The Value of Storage Virtualization Software April 2, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Datacore, SANmelody, SANsymphony, virtualization
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One of the more perplexing things about IT is that in all the rush to embrace server virtualization, there has not been a corresponding amount of increased interest in storage virtualization.
That isn’t to say that storage virtualization isn’t a big trend; it’s just that it’s not being embraced with the same level of enthusiasm.
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.
There are a few other benefits to a software-only approach to storage virtualization, such a built in disaster recovery capabilities and a more efficient approach to thin provisioning. But at the end of the day, server virtualization is popular because it helps IT organizations get more out of their existing hardware investments…
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [26.03.09] March 26, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Citrix, Datacore, SANmelody, Xen
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Infostor Lab Review: DataCore SANmelody January 22, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in I/O Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Datacore, SANmelody, storage
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The crew at Infostor recently put DataCore SANmelody through its paces in their lab and have just published a comprehensive review of their test methodology and findings.
In brief, their conclusions/key findings were:
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Full virtualization of direct-attached and SAN-connected storage
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Simplified SAN infrastructure management through automation of storage administration tasks using the Windows MMC
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SANmelody caching boosted I/O throughput by 33% running IOmeter
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Round-robin LUN distribution of server I/O traffic benchmarked at 50,000 IOPS using 8KB reads with no I/O bottlenecks
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No single point of failure with support for snapshots, synchronous mirroring, and synchronous replication
The full article can be viewed here (p.29).
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [15.01.09] January 15, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data Center Management, File Virtualization, I/O Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, datacenter, desktop virtualization.Tags: Datacore, EMC, NeoAccel, SANmelody, Sun, ToutVirtual, VirtualIQ, Vizioncore, VMware, vOptimizer Pro, VPN, xVM Ops Center, xVM Server
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DataCore’s SANmelody solution has won the SNS Achievements in Technology Award for the “Storage Virtualization Project of the Year” for the installation at Volkswagen Financial Services. (more)
David Marshall shares his reflections on “VMware’s aggressive product road map for 2009″ and concludes with “I started this post by remembering a question I had asked myself during VMworld 2008: “What aren’t they going to do?” (more)
Sun released earlier this weeks document regarding xVM Server 1.0 and xVM Ops Center 2.0, however they have removed the documents as senior management decided not to release the docs until “General Availability” of the products. Most important changes are live migration, resource pools, support for Solaris 10 – RHEL 5.2 – Windows XP – Windows 2003
VMware has always been in the market as an independent EMC daughter, today EMC steps up the integration and gives the sign to the market, we are the best for VMware. What about other storage vendors? (more)
Vizioncore releases vOptimizer Pro 2.0, a utility to reclaim unused space in Windows virtual machines. Not so long ago Vizioncore announced vOptimizer 4.0, which has been removed from the product portofolio as vOptimizer Pro 2.0 has been released. (more)
NeoAccel has recently introduced the VMware version of its flagship SSL VPN product called the SSL VPN-Plus. (more)
ToutVirtual announced the availability of VirtualIQ Pro 3 (VirtualIQ Pro). VirtualIQ Pro is a management and automation program designed to support customers in every stage of virtualization deployment. (more)
OpenBench Labs: analysis & report on SANmelody … November 17, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Datacore, SANmelody
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The results:
- SANmelody consolidates resources and virtualizes storage at the disk-block level: Logical blocks are served from tiered storage pools that can be based on such characteristics as drive performance or data availability.
- MMC Snap-in provides a unified single-pane-of-glass management for all storage resources: With storage resource management IT’s biggest cost driver, SANmelody provides the means to manage heterogeneous storage resources centrally rather than as isolated devices.
- HA and DR made practical: IT is no longer constrained to use identical hardware and can mix and match servers and storage at their disposal to assemble a highly-available storage infrastructure that also covers disaster recovery needs.
- Dynamic virtual disk pools support thin provisioning: SANmelody efficiently automates thin provisioning across an entire SAN by consuming virtual disk blocks only when non-zero data is written by application servers rather than when virtual volumes are assigned.
- SANmelody caching improves throughput: Running Iometer, SANmelody caching boosted I/O throughput by upwards of 33%.
What is also important are the ROI values for the customer …
- Consolidate Site-wide Storage Resources for Higher Resource Utilization
- Lower the Total Cost of Storage Hardware by Eliminating Device-specific Feature License Purchases
- Centralize and Standardize Site-wide Storage Resource Management via MS MMC
- Unified SAN Thin Storage Provisioning Only Draws Upon Storage Capacity When Data is Written
- High Availability Supported with Snapshots and Synchronous Mirroring
- Disaster Recovery Support with Remote Replication
- Round-Robin LUN Distribution of Server I/O Traffic Benchmarked at 50,000 IOPS Using 8KB Reads with No I/O Bottlenecks
Full report
Migrating images … time consuming? … Sneak Preview November 17, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Datacore, SANmelody, SANsymphony, Traveller
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What do you do when you need to migrate images from physical to virtual systems and from different storage systems? Most people take their time … with DataCore Transporter Option this time is reduced to a minimum.
ast and most general way to import Windows images, including the boot drive, between dissimilar physical or virtual platforms without waiting for lengthy disk‐to‐disk copies or error prone conversions.
Sneak Preview presentation
TEST: High Availability – Disaster Recovery solutions for virtualization September 19, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Datacore, SANmelody, Marathon Technologies, Vizioncore, Stratus Technologies, Avance, everrun VM, vRanger Pro, Scalant, V/OE
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Now that HA/DR/fault-tolerance has become a hot topic with the integration of HA in XenServer 5 and in the (near) future VMware FT in VI4 we remembered a test by Infoworld on 3rd party solutions for always on virtualization.
The following products were analyzed:
- VizionCore vRanger Pro
- DataCore SANmelody 2.0
- Scalent V/OE 2.5
- Stratus Technology Avance 1.3
- Marathon Technologies everrun VM 4
Fujitsu-Siemens and DataCore Announce European-wide Partnership September 11, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Datacore, Fujistu-Siemens, SANmelody, SANsymphony
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DataCore Software and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers (FSC), today announced a new partnership across Europe.
With immediate effect, both companies will collaborate in distribution, marketing and technical support to optimize the experience for mutual customers and partners.
Full article here
DataCore and Egenera Combination Delivers Next Generation Server and Storage Virtualization May 22, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Datacore, Egenera, SANmelody, SANsymphony, XenServer
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DataCore announced that it will team with Egenera to jointly verify their solutions running in tandem on virtualization platforms such as Citrix XenServer. The companies have complementary solutions that together deliver the next generation of virtualization. The Egenera BladeFrame system and its Processing Area Network architecture enable enterprise datacenters to rapidly install, deploy and manage pools of network, storage and processing resources. DataCore SANmelody and SANsymphony virtual storage solutions are some of the first SAN solutions to be certified for XenServer in the Citrix Ready program and make it easy to provision, manage, optimize and protect storage resources infrastructure-wide.
Sidenote: Egenera PAN is also OEMed by Dell & Fujitsu. They are already talking about the next generation of virtualization, like Virtualization 2.0 … hold your horses, there need to be a timeframe in which the market can adapt, otherwise products will move from an unstable 1.0 version to an unstable 2.0 version !
