelerate read/write access so more work can be accomplished in the same given time. Learn more about ROI and cost savings with DataCore at: http://www.datacore.com/costsavings.
New features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 include:
Lightning-fast, 64-bit “Mega Caches” Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are native 64-bit controller software with support for mega cache capacities, which is ideal for Database, Exchange and other I/O demanding applications “In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king,” commented James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software. “DataCore’s solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric.” The entire working set of a large number of virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide cache for unprecedented performance. Behind the cache, VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and other virtual server customers can grow their storage pools from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Non-stop, Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage Virtual Infrastructure
Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications. According to George Crump, “The result is that you can confidently take half of your storage infrastructure out-of-service for routine maintenance any time of day without suffering downtime. And of course, you can sustain a major storage hardware failure without disturbing users” (Excerpted from George Crump’s article “Are you serious about high availability?”). Link to full article: www.datacore.com/downloads/SeriousHA.pdf.
Waste-free, Efficient Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks and storage (independent of vendor brand name) rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. In the new releases, previously allocated or thinly provisioned space can be reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems no longer need it.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for either virtual or physical x86 and x64 platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support and Tighter Integration to VMware Virtual Center
DataCore’s “Transporter” time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems – eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions. A plug-in for VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure Client is a no-charge option that allows administrators to non-disruptively provision, share, clone, replicate and expand virtual disks among physical servers and VMs.
SANmelody and SANsymphony Make Non-stop High Availability Practical
DataCore does high-availability better – making business continuity and disaster recovery solutions practical.
Simple, fail-safe SAN data protection
Unique, automatic failover and failback
Priced right for Small and Mid-size Business
Full-featured, HA SAN software (Thin provisioning, Snapshots, Synchronous and Asynchronous Replication)
No-penalty upgradeability and a “future proofed” growth path
For more information, please go to http://www.datacore.com/SANpackages.
DataCore and StorageLink - storage management for the Citrix and Microsoft Hypre-V virtual infrastructure worlds
http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/05/06/datacore-announces-citrix-essentials-storagelink-integration-and-showcases-non-stop-storage-solutions-for-microsoft-hyper-v-and-xendesktop-vdi.aspx"
StorageLink provides a rich integration point between DataCore's Storage Virtualization Software and Citrix Essentials," stated James Price, vice president of product and channel marketing, DataCore Software.Citrix StorageLink is a component of the new Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V products - enabling simpler, integrated deployment of virtualization and storage solutions.
"Most virtual environments encompass diverse storage devices with disparate or non-existent management tools," continued Price. "DataCore consolidates the configuration, control and monitoring of these dissimilar disk subsystems under one unified management interface. This reduces complexity and costs by allowing administrators to satisfy the varied capacity, availability and performance needs of XenServer and Hyper-V virtual machines through coordinated and consistent requests, irrespective of the underlying storage hardware."
DataCore makes high availability SANs practical - offering non-stop storage and high performance for Citrix and Microsoft Hyper-V environments
"Many customers are stunned by the high costs and major overhaul generally proposed to put a new shared storage configuration in place," cautions Price. "And there's no getting past the sticker shock after hearing that 90% of their virtualization budget will be chewed up just to roll in a new SAN.""Instead, DataCore storage virtualization software recasts all of their storage and any extra servers they may have into a fully virtualized, highly available, shared storage pool at a fraction of the cost, without compromising performance, functionality or peace of mind."
StorageLink provides a rich integration point between DataCore's Storage Virtualization Software and Citrix Essentials," stated James Price, vice president of product and channel marketing, DataCore Software.Citrix StorageLink is a component of the new Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V products - enabling simpler, integrated deployment of virtualization and storage solutions.
"Most virtual environments encompass diverse storage devices with disparate or non-existent management tools," continued Price. "DataCore consolidates the configuration, control and monitoring of these dissimilar disk subsystems under one unified management interface. This reduces complexity and costs by allowing administrators to satisfy the varied capacity, availability and performance needs of XenServer and Hyper-V virtual machines through coordinated and consistent requests, irrespective of the underlying storage hardware."
DataCore makes high availability SANs practical - offering non-stop storage and high performance for Citrix and Microsoft Hyper-V environments
"Many customers are stunned by the high costs and major overhaul generally proposed to put a new shared storage configuration in place," cautions Price. "And there's no getting past the sticker shock after hearing that 90% of their virtualization budget will be chewed up just to roll in a new SAN.""Instead, DataCore storage virtualization software recasts all of their storage and any extra servers they may have into a fully virtualized, highly available, shared storage pool at a fraction of the cost, without compromising performance, functionality or peace of mind."
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
UK Storage Awards - DataCore announced as finalists in more categories than any other company!
Vote for DataCore: Click Here
The countdown is on – DataCore are proud to be finalists in six categories for the UK Storage Awards, including the Product of the Year, and for the first time, Storage Company of the Year.
Keith Joseph, Regional Manager, commented, “We really value and appreciate these awards, but we need your help to achieve success.
Every vote counts, so please cast your vote before May 29th “
STORAGE VIRTUALISATION PRODUCT OF THE YEAR (SANmelody 3.0)
STORAGE MAGAZINE '' VALUE FOR MONEY '' AWARD (SANmelody)
SAN SOLUTION OF THE YEAR (
GREEN STORAGE SOLUTION OF THE YEAR (The Open University KMI with NCE & VMWare)
STORAGE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR
STORAGE COMPANY OF THE YEAR
Vote for DataCore today: http://www.caddealer.com/storageday/proto/index.php?page=nominations
The winners are announced on June 11th.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
SANmelody 3.0 New Tools and Screenshots
Check out the SANmelody Tunes Blog and see the latest screenshots of SANmelody 3.0
SANmelody Tunes: SANMelody 3.0 New Tools. Suprise Suprise, there is actually some nice new features/functionality in the newly released SANMelody 3.0. that should make life a little easier for SANMelody administrators.....
SANmelody Tunes: SANMelody 3.0 New Tools. Suprise Suprise, there is actually some nice new features/functionality in the newly released SANMelody 3.0. that should make life a little easier for SANMelody administrators.....
Monday, 4 May 2009
Your Invite to the Virtual Inside Track Event at Mercedes-Benz World
Thursday 21 May, Mercedes-Benz World, Weybridge, Surrey.
http://www.it-director.com/technology/storage/event.php?eve=303
We recognise that taking to the virtual track can be a daunting process. Top virtualisation manufacturers, VMware and DataCore Software have teamed up to host an IT Director level morning event that takes you through the journey of server and storage virtualisation and the tangible benefits that consolidation on this scale can bring, looking at the latest advances on the virtualisation roadmaps. And to finish off the morning, we are holding a track passenger experience at the hands of Mercedes-Benz' top driving instructors. It promises to be an informative and memorable event.
Our top reseller partners are inviting and hosting you as guests of VMware and DataCore.
Format of the day:
9:30 Registration opens - coffee & bacon rolls
10:00 Seminar opens - Welcome inside the Virtual Track -Nick Broadbent, MD, DataCore Software
10:05 Increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your IT operations through Virtualisation.James Smith, Systems Engineer, VMware UK.
11.00 DataCore - Virtual Storage in a Physical World - Reducing costs and increasing utilisation:Keith Joseph, Regional Manager, DataCore Software
12:00 Lunch
12:45 Driving experience introduction - Mercedes-Benz host
1:00 Track passenger experience commences
2:30 Event close
To register email sharon.munday@datacore.com
Thursday 21 May, Mercedes-Benz World, Weybridge, Surrey.
How Much?
This is a FREE event. There is no charge.
Further Information
Tel: +44 (0) 1189 745418Email: sharon.munday@datacore.com
http://www.it-director.com/technology/storage/event.php?eve=303
We recognise that taking to the virtual track can be a daunting process. Top virtualisation manufacturers, VMware and DataCore Software have teamed up to host an IT Director level morning event that takes you through the journey of server and storage virtualisation and the tangible benefits that consolidation on this scale can bring, looking at the latest advances on the virtualisation roadmaps. And to finish off the morning, we are holding a track passenger experience at the hands of Mercedes-Benz' top driving instructors. It promises to be an informative and memorable event.
Our top reseller partners are inviting and hosting you as guests of VMware and DataCore.
Format of the day:
9:30 Registration opens - coffee & bacon rolls
10:00 Seminar opens - Welcome inside the Virtual Track -Nick Broadbent, MD, DataCore Software
10:05 Increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your IT operations through Virtualisation.James Smith, Systems Engineer, VMware UK.
11.00 DataCore - Virtual Storage in a Physical World - Reducing costs and increasing utilisation:Keith Joseph, Regional Manager, DataCore Software
12:00 Lunch
12:45 Driving experience introduction - Mercedes-Benz host
1:00 Track passenger experience commences
2:30 Event close
To register email sharon.munday@datacore.com
Thursday 21 May, Mercedes-Benz World, Weybridge, Surrey.
How Much?
This is a FREE event. There is no charge.
Further Information
Tel: +44 (0) 1189 745418Email: sharon.munday@datacore.com
Saturday, 2 May 2009
DataCore ships 64-bit SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage software solutions
Computer Technology Review Article
http://www.wwpi.com/storage/storage/7028-datacore-ships-64-bit-sanmelody-30-sansymphony-70-storage-solutions
For presentation on latest capabilities, please see:
DataCore New Release Presentation
The new product highlights include x64 versions, a new "Transporter" feature allowing for conversion between the different flavors of physical and virtual servers, a pioneering, waste-free space reclamation capability for thin provisioning, and ground-breaking support for "mega caches" that deliver lightning-fast (electronic memory speed), storage performance.
"The x64 versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony materially improve performance, and utilization for virtual infrastructure shared storage especially through their ability to create very large memory-based caches," said Jack Fegreus, CEO, openBench Labs, a Southborough, Massachusetts-based consultancy and product testing firm. "More importantly innovations such as the new Transporter continue to make DataCore a provider of simplifying and consolidating virtual infrastructure management, which is the most critical area for IT cost savings. DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach is the wave of the future for virtual infrastructure as integration increases between SANs and servers."
"DataCore is one of a few vendors that is answering user demand to do more with less. With solutions like this you can not only drive down capital (capital expenditure) costs, while improving reliability you can also improve administrator and operational (operating expenditure) efficiency by centralizing storage operations to a single platform," states George Crump, founder and senior analyst, Storage Switzerland.
DataCore solutions enable customers to enhance, optimize and consolidate their storage infrastructure and to get more productivity out of their existing systems. DataCore consolidates and optimizes storage resources by 60 percent, while accelerating performance. For lightning-fast performance, DataCore enables memory speed caching to accelerate read/write access, so more work can be accomplished in the same given time.
http://www.wwpi.com/storage/storage/7028-datacore-ships-64-bit-sanmelody-30-sansymphony-70-storage-solutions
For presentation on latest capabilities, please see:
DataCore New Release Presentation
The new product highlights include x64 versions, a new "Transporter" feature allowing for conversion between the different flavors of physical and virtual servers, a pioneering, waste-free space reclamation capability for thin provisioning, and ground-breaking support for "mega caches" that deliver lightning-fast (electronic memory speed), storage performance.
"The x64 versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony materially improve performance, and utilization for virtual infrastructure shared storage especially through their ability to create very large memory-based caches," said Jack Fegreus, CEO, openBench Labs, a Southborough, Massachusetts-based consultancy and product testing firm. "More importantly innovations such as the new Transporter continue to make DataCore a provider of simplifying and consolidating virtual infrastructure management, which is the most critical area for IT cost savings. DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach is the wave of the future for virtual infrastructure as integration increases between SANs and servers."
"DataCore is one of a few vendors that is answering user demand to do more with less. With solutions like this you can not only drive down capital (capital expenditure) costs, while improving reliability you can also improve administrator and operational (operating expenditure) efficiency by centralizing storage operations to a single platform," states George Crump, founder and senior analyst, Storage Switzerland.
DataCore solutions enable customers to enhance, optimize and consolidate their storage infrastructure and to get more productivity out of their existing systems. DataCore consolidates and optimizes storage resources by 60 percent, while accelerating performance. For lightning-fast performance, DataCore enables memory speed caching to accelerate read/write access, so more work can be accomplished in the same given time.
Monday, 27 April 2009
DataCore Announces Updated Partner Program at Microsoft Management Summit 2009: Targets Virtualization and Microsoft Hyper-V Partners
DataCore Encourages Resellers to “Knock Down Storage-related Barriers to Virtualization” with New Partner Benefits
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=10690
DataCore Software is using the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2009 to announce updates to its SANvantage™ Partner Program. The updated Partner Program includes new lead registration incentives, as well as a new “open-door” model that helps encourage more resellers to sell DataCore solutions. DataCore is also using the occasion to demonstrate how new, ground-breaking features in the newest releases of SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ benefit Microsoft users and therefore greatly increase opportunities for Microsoft resellers. The bottom-line: new partner incentives as well as new enhancements to DataCore’s industry-leading storage virtualization technology solutions will enable virtualization and storage partners to fast-track sales of DataCore’s business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) software solutions.
Why Solution Providers and Resellers Should Partner with DataCore
DataCore is committed to the reseller community and working with solution providers to stimulate, accelerate and grow their virtualization business. DataCore’s updated Partner Program and incentives serve as a stimulus program for partners – enabling them to accelerate their virtualization business.
First, with its “open door” model, DataCore has made it far simpler for first-time solution providers to become a DataCore reseller.
Second, as part of its updated Partner Program, DataCore has increased and simplified lead registration incentives. The lead registration incentives now apply to all software product sales – new customers, upgrades and follow-on sales.
Third, DataCore has established “SAN starter” promotions for its industry-leading BC and DR packages that are designed for resellers to kick-start business and grow with DataCore’s ”value protection, upgrade path” model.
To learn more about the DataCore SANvantage Partner Program and find out how you can ‘Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualization’ please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore.
Accelerate Your Sales and Empower Users to “Do More and Save More”
DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from your storage assets, making it an essential element of Microsoft Hyper-V configurations. DataCore’s storage virtualization software solutions provide unmatched return on investment and help clients “Do More and Save More.” Learn more at: www.datacore.com/costsavings.
DataCore’s new solutions provide unmatched performance; particularly for those solution providers supplying Microsoft Hyper-V, Exchange and SQL based solutions. The newest, x64 versions of DataCore’s flagship SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions include advances in performance, migration, thin provisioning, and high-availability that improve storage. Among the new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 that will certainly serve to benefit the demanding needs of Microsoft users are large ‘mega cache’ support to accelerate SAN performance, non-stop high-availability, universal storage controllers that are Windows Server 2008-based, a simple and fast ‘Transporter’ option, and ‘waste-free reclamation’ of storage space.
For more details on these newest versions of DataCore’s high-performance storage solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/software2009.
Get on Board with a DataCore Distributor – Today!
VARs and system integrators that want to learn more about the new benefits of DataCore’s Partner Program should contact any of DataCore’s UK distributors:
Bell Micro www.bellmicro.eu , DNS Arrow www.dnsarrow.co.uk , or Magirus www.magirus.com
See DataCore at Microsoft Management Summit 2009
MMS 2009 is the premier event of the year for IT Professionals seeking deep technical information and training on the latest IT Management solutions from Microsoft, Partners and Industry Experts. Microsoft Management Summit 2009 runs April 27 - May 1, 2009 at the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. DataCore Software is an Exhibiting Sponsor and may be found at Booth 617. For more, visit http://mms-2009.com.
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=10690
DataCore Software is using the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2009 to announce updates to its SANvantage™ Partner Program. The updated Partner Program includes new lead registration incentives, as well as a new “open-door” model that helps encourage more resellers to sell DataCore solutions. DataCore is also using the occasion to demonstrate how new, ground-breaking features in the newest releases of SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ benefit Microsoft users and therefore greatly increase opportunities for Microsoft resellers. The bottom-line: new partner incentives as well as new enhancements to DataCore’s industry-leading storage virtualization technology solutions will enable virtualization and storage partners to fast-track sales of DataCore’s business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) software solutions.
Why Solution Providers and Resellers Should Partner with DataCore
DataCore is committed to the reseller community and working with solution providers to stimulate, accelerate and grow their virtualization business. DataCore’s updated Partner Program and incentives serve as a stimulus program for partners – enabling them to accelerate their virtualization business.
First, with its “open door” model, DataCore has made it far simpler for first-time solution providers to become a DataCore reseller.
Second, as part of its updated Partner Program, DataCore has increased and simplified lead registration incentives. The lead registration incentives now apply to all software product sales – new customers, upgrades and follow-on sales.
Third, DataCore has established “SAN starter” promotions for its industry-leading BC and DR packages that are designed for resellers to kick-start business and grow with DataCore’s ”value protection, upgrade path” model.
To learn more about the DataCore SANvantage Partner Program and find out how you can ‘Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualization’ please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore.
Accelerate Your Sales and Empower Users to “Do More and Save More”
DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from your storage assets, making it an essential element of Microsoft Hyper-V configurations. DataCore’s storage virtualization software solutions provide unmatched return on investment and help clients “Do More and Save More.” Learn more at: www.datacore.com/costsavings.
DataCore’s new solutions provide unmatched performance; particularly for those solution providers supplying Microsoft Hyper-V, Exchange and SQL based solutions. The newest, x64 versions of DataCore’s flagship SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions include advances in performance, migration, thin provisioning, and high-availability that improve storage. Among the new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 that will certainly serve to benefit the demanding needs of Microsoft users are large ‘mega cache’ support to accelerate SAN performance, non-stop high-availability, universal storage controllers that are Windows Server 2008-based, a simple and fast ‘Transporter’ option, and ‘waste-free reclamation’ of storage space.
For more details on these newest versions of DataCore’s high-performance storage solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/software2009.
Get on Board with a DataCore Distributor – Today!
VARs and system integrators that want to learn more about the new benefits of DataCore’s Partner Program should contact any of DataCore’s UK distributors:
Bell Micro www.bellmicro.eu , DNS Arrow www.dnsarrow.co.uk , or Magirus www.magirus.com
See DataCore at Microsoft Management Summit 2009
MMS 2009 is the premier event of the year for IT Professionals seeking deep technical information and training on the latest IT Management solutions from Microsoft, Partners and Industry Experts. Microsoft Management Summit 2009 runs April 27 - May 1, 2009 at the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. DataCore Software is an Exhibiting Sponsor and may be found at Booth 617. For more, visit http://mms-2009.com.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Thin provisioning and Reclamation
From Informationweek's Storage BlogWhat keeps many organizations from seeing significant improvement generally centers on two areas that have plagued some thin provisioning implementations; conversion to thin and reclamation....
The second issue that has plagued thin provisioning is that during use, deleted items do not properly get reclaimed. This is because most file systems do not really delete data when you give the delete command, they just set the data as eligible to over write. If you go through a big house cleaning operation on a volume, that freed up space is not reallocated to the global storage pool that thin provisioning storage systems count on. It stays with the volume.
The result of these two factors is that thin provisioned systems put on a little weight both initially and over time. While some thin provisioning is better than no thin provisioning these challenges lead to the poor results on the survey. Companies like 3PAR, HDS and DataCore have all announced technologies that can address both the conversion to thin issues as well as the ongoing space reclamation issues.
With these technologies companies can intelligently convert to thin to see immediate storage savings and can keep their volumes thin over time. Thin provisioning is more than a check mark feature, it is a serious technology that when all the challenges are properly addressed can save significant storage costs in the enterprise.
See also: Full Use with Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Monday, 20 April 2009
DataCore Software Empowers Partners to knock down storage-related barriers to virtualisation
Resellers Register to Learn How to Remove the Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualisation and Empower Customers to "Do More and Save More" DataCore offers new partner benefits and encourages solution providers to visit www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore and attend a webinar so that they can learn how to "knock down storage-related barriers to virtualisation"
At the VMware Partner Exchange 2009 last week, DataCore put a spotlight on its worldwide distribution partners and to highlight its enhanced partner programme, new lead registration incentives, as well as a new "open-door" model that helps encourage more resellers to sell DataCore solutions. The new initiatives include reseller-focused, "SAN starter" promotions to accelerate DataCore™ business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) solution sales.
Accelerate Your Sales; Get on Board with a DataCore Distributor:
DataCore is committed to the "Power of Partnering" and working with solution providers to stimulate, accelerate and grow their virtualisation business.
VARs and system integrators that would like to partner with DataCore should contact any of DataCore's
How to Capitalise on the Current Economical Climate: Why Partner with DataCore?
- First, with its "open door" model, DataCore has made it far simpler to become a DataCore reseller.
- Second, as part of its enhanced Partner Programme, DataCore has increased and simplified lead registration incentives. The lead registration incentives now apply to all software product sales - new customers, upgrades and follow-on sales.
- Third, DataCore has established "SAN starter" promotions for its industry-leading BC and DR packages that are designed for resellers to kick-start business and grow with DataCore's "value protection, upgrade path" model.
In addition, DataCore's storage virtualisation software solutions provide unmatched return on investment and help clients "Do More and Save More." Learn more at: www.datacore.com/costsavings
VARs and system integrators should contact a DataCore distributor to learn more about these new benefits of the DataCore Partner Programme.
Partner Spotlight: A Radically Simple, High Availability Storage Virtualisation Solution Designed for VMware-Virtualised IT Environments:
"DataCore has helped us to get our foot in the door with a lot of SMB customers," said Lak Gill of Interware Systems, a VMware and DataCore Gold partner in
SANs are essential for virtual server environments. However, the high costs of most SANs put them beyond the reach of most customers. In particular, true-high availability between physically separate locations, even when located in the same building, can be prohibitively expensive. "DataCore allows us to put together solutions for our clients that do the job right within their budgets," explained Tim Rettig, President, LAN Solutions, a DataCore reseller partner. "What is more, we feel strongly that our clients are getting robust, enterprise-level SANs at SMB prices."
Continued Rettig, "With DataCore, the client can pick among hardware offerings from their favourite hardware vendors, and even mix and match them," Rettig said. "When their requirements approach their systems' limitations, we can non-disruptively upgrade them to faster, newer technology, possibly from a different supplier who then offers a better price/performance alternative. Because it offers an adaptable enterprise solution to our clients - in terms of capabilities, performance and reliability, all for a reasonable price, we feel that DataCore helps our firm to build lasting relationships with our clients."
Call to Action: Prospective Partners Should Attend A "How To" Webinar Titled "Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualisation"
DataCore has made it easy to learn about the benefits of its partner program, please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore . The brief introduction and new monthly webinars are available exclusively for solution providers and IT consultants advising clients on server and desktop virtualization.
Click here to register: www.datacore.com/partner or email: info@datacore.com
A Blueprint for affordable and accelerated Disaster Recovery
BY ANDREW KERSHAW, WATERSTONS’ TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, A DATACORE SILVER LEVEL PARTNER:
Before now, full offsite replication of an entire IT infrastructure was an expensive business, affordable to only the wealthiest of organisations.
However, this view now needs to be radically adjusted as new and innovative ways of reducing the cost of achieving this goal are developed.
A key enabling technology has been server virtualisation, adoption of which is often justified on its own merits. However, when used to address remote disaster recovery (DR), virtual technology comes into its own, offering a range of affordable solutions for off-site replication. The quality, frequency and lag of the DR replica is determined by the quality and speed of the Wide Area Network (WAN) between the sites, with operating costs of suitable high performance links very high. Often a significant upgrade would be required to provide capacity for replication, and costs are prohibitive. The answer to this problem is to architect a replication solution which gets the best out of the now well proven WAN acceleration technology.
One such architecture – which Waterstons are able to recommend - involves combining DataCore SANmelody™ storage virtualisation with Riverbed Steelhead™ WAN acceleration. The remote replication capability of DataCore SANmelody™ is used to replicate an entire server infrastructure to a remote location. The inter-site transmission is compressed, cached and optimized by inserting Riverbed Steelhead network appliances on either side of the link. This solution meets disaster recovery objectives and proves much more cost-effective both to set up and to operate than an upgrade to higher bandwidth service. The net effect is a full disaster recovery capability with often very little (or even zero) lag, behind the live site even over surprisingly poor quality and low speed WAN links. Waterstons have successfully deployed this solution for several clients, and as a result, avoided unnecessary additional wide area line rental and secured more robust and more scalable DR, backup and restore systems. For more information on using virtualisation and WAN acceleration technologies, please read the Disaster Recovery white paper: http://www.datacore.com/downloads/DataCore_Riverbed_DR_22Sep08.pdf
Virtualisation Bucks the Recession Trend
Virtualisation bucks the recession trend:
As the recession bites, for the first time IDC has predicted a slowdown in storage spending. However latest reports show that the virtualisation and storage virtualisation markets continue to grow:
http://www.techworld.com/virtualisation/news/index.cfm?newsid=114241&email
We see this trend echoed at DataCore with data still exponentially growing as a by-product of any operating business, but with IT managers becoming more disconcerting with signing off what where considered previously as organic IT spends. Largely this used to simply involve throwing more external disk to combat data growth on the network. Virtualisation and hence consolidation has changed all that with IT managers able to meet the business data growth needs by reutilising external storage solutions already in their network. We are now seeing that the market is beginning to understand that they can meet their demands within their new budgets by layering cost effective high performance storage software on commodity servers. This is now becoming more common to implement it with existing storage to extend its life by supplementing additional power and flexibility, but also we are seeing customers choosing lower cost storage that when combined with storage software provides the required capacity and performance.
Sunday, 19 April 2009
DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Partner and Customer Conference 2009: Virtualisation conference for channel and business
www.it-director.com/technology/storage/news_release.php?rel=10708 
DataCore Software is gathering partners, integrators and resellers at the DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Partner Conference (May 12/13) followed by a customer conference (May 14/15, The Golden Tulip, LTU-Arena Duesseldorf). Conference attendees benefit from first hand information on the virtualisation market, sales, and key technology developments. As well as key DataCore spokespeople, attendees have access to virtualisation experts from ADN, Azlan, DNA, Magirus and Citrix.
"In the present ecnomic downturn, storage virtualisation is like a vitamin syringe because it offers cost savings for businesses and growth potential for the channel. At the same time desktop, server and storage virtualisation technologies are becoming increasingly aggregated", explains Iris Hatzenbichler, marketing & operations manager EMEA in DataCore. "Within this climate we are holding our fourth partner and end user conference discussing both technical and sales opportunities but also unravelling some of the pitfalls that can surround virtualisation. We are pleased that we have already received lots of registrations and international interest."
The virtualisation experts from Florida expect numerous visitors from across Europe and as such, will offer senior international representation from various company divisions and countries. At the top of the technical delegation, stands DataCore's CTO and co-founder, Ziya Aral, who also brings product developers from Asia and the USA across to the Rhine Conference. Additionally sales and marketing representatives from France, Great Britain and Germany will be on hand throughout.
Recently introduced SANsymphony 7.0 and SANmelody 3.0 will be one of the key focusses. In presentations, workshops and best practice sessions, DataCore will inform and discuss in detail the new 64-bit versions as well as unravelling the "Transporter" Software, that enables an uninterrupted migration between physical and virtual platforms. Additionally, distribution partners ADN, Azlan, DNS and Magirus introduce concepts and offerings during the two-day conference. The programme is completed with an outlook on DataCore's roadmap by DataCore mastermind Ziya Aral.
Conference costs including overnight stay, conference pass, all meals and evening programme is 280 Euro.
12. - 13. May 2009: DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Partner Conference
14. - 15. May 2009: DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Customer Conference
The Golden Tulip, LTU-Arena Düsseldorf,
Registrations to Iris.Hatzenbichler@datacore.com
DataCore Software is gathering partners, integrators and resellers at the DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Partner Conference (May 12/13) followed by a customer conference (May 14/15, The Golden Tulip, LTU-Arena Duesseldorf). Conference attendees benefit from first hand information on the virtualisation market, sales, and key technology developments. As well as key DataCore spokespeople, attendees have access to virtualisation experts from ADN, Azlan, DNA, Magirus and Citrix.
"In the present ecnomic downturn, storage virtualisation is like a vitamin syringe because it offers cost savings for businesses and growth potential for the channel. At the same time desktop, server and storage virtualisation technologies are becoming increasingly aggregated", explains Iris Hatzenbichler, marketing & operations manager EMEA in DataCore. "Within this climate we are holding our fourth partner and end user conference discussing both technical and sales opportunities but also unravelling some of the pitfalls that can surround virtualisation. We are pleased that we have already received lots of registrations and international interest."
The virtualisation experts from Florida expect numerous visitors from across Europe and as such, will offer senior international representation from various company divisions and countries. At the top of the technical delegation, stands DataCore's CTO and co-founder, Ziya Aral, who also brings product developers from Asia and the USA across to the Rhine Conference. Additionally sales and marketing representatives from France, Great Britain and Germany will be on hand throughout.
Recently introduced SANsymphony 7.0 and SANmelody 3.0 will be one of the key focusses. In presentations, workshops and best practice sessions, DataCore will inform and discuss in detail the new 64-bit versions as well as unravelling the "Transporter" Software, that enables an uninterrupted migration between physical and virtual platforms. Additionally, distribution partners ADN, Azlan, DNS and Magirus introduce concepts and offerings during the two-day conference. The programme is completed with an outlook on DataCore's roadmap by DataCore mastermind Ziya Aral.
Conference costs including overnight stay, conference pass, all meals and evening programme is 280 Euro.
12. - 13. May 2009: DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Partner Conference
14. - 15. May 2009: DataCore European Storage Virtualisation Customer Conference
The Golden Tulip, LTU-Arena Düsseldorf,
Registrations to Iris.Hatzenbichler@datacore.com
Friday, 3 April 2009
CRN UK Report Quotes Nick Broadbent of DataCore Software UK
"This used to simply involve throwing in more external disk to combat data growth on the network. Virtualisation and hence consolidation has transformed all that with IT managers able to meet the business data growth needs by re-utilising external storage solutions already in their network," said Nick Broadbent.
http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn/news/2239784/recession-finally-hits-storage-4564528
According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, global storage software revenues in Q4, 2008 increased 3.6 per cent to $3.03bn (£2.16bn) over the same quarter a year ago. However, most vendors showed signs of slowed growth.
...Nick Broadbent, UK managing director of DataCore Software, agreed that managers are more reluctant to sign off what were previously considered organic IT spends.
"This used to simply involve throwing in more external disk to combat data growth on the network," said Broadbent.
"Virtualisation and hence consolidation has transformed all that with IT managers able to meet the business data growth needs by re-utilising external storage solutions already in their network."
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
DataCentre Times - DataCore demonstrates new SAN solutions
See: DataCore demonstrates new SAN solutions
Managing the large number of storage devices in the datacentre is a complex problem. Not everything uses the Storage Area Network (SAN) or Networked Attached Storage (NAS). A lot of data and machines still ship with Direct Attached Storage (DAS). The challenge is how to bring all of these into a single environment for the most efficient and secure usage.
This is where software vendor DataCore has found a niche and over the last two weeks, firstly at VMworld in Cannes and then at CeBIT in Hannover, they have been showing the latest features in their SANsymphony, SANmelody and Traveller CDP solutions...
With virtualisation high on everyone's agenda, DataCore is allowing the support of 64-bit mega caches, allowing up to 1TB of data to be held in cache. This means that several virtual machines can be held in cache drastically improving response times for users. "To ensure resiliency", Alexander Best says, "the cache is mirrored over multiple nodes. We have also extended the write cache from 2MB to 32MB per LUN and improved our global read-ahead cache schema."...
DataCore is also targeting the delay in migrating virtual machines between physical machines and hypervisors with its Transporter software. Transporter can also be used as part of a backup solution moving snapshots to backup devices.
Tony Lock, Programme Director, Freeform Dynamics states:
...the most interesting announcement concerns DataCore's "Transporter" which supplies Hypervisor Migration capabilities and better Integration to VMware Virtual Center.
" These functions could prove to be very useful as organisations begin to look at using multiple hypervisors in their environments and try to manage them as a pool rather than as a number of isolated islands of virtualisation. However DataCore needs to be very active to educate interested parties in how such functionality, and indeed the capabilities of its entire portfolio, can be exploited."
Managing the large number of storage devices in the datacentre is a complex problem. Not everything uses the Storage Area Network (SAN) or Networked Attached Storage (NAS). A lot of data and machines still ship with Direct Attached Storage (DAS). The challenge is how to bring all of these into a single environment for the most efficient and secure usage.
This is where software vendor DataCore has found a niche and over the last two weeks, firstly at VMworld in Cannes and then at CeBIT in Hannover, they have been showing the latest features in their SANsymphony, SANmelody and Traveller CDP solutions...
With virtualisation high on everyone's agenda, DataCore is allowing the support of 64-bit mega caches, allowing up to 1TB of data to be held in cache. This means that several virtual machines can be held in cache drastically improving response times for users. "To ensure resiliency", Alexander Best says, "the cache is mirrored over multiple nodes. We have also extended the write cache from 2MB to 32MB per LUN and improved our global read-ahead cache schema."...
DataCore is also targeting the delay in migrating virtual machines between physical machines and hypervisors with its Transporter software. Transporter can also be used as part of a backup solution moving snapshots to backup devices.
Tony Lock, Programme Director, Freeform Dynamics states:
...the most interesting announcement concerns DataCore's "Transporter" which supplies Hypervisor Migration capabilities and better Integration to VMware Virtual Center.
" These functions could prove to be very useful as organisations begin to look at using multiple hypervisors in their environments and try to manage them as a pool rather than as a number of isolated islands of virtualisation. However DataCore needs to be very active to educate interested parties in how such functionality, and indeed the capabilities of its entire portfolio, can be exploited."
Are you serious about high availability?
Check out the new white paper by noted storage expert George Crump of Storage Switzerland: Are you serious about high availability?
How can we entertain such mirrored HA configurations when budgets are tight?
A possible solution is found in storage virtualization. DataCore Software, as an example, offers a straightforward and affordable software solution for organizations of all sizes. It runs on standard x86 servers, or on a virtual machine in an existing server virtualized by one of the popular hypervisor products from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Parallels and Virtual Iron.Solutions like these enable non-stop data access using commodity-priced storage devices from vendors of your choosing. Each side of the mirror can use different types of storage; they need not be from the same supplier. In fact, some of the solutions can reconfigure the equipment that you already have to eliminate storage downtime.
What are the performance implications when mirrors are stretched?
DataCore as an example employs advanced caching techniques that enable data to be written simultaneously to a perfectly mirrored pair at higher speeds than you would experience with the standalone array. When one side of the pair has to be taken down or suffers an unexpected outage, all the storage I/O is sustained from the second mirror without manual intervention. Nothing needs to be scripted or reconfigured. Read more...
How can we entertain such mirrored HA configurations when budgets are tight?
A possible solution is found in storage virtualization. DataCore Software, as an example, offers a straightforward and affordable software solution for organizations of all sizes. It runs on standard x86 servers, or on a virtual machine in an existing server virtualized by one of the popular hypervisor products from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Parallels and Virtual Iron.Solutions like these enable non-stop data access using commodity-priced storage devices from vendors of your choosing. Each side of the mirror can use different types of storage; they need not be from the same supplier. In fact, some of the solutions can reconfigure the equipment that you already have to eliminate storage downtime.
What are the performance implications when mirrors are stretched?
DataCore as an example employs advanced caching techniques that enable data to be written simultaneously to a perfectly mirrored pair at higher speeds than you would experience with the standalone array. When one side of the pair has to be taken down or suffers an unexpected outage, all the storage I/O is sustained from the second mirror without manual intervention. Nothing needs to be scripted or reconfigured. Read more...
DataCore Scoops 'Software Product the Year' Award for 2009
All eyes turned towards London last week at the prestigious Network Computing Awards for 2009 were unveiled where DataCore’s SANmelody was rewarded with the "Software Product of the Year" beating off stiff category competition from finalists EMC, CA, Attempo, amongst others.
Keith Joseph, Regional Manager, Northern Europe, DataCore Software, commented, "It's great to receive this award as it demonstrates that network managers are moving away from the traditional hardware based solutions that disk manufacturers advocate in favour of a software storage solution that operates on anything and reutilises the storage and disk already in the network to provide greater utilisation, manageability, productivity, uptime and performance."
The Awards, voted on by thousands of Network Computing Magazine's readership, signifies the readers' appreciation of SANmelody and how it easily and cost effectively converts physical Intel/AMD servers or virtual machines (VMs) into fully capable virtual storage servers that are able to optimize, protect and manage storage over existing networks to fulfill the needs of application servers.
Other features that enticed winners' votes include SANmelody's thin provisioning for disk space capacity automation, point-in-time snapshots for fast disk based backups, and powerful data protection services that provide auto failover across redundant disk servers and long-distance asynchronous replication for disaster recovery over IP WANs.
The Network Computing Awards were established in 2004 to recognise best-in-breed, easy to use solutions that make the working lives of network managers easier and more effective.
Monday, 23 March 2009
Washington Archives Management Deploys DataCore for a High-Availability Storage Virtualization Solution to Safeguard Citrix XenServer and Maximize Business Uptime
"The bigger picture here is that technology like this has previously been prohibitively expensive for a small to mid-size business customer. Sure, large companies have been deploying virtual servers and virtual SANs, but they have had to pay a huge price for doing so. DataCore's SANmelody enables the small business to get this kind of virtualization environment built and to do so without paying for Fibre Channel or paying over $100,000 for the SAN alone, which is what has made having a SAN unattainable for a large number of customers - before DataCore paved the way." - Summarizes Radford, System Administrator, Washington Archives Management,
A Shared Storage Approach from DataCore Combined with Citrix XenServer Delivers High Availability - Thereby, Eliminating Costly, Storage Related Downtime
DataCore Software today announced that its SANmelody software has been selected and deployed at Washington Archives Management (WAM) to serve as a high-availability, virtualized, storage area network (SAN) that works in conjunction with virtual servers from Citrix to deliver the redundancy this customer was desperately seeking. Now WAM has a fault-tolerant storage virtualization infrastructure that provides automated failover and failback recovery in the event of a network or hardware calamity in order to maximize business uptime. WAM is a 50-person archiving service that stores, archives and manages paper records.
"A forward-thinking approach combined with technological advances in virtualization has meant that our firm could avoid past failures," says Tom Radford, System Administrator, Washington Archives Management. "And by deploying redundancy in our network - as well as leveraging advances like automated failover and multi-pathing, XenMotion and - above all - a software-based SAN that delivers on the promise of virtualization, WAM has made it possible to eliminate costly, storage related downtime."
A hardware failure leads to a fresh start on the storage front
Moving the virtualized guests to the other server (in case of a hardware failure) was difficult because there was no shared storage - no SAN was in place, which is necessary to "motion" the virtual guests. As fate would have it, the firm did experience one ESX server failure and therefore was forced to run on only one ESX server. Without redundancy in the network, if any other component had failed, Washington Archives Management would have been "out of business" until it was fixed.
Read more... Washington Archives Managment and DataCore + Citrix
Reseller Partners? Find out about DataCore and the new Free Citrix XenServer
Check out the DNS information page on DataCore
or Email: julien.mouton@dnsarrow.co.uk
“Storage is critical to rapidly deploying virtualisation solutions, and DataCore's storage virtualisation solutions have been validated with Citrix XenServer and are deployed with XenServer in a growing number of customer installations. DataCore's affordable, flexible, high availability SAN storage solutions will help our mutual customers to overcome the cost barriers and complexity that SAN storage can present,” says James McNab, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at Citrix.
Citrix XenServer for Free; What does server virtualisation for free mean for storage virtualisation?
or Email: julien.mouton@dnsarrow.co.uk
“Storage is critical to rapidly deploying virtualisation solutions, and DataCore's storage virtualisation solutions have been validated with Citrix XenServer and are deployed with XenServer in a growing number of customer installations. DataCore's affordable, flexible, high availability SAN storage solutions will help our mutual customers to overcome the cost barriers and complexity that SAN storage can present,” says James McNab, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at Citrix.
Citrix XenServer for Free; What does server virtualisation for free mean for storage virtualisation?
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Radford HMY Group: DataCore and Waterstons create virtualisation melody
For more, visit: Radford HMY Group and DataCore
Building upon the retail display equipment suppliers existing VMware ESX virtualisation environment, the SANmelody has been installed as the firms new storage area network (SAN) virtual infrastructure.
Keith Joseph, regional manager at DataCore Software, said: Waterstons and Radford HMY Group wanted to achieve highest degrees of resilience but did not want to incur heavy set-up or annual support costs.
Mark McDonald, IT Manager at the Radford HMY Group, said: Together with Waterstons we have embarked on implementing a new Virtual Infrastructure that guarantees the highest level of fault tolerance and availability. To do this, we have used a combination of two IBM servers running DataCores SANmelody storage virtualisation software to provide synchronously mirrored high availability architecture.
Building upon the retail display equipment suppliers existing VMware ESX virtualisation environment, the SANmelody has been installed as the firms new storage area network (SAN) virtual infrastructure.
Keith Joseph, regional manager at DataCore Software, said: Waterstons and Radford HMY Group wanted to achieve highest degrees of resilience but did not want to incur heavy set-up or annual support costs.
Mark McDonald, IT Manager at the Radford HMY Group, said: Together with Waterstons we have embarked on implementing a new Virtual Infrastructure that guarantees the highest level of fault tolerance and availability. To do this, we have used a combination of two IBM servers running DataCores SANmelody storage virtualisation software to provide synchronously mirrored high availability architecture.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
DataCore & VMWare Storage VMotion - Solving Troublesome Migration Problems
An interesting day in the life story...submitted today from one of the DataCore Technical Account Managers...
March always presents an interesting time in local government; the end of the financial year sees the opportunity for the IT managers to get the projects that they've always wanted to do out of the way. This was no different for a large hospital system client that I visited this morning. They have purchased DataCore and were at the stage of the project that most IT Managers dread... Attempting to calculate the downtime and risk of the implementation of a brand new SAN environment.
Lists of application servers had been drawn up, tiers had been assigned, timescales were mooted and several small conversations were taking place amongst the people involved as to what needed to go first and what could be coped without when. The migration was to move from CX300 hardware to a DataCore SANsymphony environment housed upon large storage servers. Initially a 2 node configuration, with a primary production SAN and a DR SAN housed 8 miles away at the sister hospital, the purpose of the project was to provide an initial DR strategy and Storage expansion for a virtualised environment, culminating in the implementation of a Microsoft Sharepoint environment to improve the efficiency and end user experience within the PCT.
So after about 15 minutes of discussion I asked what version of ESX they were on... 3.0.1 came the reply. This quickly turned into a discussion regarding the upgrade path of VMWare from 3.0.1 to 3.5 and when the ease of this became apparent the solution became a no-brainer. Use Storage VMotion! By provisioning the DataCore Virtual Volumes to the ESX hosts as datastores, we can then Storage VMotion from one datastore to the other! There will be NO downtime at all! Having gone through the idea in a little more detail it became obvious that it was watertight and what was a potentially awkward, convoluted meeting with tight schedules became an easy discussion about just how flexible the solution was.
The icing was the cake was the point at which we decided that we could "chuck a 4GB HBA into the storage server" for the time that the 3rd node is to be implemented... "It'll just mean we can bang it in without any downtime again..." was the final comment on the matter.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Virtual Storage - Cost Savings and ROI
Full Use: Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. With DataCore, once-occupied, thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. In this way, the SAN gives back capacity that may have been temporarily needed, further optimizing resource utilization.
http://www.datacore.com/solutions/thin_provisioning.asp
Friday, 6 March 2009
CeBIT 2009: DataCore Unveils Improved Performance, Availability and Utilisation for Citrix's XenApp, XenDesktop and XenServer
At CeBIT 2009, the leading business event for the digital world, DataCore highlighted the newest features in its forthcoming releases of its SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions. In particular, DataCore touted that the new versions of its solutions deliver SAN-wide performance boosts and provide radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for Citrix® XenServer™, XenDesktop™ and XenApp™ environments. At the show, Citrix will showcase its recent announcement “New Citrix XenServer Release Makes Enterprise-Class, Cloud-Proven Virtualization Free for Everyone.” CeBIT runs through March 8, 2009 in Hannover, Germany.“We are pleased to welcome DataCore to showcase their solutions on our booth during CeBIT,” says James McNab, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at Citrix. “Storage is critical to rapidly deploying virtualization solutions, and DataCore's storage virtualization solutions have been validated with Citrix XenServer and are deployed with XenServer in a growing number of customer installations. DataCore's affordable, flexible, high availability SAN storage solutions will help our mutual customers to overcome the cost barriers and complexity that SAN storage can present.”
High availability Solutions for Citrix
DataCore’s lineup of solutions, which are Citrix Ready™ for XenServer 5, have been met with broad appeal worldwide and the momentum keeps rolling for DataCore storage virtualization solutions delivered in combination with Citrix XenServer.
Recently announced DataCore and Citrix customers include Washington Archives Management, Statewide Title Company, Inc., and Alameda County Medical Center, just to name a few. These customers are each testifying that DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from their storage assets, making it an essential element of Citrix configurations. A case in point is Statewide Title Company, Inc. “The selection of DataCore was designed to pave the way for the Citrix XenServer implementation that we are now in the process of deploying,” explains George Overstreet, systems administrator, Statewide Title, Company, Inc. “For purposes of ease of management, efficiencies and centralizing storage, we went with SANmelody. With DataCore, you just have greater flexibility. And on top of this, with DataCore we can also meet all of our disaster recovery (DR) requirements as well.”
Moreover, according to Benjamin Crill, partner, ESI Technology Advisors, “DataCore is the perfect complement to server virtualization with XenServer. They are hardware independent, portable - and above all, 'open' solutions. Both DataCore and XenServer are feature rich and value-packed. DataCore's storage virtualization solutions make storage management easy. They enable customers to maximize resources and lower costs, while delivering high availability, better utilization as well as enhanced performance and productivity.”
Enhancements in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore Software enhancements in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 aimed at Citrix shared storage requirements include the following new features and functionality:
64-bit “Mega Caches” Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are support for 64-bit mega caches. “In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king,” comments James Price, Vice President of Channel and Product Marketing, DataCore Software. “DataCore’s solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache – per node. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric.” Entire working sets of numerous virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide caches for unheard of performance. Behind the caches, Citrix customers can grow their storage pool from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage
Needless to say, storage pools of such immensity are in constant flux. With this in mind, the new product enhancements are fully integrated into DataCore’s radically simple, high availability solutions for Citrix disk farms. Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications.
Full Use: Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. With the new releases, once-occupied, thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. In this way, the SAN gives back capacity that may have been temporarily needed, further optimizing resource utilization.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. Citrix servers and virtual machines (VMs) needing storage, connect to the DataCore controllers using iSCSI or Fibre Channel. All of the popular operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, 2008, Unix, Linux, NetWare and MacOS can take advantage of DataCore’s SAN-wide storage virtualization features. In small configurations, the DataCore controller is hosted on a VM as a virtual appliance alongside application VMs. The SAN is completely virtual needing no external storage. Larger configurations dedicate physical servers to this storage virtualization role and typically include both internal disk drives and external arrays. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of 64-bit Windows Server 2008 virtual and physical platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support
DataCore’s “Transporter” time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems – eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions
All DataCore Packages for Citrix will be Updated to SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore has a suite of SANmelody-based Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) packages available for Citrix environments, ranging from Feature Packed BC/DR SAN Starter Virtualization Bundles to a Feature Packed BC/DR 32 Terabyte SAN Virtualization Bundle to virtually unlimited capacity SANsymphony Bundles. For more details on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery packages, please visit: www.datacore.com/SMBpackages.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
DataCore's 'solid state SANs' with mega-caches to make storage virtualisation performance soar
From IT Director post by Peter Williams, Practice Leader - IT Infrastructure Mgmt., Bloor Research
Check out the full report at: http://www.it-director.com/enterprise/content.php?cid=11109
Enterprises with virtual environments should be intrigued by DataCore Software's developments for its venerable software—with upcoming SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualisation releases due for general availability around month end. These include a massive boost to SAN-wide performance and improvements to high availability...
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony will now support for 64-bit "mega-caches" providing up to one terabyte (TB) of cache memory per node; so performance will scale linearly with each node added to the fabric. It means that the entire SAN operation for many virtual machines can be kept in SAN-wide caches avoiding the vast majority of disk I-O.
"This is a solid state SAN," James Price, vice president channel and product marketing told me, adding that this would dwarf anything in the market. "There will be a 600–1200% performance increase."
He explained that while the number one bottleneck for virtualisation was memory (CPU cycles and pure capacity), next came storage performance—limited by I-O to virtualised disk. So the need was to scale and deliver I-O at native speeds or more. This boost should be worth watching!
Previously DataCore has offered up to 20 GB of cache, which Price said had been competitive, but, driven by increasing virtualisation, 16–32 GB cache would be a common requirement with a lot of customers. That's a long way from the TB maximum so provides oodles of expansion for those who find they need more...
Check out the full report at: http://www.it-director.com/enterprise/content.php?cid=11109
Enterprises with virtual environments should be intrigued by DataCore Software's developments for its venerable software—with upcoming SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualisation releases due for general availability around month end. These include a massive boost to SAN-wide performance and improvements to high availability...
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony will now support for 64-bit "mega-caches" providing up to one terabyte (TB) of cache memory per node; so performance will scale linearly with each node added to the fabric. It means that the entire SAN operation for many virtual machines can be kept in SAN-wide caches avoiding the vast majority of disk I-O.
"This is a solid state SAN," James Price, vice president channel and product marketing told me, adding that this would dwarf anything in the market. "There will be a 600–1200% performance increase."
He explained that while the number one bottleneck for virtualisation was memory (CPU cycles and pure capacity), next came storage performance—limited by I-O to virtualised disk. So the need was to scale and deliver I-O at native speeds or more. This boost should be worth watching!
Previously DataCore has offered up to 20 GB of cache, which Price said had been competitive, but, driven by increasing virtualisation, 16–32 GB cache would be a common requirement with a lot of customers. That's a long way from the TB maximum so provides oodles of expansion for those who find they need more...
Server plus Storage Virtualisation; Virtual Iron and DataCore
From Storage Guru Jon Toigo's Blog: http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=2247
Server plus Storage Virtualization. I am not a huge fan of the former, but I like the latter. And when I stack up two together, I want my servers virtualized with Virtual Iron (for reasons of cost and stability and functionality) and I want my fabric virtualized with DataCore SANsympony - because it freakin' works.
Server plus Storage Virtualization. I am not a huge fan of the former, but I like the latter. And when I stack up two together, I want my servers virtualized with Virtual Iron (for reasons of cost and stability and functionality) and I want my fabric virtualized with DataCore SANsympony - because it freakin' works.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Eweek: The Value of Storage Virtualisation Software
..."But at the end of the day, server virtualization is popular because it helps IT organizations get more out of their existing hardware investments. In order for storage virtualization to be equally as popular, the tools that are brought to bear need to provide an equal level of instant benefit. Right now, the only thing that does that in the realm of storage virtualization is a software-only approach to creating virtual pools out of existing storage investments."
http://blogs.eweek.com/masked_intentions/content/storage/the_value_of_storage_virtualization_software.html
...The folks at DataCore, which makes software that allows IT organization to turn existing storage arrays from multiple vendors into a shared pool of disk storage, have two theories about why storage virtualization is evolving much more slowly than server virtualization.
The first theory is that most storage hardware vendors require customers to buy new storage arrays that support storage virtualization. In these difficult economic times, it's hard to make an argument that basically says an IT organization should spend a lot of additional capital now in order to save money later.
The second theory is that when IT organizations introduce storage virtualization, they are worried about performance penalties. Too often there are database and e-mail applications that don't perform so well when virtualization is introduced. To specifically deal with storage virtualization performance issues, DataCore is now adding 1TB of cache to a new 64-bit implementation of its SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 software.
http://blogs.eweek.com/masked_intentions/content/storage/the_value_of_storage_virtualization_software.html
...The folks at DataCore, which makes software that allows IT organization to turn existing storage arrays from multiple vendors into a shared pool of disk storage, have two theories about why storage virtualization is evolving much more slowly than server virtualization.
The first theory is that most storage hardware vendors require customers to buy new storage arrays that support storage virtualization. In these difficult economic times, it's hard to make an argument that basically says an IT organization should spend a lot of additional capital now in order to save money later.
The second theory is that when IT organizations introduce storage virtualization, they are worried about performance penalties. Too often there are database and e-mail applications that don't perform so well when virtualization is introduced. To specifically deal with storage virtualization performance issues, DataCore is now adding 1TB of cache to a new 64-bit implementation of its SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 software.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Citrix XenServer for Free; What does server virtualisation for free mean for storage virtualisation?
Opinion, more server virtualisation projects will feed storage virtualisation deployments.Is this a trend? Is server virtualisation becoming a commodity?The battle at the virtual server market is heating up and these are the questions being asked. So what just happened? Citrix is now making XenServer free since it has had a hard time making inroads against the giant VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V initiatives and pricing (see articles below). A benefit of the industry cost battle is that it helps fuel more virtualisation projects…which obviously stresses the need for shared storage SANs but the high cost of the SAN (often the largest cost item - typically costing well over $75k) then becomes the major hurdle to virtualisation deployments.
This virtualisation and consolidation of servers results in 2 major pain points - it concentrates I/O performance (slows it down) and since all the applications are running on fewer servers it magnifies the impact of interruptions on business continuity -the 'All the eggs in one basket' impact: InformationWeek - Virtualization Driving SMB/SME Storage . This battle at the virtual server level bodes well for DataCore high-availability SAN software solutions… since DataCore overcomes these critical pain points. Citrix XensServer is now Free (XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools, etc. ). Check out this overview: http://www.virtualization.info/2009/02/citrix-xenserver-is-now-free-xencenter.html
VMworld Europe 2009: DataCore Aims Major Software Enhancements at VMware Shared Storage Requirements
Upcoming release of storage virtualisation products materially improve performance, availability and utilization for VMware Virtual InfrastructureFor full release: UK Press Release
Visitors last week at VMworld Europe 2009 were among the first to learn how new versions of DataCore SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualisation solutions materialize into SAN-wide performance boosts, radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for VMware Virtual Infrastructure customers. DataCore’s new lineup of VMware Ready Certified™ solutions were showcased at Europe's largest virtualisation community in Cannes, France.
64-bit “Mega Caches” Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are support for 64-bit mega caches. “In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king,” commented James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software. “DataCore’s solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric.” Entire working sets of numerous virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide caches for unheard of performance. Behind the caches, VMware customers can grow their storage pool from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage
Needless to say, storage pools of such immensity are in constant flux. With this in mind, the new product enhancements are fully integrated into DataCore’s radically simple, high availability solutions for VMware. Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications. “VMware customers are demanding that the many storage-related interruptions they face while making metro-wide, virtual machine migration, failover and load balancing be eliminated. Solutions like those offered by DataCore are addressing these interruptions and are critical to making these tasks practical,” said George Crump, senior analyst at Storage Switzerland.
Full Use: Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. With the new releases, once-occupied, thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. In this way, the SAN gives back capacity that may have been temporarily needed, further optimizing resource utilization.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. ESX servers and virtual machines (VMs) needing storage, connect to the DataCore controllers using iSCSI or Fibre Channel. All of the popular operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, 2008, Unix, Linux, NetWare and MacOs can take advantage of DataCore’s SAN-wide storage virtualization features. In small configurations, the DataCore controller is hosted on a VM as a virtual appliance alongside application VMs. The SAN is completely virtual needing no external storage. Larger configurations dedicate physical servers to this storage virtualization role and typically include both internal disk drives and external arrays. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of 64-bit Windows Server 2008 virtual and physical platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support and Tighter Integration to VMware Virtual Center
DataCore’s “Transporter” time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems – eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions In addition, a plug-in for VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure Client is a no-charge option that allows administrators to non-disruptively provision, share, clone, replicate and expand virtual disks among physical servers and VMs.
For more details on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery packages, please visit: www.datacore.com/SMBpackages .
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