DataCore Software Appoints Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Industry Veteran Steve Houck to Newly Created Chief Operating Officer Role

In the Wake of Launching SANsymphony-V 9.0, “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud,” DataCore Expands Management Team to Respond to New Market Opportunities and Growth

DataCore Software today announced the appointment of its first Chief Operating Officer (COO), Steve Houck. The new position was created to organize and drive DataCore’s rapid growth and market leadership in storage virtualization. Houck is a highly regarded veteran in virtualization, flash storage, cloud computing and data center technologies. His previous roles included vice president of worldwide channels for VMware, along with various global sales leadership posts at EMC Corporation. Houck has also held executive posts for global field sales and go-to-market strategy development at start-up ventures focused on cloud computing and flash storage, with the most recent executive role at Astute Networks, an innovative SSD technology company.

“DataCore’s industry leadership – combined with a top-notch management team and superb market conditions – presented a perfect scenario for all involved,” stated Steve Houck, COO, DataCore Software. “The momentum toward storage virtualization adoption is palpable and SANsymphony-V 9.0 is head-and-shoulders above any other solution. I look forward to ensuring DataCore builds upon its success and reputation for delivering ‘must have’ technology.”



DataCore Upscales Solutions & Management Team to Capture New Market Opportunities
The appointment comes in the wake of DataCore launching a new version of its leading-edge storage hypervisor, SANsymphony™-V 9.0, which targets larger scale data centers and cloud storage infrastructures. With the success of SANsymphony-V 9.0, as well as the launch of new Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and System Builder programs, DataCore is scaling up to take advantage of new business opportunities and expand routes-to-market in order to keep pace with growing demand for its technology worldwide.

DataCore’s new SANsymphony-V 9.0 – “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud” – squarely meets a market need for IT directors and systems administrators seeking to manage enterprise-wide storage and quickly roll out agile, scalable virtualized storage infrastructures. The new capabilities are driven by:

• Organizations planning private cloud deployments.
• Large data centers seeking responsive, cloud-like services.
• CSPs developing public, private and hybrid cloud offerings.

A guided tour video of SANsymphony-V and additional “at-a-glance” information is available here: http://www.datacore.com/Software/Products/SANsymphony-V.aspx

The Next Level: New Targets and New Routes to Market
“Our pursuit of available market opportunities and the success of SANsymphony-V made it important for DataCore to add an executive of Steve’s caliber to build on our momentum,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. “Steve is a proven leader and his market experience, initiative and ability to build and grow successful business partnerships will enable us to seize new market opportunities and scale our company to the next level.”

DataCore is investing in its team, technology and go-to-market strategy in many ways. Houck’s new position coincides with the rollout of new routes-to-market for DataCore products, specifically through Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)s and system builders.
DataCore is committed to working with partners to build an ecosystem of appliance-focused, value-add versions of its storage hypervisor that meets the individual needs of customers. New business development efforts are underway that further support volume resellers, system integrators, solid state disk (SSD) vendors and appliance system builders selling SANsymphony-V.

For background information, please see: DataCore Software Targets Volume Resellers, System Integrators, SSD Vendors and System Builders with Fast-Start Business Development Programs.

To learn more and to get started with these new programs, please contact the DataCore Business Development team at alliances@datacore.com.

Fusion-io Speed and DataCore Software Agility: Evolution Beats Extinction - Big Data Opens New Niches with Fast Flash Memory

Below is the recent Blog post written by DataCore's CEO George Teixeira which was recently featured on the Fusion-io main Blog site.

65 million years ago, a six-mile-wide asteroid ended the reign of the dinosaurs, reopening ecological niches that were promptly filled by members of the class Mammalia, one of which, a long time later, went on to invent things like writing, the wheel, and information technology.

Big Data—ultra large scale data storage and analysis—is the storage market’s equivalent of that big rock, but rather than causing mass extinction, it’s simply opening up a lot of new ecological niches for storage technologies, especially advanced solutions like Fusion ioMemory modules and the new release of DataCore's SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor. The advent of Big Data also offers a unique opportunity to re-architect your storage management infrastructure in a way that can prolong the life of storage “dinosaurs” and make it more adaptable in every respect and more easily aligned to business needs.

As profiled in the New York Times, Big Data is transforming business, government, and education. One researcher reported that a study of 179 large companies showed that those adopting the data-driven decision-making that Big Data makes possible “achieved productivity gains that were 5 percent to 6 percent higher than other factors could explain.”

Big Data is more than just big. It’s restless, too, and best used when hot. Let it cool off, and you lose the situational awareness that can lead to big-time financial rewards. It’s not just a matter of storing a gazillion bytes—you can’t possibly store it all, so your retention policies have to change, and the need to widely share data as quickly as possible means your networking strategies have to change as well.

Fortunately, a storage hypervisor can be a big help in adapting to Big Data. Even better, the benefits of this software layer, which insulates you from all the hardware variables that Big Data can throw your way, kick in long before Big Data arrives. A scalable and comprehensive storage hypervisor like DataCore’s SANsymphony-V is an agent of change: you get the pay-off today and a future-proof storage infrastructure. It also, as we’ll see, can give you an even better return on your Fusion-io ioMemory module investments.

SANsymphony-V provides a complete "storage management stack" and gives you a centralized console that enables you to efficiently pool all your storage resources, mirror and replicate data for high availability, cache data near applications for higher performance, automatically allocate space, and direct traffic to the optimal tier.

Resource pooling has the most immediate impact, because you can aggregate all of your storage capacity, without regard for brand, model, or interface, and easily reclaim unused space. These pooled resources can be easily mirrored locally for high availability, or replicated remotely for disaster recovery. Thin provisioning gives you just-in-time storage allocation for highly efficient use of disk space, and RAM caching speeds up “spindle-based” storage dramatically to turbocharge native disk array performance. The fact that all of these advantages are available to every storage resource managed by SANsymphony-V means that older storage that formerly might have been shuffled off to the dinosaur’s graveyard remains useful longer, leading to a higher ROI for all your storage investments.

Fusion-io Fast Flash Memory and DataCore Auto-tiering Software
When it comes to Big Data, however, it’s probably auto-tiering that’s likely to be of most interest to customers who rely on Fusion-io technology. SANsymphony’s auto-tiering can dynamically direct workloads to the right storage resource based either on access frequency or business rules, so that the hottest data gets the most attention. Older storage can be moved down-tier as new hardware is installed, again prolonging its service life. SANsymphony-V also offers a “cloud gateway” to leverage cloud service providers for both disaster recovery and archival of virtually unlimited capacity—a necessity to keep from getting squashed by Big Data.

This enables SANsymphony-V to put Fusion-io’s server class memory tier at the very top of an agile, easily-managed storage hierarchy that offers unprecedented levels of performance and availability. You can easily balance data value and the need for speed against price/capacity constraints—something that Big Data is going to make ever more necessary—and make sure that you get the utmost benefit from ioMemory modules.

The fallout from Big Data is going to transform business computing at every level, so if you don’t want to end up a data dinosaur, now’s the time to transform your infrastructure with a storage hypervisor. A good place to start is Jon Toigo’s Storage Virtualization for Rock Stars series, starting with Hitting the Perfect Chord in Storage Efficiency, which will give you a good overview of how a storage hypervisor can help you increase engineering, operational, and financial efficiency.

DataCore Software Storage Hypervisor Empowers Enterprises to Fully Realize the Benefits of Microsoft SQL Server 2012; Boosts Performance and Resiliency

SANsymphony-V Optimizes Resources, Accelerates Performance and Adds Business Continuity to Fulfill Storage Needs of Enterprises Deploying Microsoft SQL Server 

Computer Technology review: http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14863:datacore-sansymphony-v-enables-enterprises-to-realize-benefits-of-microsoft-sql-server-2012&catid=320:breaking-news&Itemid=2701739

DataCore Software today announced that Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is verified “DataCore Ready” and integrates easily with SANsymphony-V. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor helps boost performance of underlying and often diverse storage resources and enhances the business continuity and data protection of databases. As a result, it provides an agile storage infrastructure that is perfectly suited for resource intensive database applications supported by Microsoft SQL Server 2012. 

Databases are one of the most demanding applications in terms of their need for performance and high-availability due to the enormous volumes of data and transactions they typically store and use. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor includes critical features which make it an ideal storage platform to leverage the benefits of Microsoft SQL Server 2012, including:

• Powerful centralized storage management under a single pane of control with an intuitive graphical user interface and automated wizards that implement best practices 
• Automated storage tiering to maximize price/performance of available storage assets 
• Adaptive caching for performance acceleration 
• Thin provisioning for space efficiency 
• Synchronous mirroring for high-availability 
• Low-impact online snapshots for high-speed disk to disk backup 
• Pass through disks for non-disruptive migrations 
• Continuous data protection (CDP) for any point in time backup and recovery 
• Unified storage for managing file shares (NAS) and SANs

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 helps address the challenges of increasing data volumes by rapidly turning data into actionable business insights. It expands on Microsoft’s commitment to help customers manage any data, regardless of size, both on-premise and in the cloud. Customers choosing SQL Server 2012 enjoy the benefit of a rich hardware and software partner ecosystem that enables solutions for the most unique and demanding data management needs.

An Ideal Platform for SQL Server 2012
DataCore’s SANsymphony-V abstracts and presents disk storage from different devices to applications as a shared pool of resources. With an ability to process multiple database requests in tandem, the system can absorb random I/O spikes. Built-in adaptive caching fully leverages available memory to boost I/O performance of both read and write traffic. Database administrators (DBAs) have the option of using flash memory/SSDs, high-speed arrays, capacity disks or even cloud storage, all of which can be managed and auto-tiered efficiently by the storage hypervisor. Automated tiering also ensures highly active data files don’t compete with inactive blocks of data for I/O cycles. Additionally, transaction logs and other active data can remain on Tier 1, while backups and other inactive read-only data move to lower tiers.

DataCore also empowers high performance flash and SSD-based storage systems from alliance partners Fusion-IO, Texas Memory Systems, Violin, Savage IO, X-IO Technologies and other SSD vendors to deliver the very best price/performance to meet the needs of demanding SQL application workloads.

For SQL database protection, DBAs can schedule ongoing space-efficient snapshots with application-aware recovery points, or utilize DataCore’s CDP feature to capture and log all changes and allow recovery back to any point in time versus to a specific snapshot image. 

Key Benefits for Database Applications
DataCore’s intelligent storage hypervisor software enables enterprises to radically improve the efficiency, performance and availability of their storage infrastructure through virtualization, transforming disparate storage resources into a unified and efficient infrastructure that is flexible, fast, reliable and scalable.

Key benefits include the ability to:

• Optimize performance and create a high-performance pool of virtualized storage for SQL databases, eliminating most storage-related I/O bottlenecks for business-critical applications. 
• Provision virtually any size volumes for SQL applications upfront, and increase utilization and I/O capacity on the fly. 
• Balance cost and performance by storing transaction logs and active data files on higher performance storage devices, while moving backups and inactive data files to lower cost higher capacity drives or cloud storage. 
• Continuously protect databases against downtime and disaster with stretch high-availability design to maximize business continuity. 
• Scale storage for throughput, transactions and capacity that meet the needs of applications. 
• Automate and simplify storage management that has been integrated and tested “DataCore Ready” with SQL Server.

DataCore and Microsoft
DataCore has been developing innovative storage virtualization solutions designed specifically to work on Microsoft platforms for nearly 15 years. It is a longtime and active member of both the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center and theMicrosoft System Center Alliance.

“DataCore remains committed to creating solutions designed to enhance the capabilities of Microsoft platforms and can virtualize and manage enterprise-class storage environments with ease and efficiency,” said Carlos Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development for DataCore Software. “SANsymphony-V’s rich capabilities, such as auto-tiering and thin provisioning, efficiently handle extensive demands placed on storage environments by intensive database applications. Together with SQL Server 2012, DataCore is enabling enterprises to have the robust storage infrastructure critical to attaining maximum returns on their virtualization, cloud and database investments.”

DataCore has worked with Microsoft technologies since it was founded in 1998. The company has deployed over 20,000 systems around the world leveraging the technology, many with highly intensive database applications. DataCore users are also already experiencing some of the benefits of Microsoft SQL Server platforms because Express Local Edition is integrated into SANsymphony-V to store historical performance data

DataCore customers represent a broad spectrum of IT organizations, spanning all major vertical industries, and ranging from large enterprises to small and midsize business. Their physical environments consists of systems from all the major storage manufacturers, including Dell, EMC, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp, and many others.

DataCore Software Named Top Finalists for the 2012 Microsoft Private Cloud Partner of the Year Award

DataCore Software Corporation announced it has been selected as a finalist for the Microsoft Private Cloud Partner of the Year Award.

“We are proud to recognize our 2012 Partner Award finalists for their outstanding commitments to solving customer challenges”

“DataCore is proud and honored to be recognized by Microsoft,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore. “For more than a decade, DataCore has developed innovative storage virtualization solutions designed specifically to work on Microsoft platforms. Our newest product, SANsymphony-V 9.0, is a 'storage hypervisor for the cloud' that seamlessly integrates with Microsoft’s virtualization infrastructure products, including Windows Server, Hyper-V, and System Center. Working collaboratively with Microsoft has enabled us to provide the best storage virtualization solution available to our partners and customers alike.”

Awards were presented in multiple categories, with winners chosen from a set of nearly 3,000 entrants worldwide. The Private Cloud Partner of the Year Award recognizes the partner that excelled in offering innovative private cloud solutions for their customers based on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center, and related products.

“We are proud to recognize our 2012 Partner Award finalists for their outstanding commitments to solving customer challenges,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. “Our partners are critical to our success as a company, and it is their creativity and innovative thinking in solving the unique needs of our customers that serves as the foundation for mutual, long-term success. We congratulate this year’s finalists on their achievements and look forward to following their continued success in the future.”

DataCore’s storage hypervisor innovations enable enterprises of all sizes to quickly roll out agile, scalable cloud storage infrastructures customized to their specific needs. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V 9.0 storage hypervisor excels at pooling distributed storage assets regardless of vendor make or model, whether co-located or many miles away. In large scale scenarios, SANsymphony-V 9.0 uses N+1 redundant grids to ensure necessary and flexible performance expansion and to make cloud storage continuously available.

The Microsoft Partner Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.

DataCore Software Rolls Out SANsymphony-V 9.0 Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud

http://www.mspnews.com/channels/cloud/articles/296396-datacore-software-rolls-out-sansymphony-v-90-storage.htm 

The latest version of SANsymphony provides a number of new capabilities to help organizations that are planning private cloud deployments. The solution is also suitable for large data centers that are seeking cloud-like services, and cloud service providers (CSPs) may also benefit in developing public, private and hybrid cloud offerings.

The company has also introduced a new program designed for CSPs, who wish to create cloud storage infrastructure using the SANsymphony solution. The latest version of SANsymphony enables CSPs to call IaaS functions in order to satisfy each of their clients' individual storage needs. DataCore's storage hypervisor offers a wide range of capabilities that may be centrally managed to work throughout an infrastructure.

Storage devices may be profiled and organized into different tiers and optimized dynamically to maximize the use of more expensive or higher performance assets. Virtual disks are also set up and taken down on cue, reclaiming space when the process is finished. The solution offers complete control and visibility of infrastructure via IaaS modules that may be integrated with server hypervisors from VMware and Microsoft, as well as a number of systems and management products like Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager and VMware vCenter.

SANsymphony-V 9.0 may also be scaled up and out, automatically adapting quickly to new requirements without any disruption. Key storage elements beyond disk space are enabled, including the horsepower to multiply IOPS, throughput and caches. And the solution's central management console also scales according to needs to support operations on large groups of related objects while also enabling experts to troubleshoot and fine-tune on a granular basis.

Additional capabilities include pooling of distributed storage assets, agnostic to vendor make or model or whether they are co-located or situated far away. This design harnesses the value of purpose-built storage devices and also eliminates management confusion and complexity. Other features include automatic storage tiering and automatic load balancing, which leads to optimal use of disk space and maximum I/O performance.

"DataCore's latest storage hypervisor innovations, together with both its pricing and rental models, are extremely well tailored for building out cloud storage infrastructures, whether a user is starting out with a modest trial or is well on their way to a full-blown, large scale rollout," said Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group (News - Alert). "It has succeeded in abstracting the storage-related aspects of the Infrastructure-as-a-Service layer so that cloud-storage is easy to drop into place, and can be flexed or expanded at will. It makes perfect sense -- even for contemporary data centers that don't yet have cloud on the brain."

"IaaS modules supported by SANsymphony-V 9.0 orchestrate the dynamic coordination between the catalog choices subscribers see and the storage devices enlisted to meet their needs," said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. "It's what makes cloud storage work unattended."

"We're fast approaching 1,000 days of 100 percent uptime thanks largely to the DataCore platform -- and we continue to check off days on the calendar without a hitch," added Jeff Slapp, chief technology officer at Host.net (News - Alert). "All this while we expand, upgrade, change out storage devices and even reconfigure networks in the background. It offers flexibility and interchangeability at its best."

DataCore Launches “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud”

DataCore Launches Large Scale, Automated Infrastructure-as-a-Service Enhancements and Empowers Enterprises with “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud”

DataCore Software, the storage hypervisor leader and premier provider of storage virtualization software,  announced far-reaching innovations required to manage enterprise-wide storage and quickly roll out agile, scalable cloud storage infrastructures. Aptly described as “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud,” DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V 9.0 offers customers superior flexibility, powerful automation and exceptional value.

The new capabilities are driven by:

•Organizations planning private cloud deployments

•Large data centers seeking responsive, cloud-like services

•Cloud service providers (CSPs) developing public, private and hybrid cloud offerings.

“DataCore’s latest storage hypervisor innovations, together with both its pricing and rental models, are extremely well tailored for building out cloud storage infrastructures, whether a user is starting out with a modest trial or is well on their way to a full-blown, large scale rollout,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “It has succeeded in abstracting the storage-related aspects of the Infrastructure-as-a-Service layer so that cloud-storage is easy to drop into place, and can be flexed or expanded at will. It makes perfect sense – even for contemporary data centers that don’t yet have cloud on the brain.”


Manage Storage Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to Meet Unpredictable Demands
Storage has long been managed as static, motionless hardware. Each request for capacity requires IT specialists to manually intervene anytime new applications or users demand new storage. That means provisioning space using complicated, device-specific procedures and permanent connections. In contrast, self-service requests for cloud storage come fast and furious in unpredictable patterns. Resources across multiple purpose-built devices with tiered levels of protection must be quickly reserved and subsequently released to make room for the next subscriber. Manual intervention, especially in large scale systems, is overwhelming and simply not an option. It is made even more difficult by the sheer number of devices and the variety of equipment necessary to satisfy the different classes of service.

“IaaS modules supported by SANsymphony-V 9.0 orchestrate the dynamic coordination between the catalog choices subscribers see and the storage devices enlisted to meet their needs,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. “It’s what makes cloud storage work unattended.”

Powerful Infrastructure-wide Storage Management and Dynamic Asset Optimization
CSPs can programmatically call the IaaS functions in SANsymphony-V 9.0 to satisfy each client’s individual storage needs. The DataCore storage hypervisor provides an extensive and comprehensive set of capabilities that can be centrally managed and work infrastructure-wide. Storage devices can be profiled and organized into different tiers and optimized dynamically to maximize the efficient use of more expensive and higher performance assets. The software dynamically sets up or tears down virtual disks on cue, reclaiming space when done. For complete control and visibility of the infrastructure, SANsymphony-V 9.0 offers IaaS modules that integrate with popular server hypervisors from VMware and Microsoft, as well as broad systems management products like Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager and VMware vCenter.

Device-Independent Storage Virtualization Scales Up and Out
Variable size is an intrinsic property of cloud infrastructures, dictating that storage pools be segmented, readily expandable and even shrunk according to the changing needs of users. In response, SANsymphony-V 9.0 scales up and scales out, automatically adapting to new requirements quickly and without disruption. That means key storage elements beyond disk space - including the horsepower to multiply IOPS, throughput and caches - can be harnessed quickly for added performance when demand calls for it. The SANsymphony-V 9.0 centralized management console scales accordingly, supporting operations on large groups of related objects for convenience and synchronization, yet allowing experts to troubleshoot and tune on a granular basis.

Scale to Federate Diverse Resources; Automate to Optimize Utilization and Performance
The storage hypervisor excels at pooling distributed storage assets regardless of vendor make or model, whether co-located or many miles away. The hardware-agnostic design harnesses the value of purpose-built storage devices (solid state disks, external storage systems, internal server drives and public cloud storage) while eliminating management confusion and complexity. Automatic storage tiering combined with automatic load balancing results in optimal use of disk space and the ultimate I/O performance. These features are key to fulfilling the dynamic and variable needs of users, applications and the business at a reasonable cost.

The Role of Scale in Realizing Resiliency and Meeting Looming Performance Expansion
In large scale scenarios, SANsymphony-V 9.0 uses N+1 redundant grids to ensure necessary performance expansion and to make cloud storage continuously available. The storage hypervisor anticipates equipment periodically being taken out-of-service for planned and unplanned reasons, redirecting suitable storage resources to take their place in accordance with service level agreements. In effect, a configuration that requires two storage virtualization nodes to handle peak workloads is configured with an active third node to which information is mirrored. The third node is able to take over transparently for any of the others. As the cloud expands, additional nodes can be seamlessly inserted to add performance and facilitate growth.

For evidence of continuous availability with DataCore’s architecture in large scale deployments, one need only look at Host.net, a provider of enterprise private cloud as well as colocation, offsite backup and network solutions. Jeff Slapp, chief technology officer at Host.net explains, “We’re fast approaching 1,000 days of 100 percent uptime thanks largely to the DataCore platform – and we continue to check off days on the calendar without a hitch. All this while we expand, upgrade, change out storage devices and even reconfigure networks in the background. It offers flexibility and interchangeability at its best.”

Unlike traditional data centers, clouds don’t just expand at the core, they expand at the periphery, particularly to remote locations. The satellite locations provide extra safeguards against regional disasters and bring the data closer to distant subscribers. SANsymphony-V 9.0 stretches outwards to connect these sites with 1-to-many and many-to-1 replication options. Disaster recovery procedures can be periodically tested and verified without disturbing production activities at other points in the cloud. Similarly, the software allows rapid resynchronization and resumption of a temporarily suspended site.

Licensing, Pricing and Availability

The new licensing structure for SANsymphony-V 9.0 aligns perfectly with the broad range and scale of the product. It is available in five different virtualization models spanning from very large deployments to small pilot programs and branch applications. Customers can upgrade across levels without any software “throw-away,” disruption or retraining, ensuring maximum ROI. A special licensing program has also been created for Hosters and CSPs. SANsymphony-V 9.0 will be generally available from DataCore-authorized partners around the world beginning July 2, 2012. For more information, please visit – http://www.datacore.com/storagehypervisor .

DataCore Software Announces “Pay-as-You-Serve” Cloud Service Provider Program to Slash Capital Costs of Providing Hosted IT Services

With Latest Storage Hypervisor Enhancements and New Cloud Service Provider Program, DataCore Helps Hosting Companies Eliminate Up Front Costs and Manage Services to Higher Margins

DataCore Software, the storage hypervisor leader and premier provider of storage virtualization software, today announced that providers of hosted IT services may now rent DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor through the company’s Cloud Service Provider Program. Under the program, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) pay for the use of the software monthly based on the amount of storage they serve versus having to purchase it outright. This allows participating providers to reduce capital expenditure and better align costs to revenue.

DataCore’s storage hypervisor software manages and protects hosted IT environments, providing a high performance, highly scalable, automatically tiered storage infrastructure upon which providers can confidently build and offer their hosted IT services.

“Pay-as-You-Serve” Business Model Aligns Storage Costs with Revenue Generating Services

The DataCore Cloud Service Provider Program goes a step further in the direction of “on demand” infrastructure with its “Pay-as-You-Serve” proposition to hosted IT service providers—they pay for the software as they use it, based upon the storage they serve to their subscribers.

“In order to offer the most competitive pricing for their services, CSPs and other hosting companies seek to lower capital expenditures and keep expenses and their timing aligned to revenue-producing activities,” said Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development, DataCore Software. “The DataCore storage hypervisor ‘software advantage’ gives us the unique ability to offer the kind of service provider program that other leading software companies, like VMware, have developed, but apply it to the storage-side of the infrastructure. Ideally tailored for the flexibility, efficiency and predictable expenses they seek.”

DataCore’s Storage Hypervisor: Greater ‘Buying Power’, Productivity and Operating Expense Savings

New cutting edge technologies will also be of interest to CSPs. These innovations designed to satisfy large scale, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) requirements crucial to building robust cloud storage infrastructures are packaged in the company’s newest product, SANsymphony-V R9.0, aptly described as “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud.”

The storage hypervisor’s powerful storage management capabilities and interchangeable hardware design empowers hosters with great cost-savings flexibility, new levels of automation for increased resource productivity and a storage infrastructure that easily incorporates the industry’s latest innovations.

“The new DataCore CSP pricing model reduces our upfront costs – thereby enhancing our margins,” comments Philippe Merckel, CEO, MERCKEL SAS. “DataCore understands that as data centers move to the cloud in the form of virtual, private data centers, cloud platforms need the storage virtualization functionality that DataCore brings to the table with its storage hypervisor. The key, however, for CSPs lies in making the adoption of this technology cost-effective. That is what this Cloud Service Provider Program does. It makes it far easier for us to standardize on DataCore for storage virtualization because we pay as we go rather than paying for everything upfront. It fundamentally suits our own business model whereby our own clients lease our cloud platform.”

More Information: Getting Started with DataCore’s Cloud Service Provider Program

The DataCore Cloud Service Provider Program is currently open only to providers of hosted IT services located in Europe; the program will be expanded to include North America and additional geographies over the next 90 days. For more up-to-date information about program eligibility and the program itself, please visit: http://www.datacore.com/Partners/cloud-service-providers/CSP-Program.aspx .

DataCore, a TechEd Platinum Sponsor, will Showcase The Storage Hypervisor and Present Storage Virtualisation Best Practices for Private Clouds at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012 - Visit Stand P2

DataCore Software today announced that it is a Platinum Sponsor at Microsoft’s TechEd Europe 2012 show (June 26-29 at the Amsterdam RAI Centre) and is welcoming attendees to visit booth P2 to see and learn about the newest developments of its storage hypervisor and how it can optimise storage infrastructures for Microsoft platforms. The premier provider of storage virtualisation software will present a “Private Cloud Design and Management” session aimed at helping organisations understand and overcome the difficult storage related challenges needed to build, deploy and manage successful private clouds (June 26, Session 01, 12:00-13:15, Room D204). Separately, a second session has been dedicated to present the new SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor developments and innovations (June 27, Lunch Session Wednesday, 13:30-14:15, Hall 3B).


Microsoft’s selection of DataCore to present these sessions marks the continuation of a long relationship between the companies, highlighted by the success of thousands of joint customers and partners around the world using the combination of Microsoft and DataCore to build highly available and flexible virtual infrastructures.

“Private Cloud Design and Management” will detail how to transform existing IT operations into a robust, private cloud, utilizing existing storage assets and without putting a massive strain on IT departments or budgets. The session will provide recommendations for achieving performance, availability and flexibility through a virtualised storage infrastructure. Emphasis will be placed on leveraging and optimising Hyper-V, clustered shared volumes and Microsoft System Center. The session will include a live demonstration and a discussion of various real-world customer scenarios. In the second session, DataCore is introducing a new generation of its storage hypervisor software extending its reach into Large Scale Data Centers, Private Cloud Projects and Cloud Service Providers.

“The acceptance for private cloud and storage virtualisation technologies in the Microsoft space is rapidly growing and Microsoft professionals need to get a real handle on proven approaches,” said Alexander Best, director of technical business development at DataCore Software. “Improperly handling storage can bring such projects to a grinding halt. DataCore’s storage hypervisor, and our long history in virtualisation, helps Microsoft experts and partners to maximise the benefits of private cloud in the easiest, most cost-effective way possible.”

The sessions will be open for all attendees of Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012. In addition, attendees are invited to visit DataCore at booth P2 for further information.

Alexander Best and Christian Marczinke, both Microsoft Certified Technology Specialists and DataCore Certified Master Engineers, will be available for technical press briefings during the show. CEO George Teixeira will be available for strategic briefings on Thursday, June 28.

DataCore Software has released new plug-in to integrate DataCore’s Storage Hypervisor and Management with VMware vCenter™

DataCore Software has released a new plug-in software to integrate the powerful enterprise-wide storage management capabilities of DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V Storage Hypervisor with VMware vCenter™ Server. The management plug-in software is available immediately for download to all SANsymphony-V customers.

VMware vCenter is the de facto standard for managing VMware virtual infrastructures and the SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor combines powerful storage virtualisation and enterprise-wide storage management. Together, these capabilities are seamlessly integrated to allow a VMware administrator to efficiently manage all their virtual machines (VM) and storage resources from a single console.

DataCore and VMware – A Combination Delivering Compelling Benefits

VMware administrators are now able to provision, monitor and manage their storage and server resources from a single pane of glass and perform common storage tasks and complex scheduling workflows to clone, snapshot and restore datastores and VMs without having to become storage experts

The vCenter Plug-In helps VMware administrators increase productivity and respond faster to user needs in a number of ways, including:
•Enabling an end-to-end view for VMware to storage from a virtual machine, host or virtual disk perspective; central monitoring and management of storage resources

•Rapidly provisioning virtual disks to VMware vSphere®/ESX® hosts

•Creating and restoring snapshots of datastores where VMs are housed
•Scheduling tasks to coordinate workflows between vSphere and SANsymphony-V servers

•Taking consistent snapshots of a datastore for validation or before making changes to the environment

•Scheduling recovery clones (full copy) or efficient differential snapshots to rapidly restore VMs

•Employing high-availability mirror protection to virtual disks

•Visualising current conditions in easy-to-understand terms to simplify troubleshooting and performing root cause analysis for virtual machines and their storage•Lowering OpEx and enhancing administrator productivity – through automated workflows, task wizards and lesser need for storage training and specialised skill sets
Simplify Difficult Storage Tasks: Snapshots, Clones and Restorations
The software’s built in wizards and simple command menus take the complexity out of creating, scheduling or capturing snapshots of VMs. Administrators simply select the datastore housing the specific VMs of interest. The plug-in signals the VMware vCenter Server to quiesce those VMs and then triggers SANsymphony-V to take snapshots of the corresponding datastore. Both full clone and differential (lightweight) snapshots are supported. The known positive state in those online snapshots may be used to set up new VMs or quickly recover from malware and user errors that may have damaged their integrity.

Snapshots with a click of the mouse may be scheduled at regular intervals, for instance, Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m. when it will not disrupt daily operations. The workflow can also define how long the snapshots should be retained before being deleted.

TechEd 2012: DataCore Software Selected to Present Storage Virtualization Best Practices Sessions for Building, Deploying and Managing Private Clouds

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/06/04/teched-2012-datacore-software-selected-present-storage-virtualization-best-practices-sess?page=0,0

Microsoft Enlists Longtime Partner and Creators of the First Storage Hypervisor to Showcase Joint Cloud Solutions at Worldwide TechEd 2012 Events in North America, Europe and APAC

DataCore Software, the storage hypervisor leader and premier provider of storage virtualization software, today announced it has been chosen to participate worldwide at multiple TechEd events and to present the “Private Cloud Design and Management” session at Microsoft’s TechEd North America 2012 aimed at helping organizations understand and overcome the difficult storage related challenges needed to build, deploy and manage successful private clouds. TechEd is Microsoft's premier technology conference for IT professionals and developers and takes place June 11-14 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. DataCore, who introduced the first storage hypervisor with its SANsymphony-V, will be delivering a session titled “Private Cloud Design and Management: Speeding the Transition to a Responsive, Virtualized Storage Infrastructure,” scheduled for June 12 at 10:15 a.m. ET in room S210A (387).

Microsoft’s selection of DataCore to present the session marks the continuation of a long relationship between the companies, highlighted by the success of thousands of joint customers and partners around the world using the combination to build highly available and flexible virtual infrastructures. For those unable to attend the session in North America, please note that DataCore has also been chosen to present multiple sessions at Microsoft’s TechEd Europe and will have a booth at TechEd Australia showcasing private cloud design and management, as well as its pioneering storage hypervisor, SANsymphony-V.

“Private Cloud Design and Management” will detail how to transform operations into a robust, private cloud, utilizing existing storage assets and without putting a massive strain on IT departments or budgets. The session will provide recommendations for achieving performance, availability and flexibility through a virtualized storage infrastructure. Focus will be placed on incorporating storage hypervisor functions to rapidly provision resources, dynamically distribute workloads across multiple tiers and types of storage, non-disruptively refresh hardware to expand capacity, while tapping into the latest and most cost-effective disk technologies. Emphasis will be placed on leveraging and optimizing Hyper-V, clustered shared volumes and Microsoft System Center. Attendees will take away concrete, actionable steps considered standard practice by seasoned colleagues in IT for building and enhancing private cloud infrastructure. The session will include a live demonstration and a discussion of various real-world customer scenarios.

Conducting “Private Cloud Design and Management” will be DataCore’s Director of Worldwide Business Development, Rob Griffin, an expert in helping original equipment manufacturers, independent software and hardware vendors take advantage of private cloud and virtualization technology. Griffin was formerly involved in OEM Server business development at Microsoft Corporation and was a server product manager at Lenovo. He also possesses nearly a decade of experience as an IT director.

“Advancements in private cloud and virtualization have been very dramatic and rapid, so it’s important IT professionals get a real handle on proven approaches before proceeding down a path that can be costly and frustrating,” said Griffin. “Improperly handling storage is an area that can bring such projects to a grinding halt. With DataCore’s breakthrough storage hypervisor, and our long history in virtualization, we can draw off real-world examples to provide attendees with solid and precise recommendations that will help them achieve the great benefits of private cloud in the easiest, most cost-effective way possible.”

“Private Cloud Design and Management” is an intermediate level breakout session, though it is valuable for anyone interested in learning more about successfully harnessing the technology. Additionally, DataCore will be exhibiting at TechEd and invites attendees to visit booth #509 for further information. 

2 virtualization worries that keep admins up at night

System downtime and slow application performance related to storage in virtualized environments are the primary concerns of IT administrators surveyed in a new report on the state of private clouds.
IT administrators are more concerned about performance issues and less about the cost of storage than they were a year ago, according to the report, “2012 State of the Private Cloud Survey” by DataCore Software, a provider of storage virtualization software.
DataCore’s survey, which polled IT administrators in the private and public sectors worldwide, revealed that 63 percent of respondents consider system downtime and slow application performance to be their primary storage-related virtualization concerns, up from 36 percent in 2011.

IT administrators still consider the rising cost of storage to be a problem with virtualization initiatives, but overall it is declining as a major concern, with just over half (51 percent) describing increasing storage costs as one of their biggest problems (down from 66 percent in 2011), the report states.

While increasing storage costs may be less of an issue than last year, storage-related costs continue to comprise a significant portion of virtualization budgets, with 44 percent of respondents saying that storage costs represent more than a quarter of their total budget for virtualization, the report states

Many companies are allocating more money for storage, with 37 percent saying their storage budgets have increased this year, while just 13 percent say they have been cut.

Despite this, more than one in three respondents (34 percent) admit they underestimated the impact server/desktop virtualization would have on their storage costs. For those deploying a private cloud, more than one in four (28 percent) underestimated how storage costs would be affected.

“More companies are virtualizing more servers than ever before, but a notable faction of users – about a third – are underestimating the storage costs associated with server and desktop virtualization projects as well as the storage costs associated with private clouds,” said to Mark Peters, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group.

Throwing more money at storage has not reduced performance concerns for companies that have embraced server and desktop virtualization. Even with an increase in the average storage budget, more companies reported significant problems with storage-related performance, bottlenecks, downtimes and business continuity in 2012, the report states.

“Rather than simply continuing to expand traditional storage solutions, IT managers would be well advised to consider addressing performance and downtime issues with a storage virtualization solution that enables them to apply a simplified management approach to manage their storage resources in a single, logical storage pool," Peters said.

“As virtualization moves from theory to practice, storage-related performance and availability are becoming of greater concern to businesses, but cost concerns haven’t gone away,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore Software, who recommends the use of storage hypervisors.

Storage hypervisors ensure high performance and availability in the storage infrastructure through features such as auto-tiering, device interchangeability, thin provisioning and continuous data protection, Teixeira noted. “A storage hypervisor solves the cost issue by enabling enterprises to make greater use of existing storage infrastructure, while reducing the need for large-scale storage hardware,” he said.

Read full article at: http://gcn.com/articles/2012/05/01/datacore-storage-virtualization-survey-top-concerns.aspx

DataCore Software integrates enterprise-wide Storage Hypervisor Management with VMware vCenter; Empowers vSphere Admins to manage VMs and storage from a single console

"The new DataCore Storage Hypervisor Plug-in for VMware vCenter Server combines two industry-leading management solutions to offer customers the best of both worlds through a single view infrastructure management," said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "Customers can better manage and realise the full benefits of their desktop, server and storage resources in a VMware virtual environment."

DataCore Software today announced that it has released new plug-in software to integrate the powerful enterprise-wide storage management capabilities of DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V Storage Hypervisor with VMware vCenter™ Server. The management plug-in software is available immediately for download to all SANsymphony-V customers.

VMware vCenter is the de facto standard for managing VMware virtual infrastructures and the SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor combines powerful storage virtualisation and enterprise-wide storage management. Together, these capabilities are seamlessly integrated to allow a VMware administrator to efficiently manage all their virtual machines (VM) and storage resources from a single console.

DataCore and VMware – A Combination Delivering Compelling Benefits

VMware administrators are now able to provision, monitor and manage their storage and server resources from a single pane of glass and perform common storage tasks and complex scheduling workflows to clone, snapshot and restore datastores and VMs without having to become storage experts

The vCenter Plug-In helps VMware administrators increase productivity and respond faster to user needs in a number of ways, including:

•Enabling an end-to-end view for VMware to storage from a virtual machine, host or virtual disk perspective; central monitoring and management of storage resources

•Rapidly provisioning virtual disks to VMware vSphere®/ESX® hosts

•Creating and restoring snapshots of datastores where VMs are housed

•Scheduling tasks to coordinate workflows between vSphere and SANsymphony-V servers

•Taking consistent snapshots of a datastore for validation or before making changes to the environment

•Scheduling recovery clones (full copy) or efficient differential snapshots to rapidly restore VMs

•Employing high-availability mirror protection to virtual disks

•Visualising current conditions in easy-to-understand terms to simplify troubleshooting and performing root cause analysis for virtual machines and their storage

•Lowering OpEx and enhancing administrator productivity – through automated workflows, task wizards and lesser need for storage training and specialised skill sets

Simplify Difficult Storage Tasks: Snapshots, Clones and Restorations
The software’s built in wizards and simple command menus take the complexity out of creating, scheduling or capturing snapshots of VMs. Administrators simply select the datastore housing the specific VMs of interest. The plug-in signals the VMware vCenter Server to quiesce those VMs and then triggers SANsymphony-V to take snapshots of the corresponding datastore. Both full clone and differential (lightweight) snapshots are supported. The known positive state in those online snapshots may be used to set up new VMs or quickly recover from malware and user errors that may have damaged their integrity.

Snapshots with a click of the mouse may be scheduled at regular intervals, for instance, Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m. when it will not disrupt daily operations. The workflow can also define how long the snapshots should be retained before being deleted.

VMware administrators want to focus on VMs not storage complexity
Transitioning to a virtualised environment creates new requirements for the effective management of the underlying storage resources that are virtualised. VMware administrators are faced with requests to provision new VMs, set up datastores and manage cloning and snapshot copy operations. There can be a lack of in-depth knowledge of storage systems and no end-to-end management leaving VMware administrators with an incomplete view into how physical resources in the virtual environment are used. This in turn, can increase the amount of time and effort required to manage the environment. Therefore, VMware administrators need to be prepared with the right management tools to take on these tasks and as a result are using VMware vCenter to manage their servers.

The SANsymphony-VPlug-in for VMware vCenter provides a rich set of management capabilities for storage. From the plug-in, vSphere administrators can fulfill the dynamic storage needs of their vSphere/ESX clusters, hosts and virtual machines without having to become a storage expert or having to leave their familiar central console.

DataCore and VMware: The Fully Virtualised Data Centre
“VMware customers around the globe running VMware vSphere rely on DataCore’s solutions to deliver the critical “third dimension” of virtualisation – storage. DataCore has architected its software to cost-effectively shape the shared storage infrastructure required by virtualisation,” states Carlos Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development for DataCore Software. “The SANsymphony-VVMware vCenter Plug-in makes the storage management job significantly easier for VMware administrators. They now have a ‘one-stop’ administrative console to monitor and manage the full set of server and storage resources across their entire virtual data centre.”

For more information:
For more information please see the DataCore SANsymphony™-V Plug-in for VMware vCenter or email DataCore at info@datacore.com .

Data sheet: http://pages.datacore.com/SANsymphony-VforVMwarevCenter.html

Storage hypervisor makes cloud storage fast, affordable and reliable

http://searchcloudprovider.techtarget.com/podcast/Storage-hypervisor-makes-cloud-storage-fast-affordable-and-reliable

Cloud providers like to tout how quickly and easily they can scale their environments to meet customer demands, but nothing puts that to the test like cloud storage growth. Even outside of the cloud, storage demands can easily spiral out of control, and there comes a point when it's no longer economical for a provider to keep adding boxes. Anticipating that challenge before launching its cloud services in 2009, Host.net deployed DataCore Software's storage hypervisor, SANsymphony-V, a platform that Host.net credits for providing its customers with 900 days of consecutive, uninterrupted uptime.

In this case-study podcast, SearchCloudProvider.com site editor Jessica Scarpati gets a crash course on storage hypervisors from George Teixeira, CEO of DataCore Software, before diving into the details of Host.net's deployment with Jeffrey Slapp, vice president of virtualization services at the Florida-based cloud and managed services provider.

Read the rest of the article and hear the podcast: http://searchcloudprovider.techtarget.com/podcast/Storage-hypervisor-makes-cloud-storage-fast-affordable-and-reliable

N-TEC and DataCore Software partner to deliver easy to use SAN Appliances

Built-in DataCore Storage Hypervisor optimizes storage performance and Business Continuity

http://www.it-director.com/technology/storage/news_release.php?rel=31686

Powered by DataCore, the N-TEC Rapidcore Storage Appliance makes it practical for Small and Mid-size Businesses to virtualize and meet increasing High-Availability and performance demands

DataCore Software announced that N-TEC, a European system builder and storage vendor, will build and deliver a range of Storage Appliances under the new “DataCore Ready” program, which is designed to help system builders grow their storage business and serve the increasing market demand for easy to use storage solutions. The “DataCore Ready” program makes it easy for system builders to develop turnkey storage systems and appliances based on DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor. As one of the first partners to announce solutions under this new program, N-TEC has launched a new RapidCore Storage Appliance product line which comes pre-installed with DataCore’s storage hypervisor software. The N-TEC RapidCore Storage Appliance provides small and mid-size businesses a cost-effective and easy-to-use, turnkey solution to meet the needs of managing storage growth and the growing demand driven from virtualization projects for greater business continuity and performance.

The “Powered by DataCore" N-TEC RapidCore Storage Appliance is now available as a one-stop turnkey solution offering from N-TEC with pricing for hardware, software, installation, support and services all included. The great flexibility and simplicity provided by these pre-configured appliances, make them the ideal SAN solution for small and mid-size enterprises. The built-in storage hypervisor software ensures high-availability for business continuity, fast performance, optimal resource efficiency and ease of administration.

"Businesses are demanding affordable, reliable, universal and scalable storage solutions. The storage hypervisor software from DataCore complements the N-TEC portfolio ideally. We are very excited about the collaboration and the rapid certification of the solution”, says Sven Meyerhofer of N-TEC. "With the N-TEC RapidCore Storage Appliance ‘powered by DataCore’ we now offer a cost-effective turnkey high-availability solution that integrates the industry’s most advanced storage technologies in an appliance form factor that anyone can easily use."

The N-TEC RapidCore Storage Appliance is available in three versions ranging in capacity from two to 64 terabytes. Additional storage devices can be easily integrated and expanded to add capacity on-the-fly. The solution supports SATA, SAS or SSD storage devices, both iSCSI or FC connectivity are available either included or as an option. High-availability via a continuous mirroring design prevents downtime and data loss. In addition, features such as thin provisioning, automatic failover and failback multipathing (MPIO) and asynchronous replication are integrated within the appliances. The management of the appliance is based on an intuitive GUI which makes it easy for anyone to administer and perform operations via wizards, automation and simple mouse clicks.

"Over many years, N-TEC has established itself as a major manufacturer of storage solutions in the German/European market, that makes N-TEC an ideal first partner to launch our ‘DataCore Ready Program’ for system builders. The RapidCore Storage Appliance is a high-performance solution that is cost-effectively priced to address the growing market for virtualisation projects in the small to mid-size business environments. With this partnership, DataCore opens up the larger volume market potential available to SAN appliances who demand a one-stop turnkey solution", says Siegfried Betke, Director of Business Development and CE Strategic Channel Sales at DataCore Software.

The DataCore Ready Program

The DataCore Ready Program identifies solutions that are trusted to enhance DataCore SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor-based infrastructures. While DataCore solutions interoperate with common open & industry standard products, those listed as DataCore Ready have completed additional verification testing thereby providing customer confidence in joint solution compatibility. The DataCore Ready designation is awarded to third party products that have successfully met the verification criteria set by DataCore through the successful execution of a functional test plan.

Through the program, third-party products and solutions can gain exposure to DataCore customers and resellers. The DataCore Ready designation enables partners to generate new revenue opportunities, improve customer satisfaction, and also increases mindshare leveraging the DataCore brand. The DataCore Ready Programme is designed for software vendors, hardware vendors, hosting service providers and cloud technology firms who have demonstrated product and solution compatibility with DataCore products. The DataCore Ready logo helps customers quickly identify DataCore partner’s products and solutions that are tested and optimized for DataCore SANsymphony-V.

About N-TEC: The N-TEC GmbH is headquartered in Munich and has specialized in the development and marketing of storage and server solutions.

Among standard products, N-TEC develops and produces customized solutions. For more information http://www.n-tec.eu

Can Storage Hypervisors Enable BYOD for Data Storage?

By George Teixeira, CEO & President DataCore Software

I’m sure you have seen the wider use of the term BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in our industry and while I know it mainly refers to mobile devices, it got me thinking about why this is an inevitable trend – fueled by customers wanting greater buying power and flexibility. Therefore why shouldn’t this same trend impact their storage devices?

In reality, with storage hypervisors it already has. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V software empowers users with hardware interchangeability (another way to say BYOD) and a powerful, enterprise-wide feature set that works with whatever the existing or latest storage devices happen to be. For those skeptics out there, try it out yourself Download a Storage Hypervisor or give it a Test Drive on our hosted virtual environment.

Why do I say it’s inevitable? Because it has already happened before with server hypervisors and they dramatically make the point. Think how the world has changed in terms of server platforms. We now take for granted that with VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V software in place that the hardware they run on has become largely irrelevant and for the most part a matter of personal preference.

Think about it. When you deploy VMware vSphere or Hyper-V, do you really care if it is running on a Dell, HP, IBM or Intel server platform? Sure you may have a preference, but it clearly a secondary consideration. Instead, other factors like company buying practices, best price or the personal vendor choice of your boss often drive the decision. It is now obvious that after the advent of server virtualization, we now can take it for granted that software architecture is what truly matters and that the underlying hardware will continuously change. The software-based hypervisor architecture is what endures and enables new technologies to be incorporated over time. Specific hardware devices (or brands) are like fads -- they will continue to "come and go." The faster pace of change and the need to continue to drive costs down will make this trend inevitable. BYOD in a corporate sense means greater purchasing power and greater freedom to incorporate ”best value” storage solutions when and where they are needed.

Don’t take my word for it. Thousands of customers have already deployed DataCore SANsymphony-V and are realizing the compelling benefits of hardware independence. Find out more by checking out the SANsymphony-V analyst lab reports and the latest storage hypervisor capabilities like automated storage tiering that let you not only bring new devices into your infrastructure but get the most out of them.

Big Smart Storage for a Big Data World - Top 3 Issues to Address, Virtualization and Auto-tiering

http://www.storagereview.com/big_smart_storage_for_a_big_data_world
In 2012, the phrase “big data” is on everyone’s lips, just like virtualization was five years ago. Also just like virtualization, and cloud computing, there is a lot of hype obscuring the more important discussions around IT challenges, skill sets needed and how to actually build an infrastructure that can support effective big data technologies.

When people waxed poetic about the wonders of virtualization, they failed to recognize the new performance demands and enormous increase in storage capacity required to support server and desktop initiatives. The need for higher performance and continuous availability came at a high price, and clearly, the budget-busting impact subsequently delayed or scuttled many projects.

These problems are now being solved through the adoption of storage virtualization that harnesses industry innovations in performance, drives greater commoditization of expensive equipment, and automates storage management with new technologies like enterprise-wide auto-tiering software.
That same dynamic is again at work, only this time with big data.

Business intelligence firms would have you believe that you simply slap their analytics platforms on top of a Hadoop framework and BINGO – you have a big data application. The reality is, Hadoop production deployments are practically non-existent in large enterprises. There are simply not many people who understand and can take advantage of these new technologies. In addition, the ecosystem of supporting technologies and methodologies are still too immature, which means the industry is going through a painful process of trial and error, just as it did with virtualization five years ago. Again, underestimating storage requirements is emerging as a major barrier to adoption as the age-old practice of “throwing hardware at the problem” creates often-untenable cost and complexity.

To put it bluntly, big data does not simply require big storage – it requires big smart storage. Unfortunately, the industry is threatening to repeat major mistakes of the past!
Before I turn to the technology, let me point out the biggest challenge being faced as we enter the world of big data - we need to develop the people who will drive and implement useful big data systems. A recent Forbes article indicated that our schools have not kept pace with the educational demands brought about by big data. I think the following passage sums up the problem well: “We are facing a huge deficit in people to not only handle big data, but more importantly to have the knowledge and skills to generate value from data — dealing with the non-stop tsunami. How do you aggregate and filter data, how do you present the data, how do you analyze them to gain insights, how do you use the insights to aid decision-making, and then how do you integrate this from an industry point of view into your business process?”

Now, back to the product technologies that will make a difference - especially those related to managing storage for this new paradigm.
As we all know, there has been an explosion in the growth of data, and traditional approaches to scaling storage and processing have begun to reach computational, operational and economic limits. A new tact is needed to intelligently manage and meet the performance and availability needs of rapidly growing data sets. Just a few short years ago, it was practically unheard of for organizations to be talking about scaling beyond several hundred terabytes, now discussions deal with several petabytes. Also in the past, companies chose to archive a large percentage of their content on tape. However, in todays on-demand, social media centric world, that’s no longer feasible. Users now demand instantaneous access and will not tolerate delays to restore data from slow and or remote tape vaults.

Instant gratification is the word-of-the-day and performance is critical.
New storage systems must automatically and non-disruptively migrate data from one generation of a system to another to effectively address long-term archiving. Also adding to this problem is the need to distribute storage among multiple data centers, either for disaster recovery or to place content closer to the requesting users in order to keep latency at a minimum and improve response times.

This is especially important for the performance of applications critical to the day-to-day running of a business such as databases, enterprise resource planning and other transaction oriented workloads. In addition to the data these resource-heavy applications produce, IT departments must deal with the massive scale of new media such as Facebook and YouTube. Traditional storage systems are not well suited to solve these problems, leaving IT architects with little choice but to attempt to develop solutions on their own or suffer with complex, low performing systems.

Storage systems are very challenged in big data and cloud environments because they were designed to be deployed on larger and larger storage arrays, typically located in a single location. These high-end proprietary systems have come at a high price in terms of capital and operational costs, as well as agility and vendor lock-in. They provide inadequate mechanisms to create a common, centrally managed resource pool. This leaves an IT architect to solve the problem with a multitude of individual storage systems usually compromised of varied brands, makes and models, requiring a different approach to replication across sites and some form of custom management.

With this in mind, there are major issues to address:

• Virtual Resource Management and Flexibility: It takes smart software to transition the current landscape of monolithic, independent solutions into a virtual storage resource pool that incorporates and harnesses the large variety of storage hardware and devices available today. High Capital and Operational Costs: To reduce operational costs, achieving greater productivity through automation and centralized management is essential. Just as importantly, empowering companies with more of an ability to commoditize and allow hardware inter-changeability is critical to cost-effective storage scalability. No one can afford “big bucks” to throw more expensive “big box” solutions at a big data world. Hypervisors such as VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V have opened up purchasing power for users. Today, the use of a Dell, HP, IBM or Intel server has become largely a personal company preference. This same approach is required for storage and has driven the need for hypervisors.
• Scalability Demands Performance and Continuous Availability: As data storage grows and more applications, users and systems need to be serviced, the requirement for higher performance and availability rise in parallel. It is no longer about how much can be contained in a large box, but, how do we harness new technologies to make storage faster and more responsive. Likewise, no matter how reliable any one single storage box may be, it does not compare to many systems working together over different locations to ensure the highest level of business continuity, regardless of the underlying hardware.
• Dynamic Versus Static Storage: It is also obvious we can no longer keep up with how to optimize enterprise data for maximum performance and cost trade-offs. Software automation is now critical. Technologies such as thin-provisioning that span multiple storage devices are necessary for greater efficiency and better storage asset utilization. Powerful enterprise-wide capabilities that work across a diversity of storage classes and device types are becoming a must-have. Automated storage tiering is required to migrate from one class of storage to another. As a result, sophisticated storage hypervisors are critical, regardless of whether the data and I/O traffic is best-migrated from high-speed dynamic RAM memory, solid state drives, disks or even cloud storage providers.

Intensive applications now need a storage system that can start small, yet scale easily to many petabytes. It must be one that serves content rapidly and handles the growing workload of thousands of users each day. It must also be exceedingly easy to use, automate as much as possible and avoid a high degree of specialized expertise to deploy or tune. Perhaps most importantly, it must change the paradigm of storage from being cemented to a single array or location to being a dispersed, yet centrally managed system that can actively store, retrieve and distribute content anywhere it is needed. The good news is, storage hypervisors like DataCore’s SANsymphony-V, deliver an easy-to-use, scalable solution for the IT architect faced with large amounts of data running through a modern-day company.

Yes, big data offers big potential. Let’s just make sure we get storage right this time to avoid repeating the big mistakes of the past.

DataCore Software 2012 Private Cloud and Storage Virtualization Survey: Performance Bottlenecks and Downtime Top Storage-Related User Concerns

DataCore Software 2012 Private Cloud and Storage Virtualization Survey: Performance Bottlenecks and Downtime Top Storage-Related User Concerns

A Perfect Storm of Possibilities for Storage Virtualization

http://vmblog.com/archive/2012/05/01/datacore-software-2012-private-cloud-and-storage-virtualization-survey-performance-bottlenecks-and-downtime-top-storage-related-user-concerns.aspx

According to Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, “If the DataCore survey shows anything, it's that the time is ripe for storage virtualization, both to meet the business objectives associated with virtualization projects and to reduce the risks associated with those initiatives. More companies are virtualizing more servers than ever before, but a notable faction of users – about a third – are underestimating the storage costs associated with server and desktop virtualization projects as well as the storage costs associated with private clouds.

“Rather than simply continuing to expand traditional storage solutions, IT managers would be well advised to consider addressing performance and downtime issues with a storage virtualization solution that enables them to apply a simplified management approach to manage their storage resources in a single, logical storage pool. For the respondents in DataCore's survey – and others – who are not using storage virtualization, I would say that logic, availability, and need are all aligned to say it's time to take a serious look.”

Government Computer News: 2 virtualization worries that keep admins up at night

http://gcn.com/articles/2012/05/01/datacore-storage-virtualization-survey-top-concerns.aspx

System downtime and slow application performance related to storage in virtualized environments are the primary concerns of IT administrators surveyed in a new report on the state of private clouds.

IT administrators are more concerned about performance issues and less about the cost of storage than they were a year ago, according to the report, “2012 State of the Private Cloud Survey” by DataCore Software, a provider of storage virtualization software.

DataCore’s survey, which polled 289 IT administrators in the private and public sectors worldwide, revealed that 63 percent of respondents consider system downtime and slow application performance to be their primary storage-related virtualization concerns, up from 36 percent in 2011. About 10.8 percent of the respondents state they work with government.

IT administrators still consider the rising cost of storage to be a problem with virtualization initiatives, but overall it is declining as a major concern, with just over half (51 percent) describing increasing storage costs as one of their biggest problems (down from 66 percent in 2011), the report states.

While increasing storage costs may be less of an issue than last year, storage-related costs continue to comprise a significant portion of virtualization budgets, with 44 percent of respondents saying that storage costs represent more than a quarter of their total budget for virtualization, the report states

Many companies are allocating more money for storage, with 37 percent saying their storage budgets have increased this year, while just 13 percent say they have been cut.

Despite this, more than one in three respondents (34 percent) admit they underestimated the impact server/desktop virtualization would have on their storage costs. For those deploying a private cloud, more than one in four (28 percent) underestimated how storage costs would be affected.

...“As virtualization moves from theory to practice, storage-related performance and availability are becoming of greater concern to businesses, but cost concerns haven’t gone away,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore Software, who recommends the use of storage hypervisors.

Storage hypervisors ensure high performance and availability in the storage infrastructure through features such as auto-tiering, device interchangeability, thin provisioning and continuous data protection, Teixeira noted. “A storage hypervisor solves the cost issue by enabling enterprises to make greater use of existing storage infrastructure, while reducing the need for large-scale storage hardware,” he said.

The online survey was conducted in March 2012. The survey asked a series of questions about virtualization and its impact on storage.

DataCore Software Presents the Storage Hypervisor to "IDC Virtualisation and Cloud Conferences" ; Also on 22 May, DataCore will join IDC to present “Evolution of the Datacentre Conference” in London.

Live from the “IDC Virtualisation and Cloud Conference” in Dublin, DataCore Software, one of the industry’s premier providers of storage virtualisation software, is presenting the latest innovations of its storage hypervisor, SANsymphony-V.

DataCore have additionally been invited to host a customer testimonial slot from the Irish League of Credit Unions, detailing how they successfully use DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor to virtualise, manage and protect the data storage at 500 credit unions.
Later this month on 22 May, DataCore will also join IDC to present at their “Evolution of the Datacentre Conference” in London.

The IDC London Conference takes place on 22 May 2012 in the Grand Connaught Rooms. For more information on the IDC Evolution of the Datacentre Conference in London, visit http://www.cvent.com/events/evolution-of-the-datacentre-conference/event-summary-76ca2804ef284446827655acfff38e0d.aspx .

Partnership and attendance of DataCore Software at IDC Europe Conferences is a natural fit for both organisations. The results of a recent European IDC survey conducted at the end of 2011 showed that 35.8 per cent of European companies continue to invest in their infrastructure despite a flat economic climate. Storage and virtualisation are the cited by IDC as the top investment categories. Wider infrastructure challenges such as Private Cloud, “Big Data,” and storage efficiency, are identified to dramatically change the short-term market adoption of storage virtualisation.

Hence the reason why DataCore’s Regional Manager, Rupert Collier, will lead the discussion among attending IDC delegates on the virtues of changing the way organisations view storage, promoting effective data management through the deployment of a portable, independent storage hypervisor to alleviate their data centre issues.

Rupert’s slot will be followed by a customer testimonial from the Irish League of Credit Unions, who provide infrastructure services for 500 credit unions (not-for-profit regional banks) across Ireland and who have successfully deployed DataCore’s SANsymphony-V in a mirrored environment to guarantee high availability, business continuity, DR and better performance.

“It’s great to be invited to the IDC conferences to present customer success stories,” noted Rupert Collier, Regional Manager, DataCore Software. “Given the IDC European state of the market survey late last year, it appears that having DataCore in attendance addresses delegates’ concerns on how to actively identify alternative ways to improve usage of existing storage assets and how to avoid proprietary vendor lock in when expansion inevitably occurs. Most of our customers experience an immediate return on investment by implementing the storage hypervisor that delivers better utilisation and performance for their storage. It is the perfect complement to dynamic, virtualised infrastructures and cloud environments which cannot afford failures or degradations to performance.”

DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor centralises, manages and optimises the use of heterogeneous storage devices – regardless of price, performance, model, or hardware – and integrates flash memory, SSDs, hard drives and cloud storage. The auto-tiering functionality automates the progression and demotion of data across different storage devices – based on performance and cost criteria. Also, by integrating a cloud array gateway, DataCore expands auto-tiering to the cloud level, so non-critical backup and archiving data can be outsourced.

IDC’s Dublin Conference occurs on 1 May 2012 at Dublin’s Burlington Hotel. For more on the IDC Virtualisation and Cloud Conference in Dublin, visit http://www.cvent.com/events/virtualisation-and-cloud-ireland-conference/event-summary-a80359b954cd4d858cb334bb739f0db4.aspx .