Storage Virtualization

Current Trends in the Data Management Market

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EDT

In an interactive general session that forms part of its Data in Action virtual conference, IBM has really hit the jackpot. It has managed to snag Donald Feinberg, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, to talk about current trends in the Data Management market. There is a live Q&A session too, and all of it - both the general session and the Q&A - are well worth viewing.

Revenue Generation, Tiered Storage, and the Glass Floor

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:30:00 EDT

In his latest blog post, Michael Hay of Hitachi Data Systems points out that expensive tiers of storage ought to be reserved for business data that generates positive cash flow. By extension, he suggests, non cash-generating applications should be restricted to lower tiers of storage. The logic here is hard to argue with: Why buy expensive infrastructure to support drains on the business?

Hay's argument that lower-tier storage makes more financial sense is interesting, but savings are limited. Any large enterprise IT manager will tell you that the cost of physical hardware (like disk storage systems) is fairly small compared to other IT costs. In fact, a CIO at a major company once suggested to me that the cost of hardware was flat out insignificant: High operational costs form a "glass floor" limiting the effectiveness of cost savings efforts. Saving 50% on the cost of disk drives is nothing when one considers that this line item makes up less than 10% of the total cost of ownership for enterprise data storage!

With this in mind, one could easily look at Hay's argument and ask an "emperor's clothes" question: Why are businesses paying to operate cash-flow negative systems at all? Why buy storage? Why spend time provisioning and managing systems?

Why not cut all these costs off and outsource these applications? Since non revenue-generating applications are a drag on the overall profitability of the business, the cost and effort spent supporting them ought to be cut to the bone and resources (both staff and infrastructure) should be reassigned to core revenue-generating systems. As Simon Wardley demonstrates in this presentation at OSCON '09, common IT systems don't represent a strategic value to the business.

This is easier said than done, however. IT has always faced challenges identifying data under management and understanding the business value of it. Consider the impact of this difficulty on compliance with encryption laws, for example. If IT can't decide which data supports revenue generation, they can't very well move everything else to lower tiers of storage!

But all is not lost. Even if some data is a metaphorical black box, IT often can identify certain application data. Many non revenue-generating support applications are easily spotted and could be rapidly offloaded to lower tiers of storage or outsourced entirely. Risk-mitigation applications like email and file archives are ideal candidates for this shift: They consist of large amounts of data and are easy to locate in the IT storage environment. Why not move these off to a service provider in the cloud and focus on core systems?

Can You Leverage Cloud Services For Disaster Recovery?

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:15:00 EDT

IT is great at some things, but out of its league in many cases. Business continuity planning is an example of the latter: No matter how well we set up our applications and systems, the human element is always a roadblock. Sure, we can build a complex system to return our CRM system to operation in Duluth, but will anyone be able to use it? Even the best disaster recovery (DR) infrastructure is useless without a business continuity (BC) strategy for everything else. All IT can offer is to do its best to hold up its side of the deal. IT can design systems with return-to-operations in mind, replicating data and documenting configurations. IT can deploy remote systems and keep them warm and ready should we need them. And IT can create operational plans to rapidly get everything working when disaster strikes.

Double-Take Software Compliments Business Continuity Testing for Hyper-V

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Business continuity exercises have always been complicated and hard to exercise. There is significant planning involved to test the availability and recovery of the IT workloads and usually requires extensive downtime and effort from IT managers. Virtualization technology has helped IT managers with this process but that is primarily only for local high availability testing at the primary data center. The roll of a business continuity planner is to exercise the entire IT infrastructure and verify the workloads can be recovered and run at a functional level to restore critical business operations.

Cloud Optimized Storage Solutions (COSS) Explored

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:30:00 EST

In part one of this series, we discussed the nature of content within the cloud. After determining the nature of the content being stored, it is important to understand how this unstructured and structured content will be stored. The mechanism for storage has significant impact on a provider’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) to the end user and can also promote the concept of tiered storage within the cloud as well.

Covenant House Toronto Relies on DataCore Virtualization

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:45:00 EDT

DataCore announced that its SANmelody software is providing peace of mind to Covenant House Toronto in the event that its IT systems undergo an unforeseen calamity. DataCore partner Interware Systems has deployed DataCore's SANmelody to deliver business continuity and disaster recovery (DR) via an affordable, yet highly available, virtual SAN solution, which provides the remote replication essential to safeguarding an organization's data.

When DataCore Storage Virtualization and Citrix Virtualization Combine

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

DataCore announced that its SANsymphony and SANmelody products have been certified on Citrix's newest XenServer 5 release as virtual SAN appliances, as well as on both standard servers and blades. With XenServer 5, Citrix has optimized Citrix XenApp performance on XenServer virtual machines. According to Citrix, this enables XenApp workloads to be virtualized with as little as 7% overhead and as many as 73% more users than XenApp workloads virtualized with competing products. Citrix XenApp is used by more than 100 million users and 99% of the Fortune Global 500.

EMC Strengthens Integration Between Storage and VMware Virtualization Environments

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:15:00 EDT

EMC announced broad participation in VMware vStorage, a set of technologies that provides storage vendors like EMC with interfaces and programs that enable its products to integrate and optimize their capabilities with the VMware platform. Having strong integration points across EMC's portfolio, improve the ties between two critical areas of the virtual environment: centralized storage and virtual infrastructure.

DataCore Updates Its SANsymphony Storage Virtualization Platform

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:30:00 EDT

DataCore announced that it has updated its flagship SANsymphony enterprise-class, open storage networking platform and its Traveller CDP (continuous data protection) add-on capability. The new update releases are available immediately. DataCore's SANsymphony provides manufacturer-independent SAN-wide services designed to virtualize storage and meet the needs of larger scale SAN infrastructures and enterprise storage management. Traveller is a continuous data protection, recovery and time-shifting software that enables SANsymphony based systems to use or recover Virtual Machines or data by going back in time to restore systems to a previous good state.

3PAR Utility Storage Scales Web 2.0 Easily at Demand Media

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:38:00 EDT

3PAR announced that Web 2.0 social media company Demand Media has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage to support its rapidly growing social media business. Demand Media uses its network of vertically-oriented Web properties to connect content creators and large audiences with advertisers. To improve infrastructure agility, storage scalability, and capacity utilization over the data lifecycle, the social media company has implemented multiple 3PAR InServ Storage Servers in addition to 3PAR Thin Provisioning and 3PAR Dynamic Optimization software. Demand Media has also chosen to deploy an entire virtual datacenter based on the 3cV blueprint, which combines 3PAR Utility Storage with products from HP and VMware to create a complete utility computing environment.

Heterogeneous Virtualization – the Real Benefit Is Choice

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Anyone working in IT could be forgiven for suffering a little green-fatigue. IT vendors are eager to throw "greenwash" around, highlighting the power-saving features of their existing technologies. However, this is not necessarily all bad. There are many existing technologies that have a greater power-saving potential than some of the dedicated "green" solutions designed for that purpose.

DataCore Partner J4 Systems' SANmelody Virtualization Sales Hit High Notes

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 EDT

DataCore Software announced that sales from partner J4 Systems have sizzled throughout the first half of 2008. J4 Systems, a DataCore Authorized Business Partner, has added numerous customers to the ranks of DataCore users, including Ahtna Government Services, American Building Supply, Citizens Bank of Northern California, City of Elk Grove, Composite Engineering, Corn Products International, County Medical Services, Hobsons US, Schuering Zimmerman Scully Tweedy & Doyle, and Stockton East Water District, among others.

Pillar Data Systems Launches Application-Aware Storage Virtualization System for SMEs

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:00:00 EDT

Pillar Data Systems unveiled the Pillar Axiom 300. Ideally suited for small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs), the Axiom 300 drives down infrastructure and operational costs while reducing business risk and complexity of data storage. The Axiom 300 is easy and quick to configure and deploy into existing storage environments. Ongoing management and maintenance are streamlined with Pillar’s clean, intuitive user interface and Guided Maintenance functionality.

Data Domain Expands Nearline Storage Virtualization Partnerships

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:30:00 EDT

Data Domain announced partnerships with archiving and file virtualization providers, further extending the implementation options available to users wishing to leverage Data Domain's nearline storage capabilities. Data Domain systems can now be used with Mimosa Nearpoint; AXS-One Compliance Platform; F5 Networks Acopia ARX File Virtualization devices; Brocade File Management Engine (FME); DataGlobal Enterprise Resource Suite (ERS); ARKIVIO auto-stor and Kazeon Information Server.

Alameda County Medical Center Selects DataCore's Storage Virtualization

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

DataCore Software announced that its SANmelody software is serving as the foundation of a replication and disaster recovery (DR) plan at Alameda County Medical Center (ACMC) that was orchestrated by DataCore partner Entisys. The IT environment at ACMC was fundamentally based upon products from Dell and EMC as well as virtual machines from VMware. ACMC is comprised of multiple sites and as a county hospital the organization is under a number of budget constraints. Entisys presented the Citrix XenServer and DataCore SANmelody DR solution based upon XenServer, which provides great savings to the medical center.

NetApp Now Deduplicates EMC Primary Storage Virtualization

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:45:00 EDT

NetApp announced the ability to deduplicate primary storage from other vendors with its V-Series family of storage virtualization solutions. The V-Series product line enables customers with storage systems not from NetApp to leverage NetApp’s Data ONTAP 7G operating system for improved business efficiency and reduced data management complexity.

Verari Selects Chelsio for High Performance Blade-Based Storage Virtualization Platforms

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:52:00 EDT

Chelsio Communications announced that its T3-based, dual port 10GbE CX4 PCI Express Storage Accelerator has been selected by Verari Systems as the high-speed interconnect for its BladeRack 2 X-Series DataServer and StorageServer storage platforms. Chelsio adapters are designed for storage, server and cluster networking applications.

CA Products Complement Alternative Technology's Virtualization Offerings

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:15:00 EDT

Alternative Technology continues to expand its offerings by announcing it will supply a broad range of CA distributed enterprise IT management software. Those offerings include: application & development databases; application performance management; database management; dynamic & virtual systems management; governance, risk & compliance; infrastructure & operations management; IT service & asset management; project, portfolio & financial management; security management; and storage & information governance.

FalconStor Teams Up With HiNet to Offer SaaS-Based Storage Services in Taiwan

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:15:00 EDT

FalconStor announced its expansion in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market, collaborating with HiNet - the Internet service provider (ISP) arm of Chunghwa Telecom, an information and telecom service provider in Taiwan - to make online backup services available to customers and small-and-medium-size businesses in Taiwan.

NetApp and LeaseWeb to Launch Storage Virtualization Platform

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:00:00 EDT

Hosting provider LeaseWeb has decided to use a FAS 3040HA mid-range platform by NetApp so that it will be able to offer its customers a complete storage-on-demand (SOD) solution. The platform will allow LeaseWeb to offer managed back-up and disaster recovery services.

CDNetworks & Nirvanix Unite Cloud Storage & Content Delivery Network Services

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:15:00 EDT

CDNetworks and Nirvanix announced a strategic partnership to deliver a unified cloud storage and content delivery service. Available immediately, CDNetworks' customers will be able to store unlimited amounts of protected and secure content online and move content instantly to and from any of CDNetworks' 63 nodes worldwide at previously unseen economies. The partnership with CDNetworks will provide Nirvanix customers with the ability to not only securely store massive amounts of media and content but also stage content for instant delivery anywhere in the world, utilizing one of CDNetworks' data centers for local delivery. By combining these services, companies will have better overall media delivery capability and also save 80 to 90 percent over building or growing storage infrastructures of their own.

Nirvanix Takes NAS to Cloud Computing

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Nirvanix announced the beta of a new set of products that attaches the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network to a local network as a Windows or Linux filer using standard industry networking protocols. Users can then work with the applications they are accustomed to, or simply drag and drop files from their desktops to Nirvanix's storage service.

3PAR and SYSDBA Launch Utility Storage Virtualization in South Africa

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:00:00 EDT

3PAR announced a new partnership with SYSDBA in South Africa to deliver innovative utility computing solutions built on 3PAR Utility Storage. SYSDBA offers a portfolio of products that collectively optimize and consolidate their clients' data centers by reducing management overhead and improving resource utilization, ultimately saving their clients money. 3PAR Utility Storage is designed to enable a new generation of utility computing applications such as delivery of enterprise IT as a utility service, cloud computing over the Web, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based applications. The partnership with 3PAR allows SYSDBA to take virtualization beyond the server layer and into the storage infrastructure for greater consolidation, cost savings, and reduction of storage administration for their customers.

Peer Software Partners With Parallels To Provide Continuous Data Protection On Virtualization Platforms

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Peer Software announced a partnership with Parallels. The companies are collaborating to enable customers to realize cost-savings through simplified IT infrastructures, using virtualization platforms and disaster recovery solutions with certified data protection, availability and continuous backup provided by Peer Software. Peer Software's solutions have been certified to provide Parallels Virtuozzo Containers with virtual server backup of user and application data through the PeerSync product line, and MS SQL backup and MS Exchange backup through the Peer DRS product line.

StoneFly Upgrades StoneFusion Network Storage Virtualization Platform

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:15:00 EDT

StoneFly unveiled StoneFusion 6.1, a new more robust release of the company's intelligent network storage platform, which is integrated into all StoneFly IP SANs to provide block-level provisioning and centralized storage management, control and monitoring of logical storage volumes.

Server and Storage Virtualization Company Adeara Achieves Emerald Status from Pillar Data Systems

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EDT

As part of Pillar Data's Emerald Partner Program initiative, Adeara has been elevated to the Emerald Partner Program. In order to participate, Adeara met specific requirements around sales and technical Pillar accreditations which have enhanced Adeara's overall storage go-to-market strategies. With over 7 installations now since striking a partnership with Pillar Data over 24 months ago, Adeara is in a position to offer its end-to-end storage solutions including consolidation, disaster recovery and backup solutions in a very cost-effective manner.

Pillar Data Systems Extends Storage Capabilities for VMware Virtualization Environments

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:15:00 EDT

As a member of the VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program, Pillar Data Systems announced compatibility of its Application-Aware Axiom with virtualized VMware environments. The Pillar Axiom and Axiom MC are now listed on the VMware SAN compatibility guide for VMware ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5.

Nexenta Announces Broadberry Data Systems Virtualization Partnership

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:00:00 EDT

Nexenta Systems announced a partnership with Broadberry Data Systems. Broadberry and Nexenta are partnering to deliver complete enterprise class storage solutions. Based upon NexentaStor, these solutions leverage the revolutionary ZFS file system and offer many advantages versus alternatives including: no limits on file system sizes or on the number of snap shots; inherent virtualization including the use of storage pooling to improve performance and enable thin provisioning; integrated search to manage highly granular backup policies; and end to end data integrity that eliminates the risk of silent data corruption that impacts many SATA based solutions.

Network Virtualization Company BLADE Joins Climate Savers Computing Initiative

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:45:00 EDT

BLADE Network Technologies announced that it has joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing computer power consumption by 50 percent by 2010. As a pioneer of energy-efficient data center networking, BLADE is recognized on AlwaysOn's GoingGreen 100 list of the world's foremost 'green' companies. BLADE views organizations such as the Climate Savers Computing Initiative as key to the energy-efficient data center of the future.

Alchemy Plus Uses DataCore's SANmelody to Achieve Simplified SAN Storage Virtualization Management

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:30:00 EDT

DataCore announced that Alchemy Plus is using DataCore's SANmelody solution to provide a hosted server virtualization farm environment for small businesses under a 'Pay as You Use' utility computing framework. Alchemy Plus' data center is located in Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands. David Massey, Chief Technology Officer at Alchemy Plus, noted, 'We wanted to bring the power and efficiencies of virtualization to smaller organizations that typically were only running a single server or a couple of servers at most. We knew in order to succeed that we would have to develop a model that was as cost effective as it was functionality rich, using the principles of utility computing ? a concept where the customer only pays for what is used.'

Mellanox InfiniBand Adapters Provide Storage Virtualization Connectivity to Galactic Computing's VSTOR

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:15:00 EDT

Mellanox Technologies and Galactic Computing announced that Mellanox's 20Gb/s InfiniBand adapters provide the low-latency, high-performance storage interconnect for Galactic Computing's line of VSTOR storage systems and gateways, providing an adaptive and responsive infrastructure for business continuity and disaster recovery applications such as remote mirroring and replication. VSTOR supports Fibre Channel, iSCSI, InfiniBand, SAS and NAS connections to servers allowing total flexibility in access. Mellanox InfiniBand adapters serve as the ideal choice for workloads that require high performance, efficiency and scalability.

Tek-Tools Enhances IT Resource Management Software to Deliver End-to-End Visibility of Virtualization IT Assets

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:00:00 EDT

Tek-Tools Software announced the latest version of its Profiler Suite with enhancements to continue to support customer requirements for managing virtualized and physical IT assets - servers, storage, backup and applications - from a single console. Virtualization provides almost immediate improvements in resource utilization and flexibility. However, it also impacts the way in which every component of the IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, backups, and applications, must be managed. Over time, organizations find that the derived benefits of virtualization are offset by the complexity of managing a virtualized environment.

Virtualization with Dell Helps Cure Growing Health Care It Ills

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:15:00 EDT

Health care organizations -- faced with a staggering influx of information from patient medical records and billing and claims to data on medical discoveries -- are turning to Dell and virtualization to help cure their data storage and management challenges. According to a recent report by Forrester Research, current server utilization in many data centers is hovering around 10 percent to 20 percent1. By adopting virtualization, these IT environments can increase efficiency and reap the maximum benefits of an efficient IT infrastructure. This efficiency becomes even more critical as the influx of data continues to grow as the number of devices connected to the network, including PCs, RFID devices, and tablet and notebook computers expands.

Embotics Highlights Aberdeen Group Report on Infrastructure Virtualization Strategies

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:15:00 EDT

Embotics announced the sponsorship of a new research benchmark report entitled 'Virtual Strategies: Managing Servers, Desktops and Storage for Infrastructure Efficiency' by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company. The research details how best-in-class companies manage virtual servers, desktops and storage for greater efficiency.

MCCS Okinawa Chooses DataCore Software's SANmelody for Storage Virtualization

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:15:00 EDT

DataCore announced that Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) has purchased, deployed and benefited from the productivity and cost savings achieved from using DataCore's SANmelody storage virtualization software. SANmelody now forms the foundation for the IT department's consolidation and modernization approach. SANmelody virtualizes, safeguards, manages, and thin provisions storage for MCCS, while optimizing disk storage utilization, simplifying administration and boosting overall performance.

IBM Announces Next-Generation Storage Virtualization Software

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EDT

As part of IBM's 'Project Big Green' offerings, IBM announced new storage virtualization software that helps clients more efficiently manage and consolidate volumes of business data, providing clients with a storage solution designed to help improve utilization rates, energy efficiency, availability, and scalability of critical applications.

Virtualization Conference - Essential Requirements for Storage Virtualization

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:45:00 EDT

Storage virtualization introduces a level of abstraction that sits between application servers and physical storage resources to provide centralized volume management and non-disruptive data mobility. These capabilities help storage managers improve productivity, capacity-utilization and service levels. Its unique position between application servers and storage resources demands the highest levels of availability, performance and data integrity. This session will review the benefits of virtualization and how it improves productivity, capacity utilization and service levels. It will also discuss how second generation, network based storage virtualization can be used to meet the demands imposed by its central position in the I/O stack.

IBM Releases Storage Virtualization Software

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:45:00 EDT

As part of IBM's 'Project Big Green' offerings, IBM announced new storage virtualization software, its System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software, to manage and consolidate volumes of business data.

Storage Virtualization, the Key to Unlock Tomorrow's Data Center

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:45:00 EDT

As data growth rates continue to climb and business requirements further evolve, customers are feeling the pressure to realign their storage infrastructure to better meet the needs of their business. Mr. Yoshida will discuss how storage virtualization is the key enabler towards the storage-based services required to deliver substantial breakthroughs in efficiency and business agility across the entire enterprise. He will discuss how storage-based services such as thin provisioning, content and file management and dynamic data migration, enabled via controller-based Virtualization, are paving the way for the Dynamic Data Center of tomorrow.

SYS-CON's Virtualization Conference & Expo: Themes & Topics

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:30:00 EDT

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.