Enterprise Systems: From Clouds Comes Clarity in 2012

http://esj.com/articles/2012/01/16/From-Clouds-Comes-Clarity.aspx

By George Teixeira, CEO and President, DataCore Software

What can bridge the state of virtualization today and the unfettered reality we seek from the cloud? A true storage Hypervisor may hold the key.

Some people read palms or tea leaves to predict the future. I'm looking at clouds.

Clouds are what all sorts of people are talking about these days. I was at dinner the other evening and overheard a conversation at the next table between two senior citizens and what was likely a more tech savvy 20-something grandchild and his companion. When one asked the grandmother where she keeps the photographs she was showing them, she confidently answered, "They're in the cloud." Now, I'll bet she wouldn't have been comfortable entrusting her precious photos to me, to you, or to a company that might not be in business in the future. That unease would likely be exacerbated by the complexity of any assurances as to how these photos are stored, made available, or protected.

Yet, she is quite comfortable with "the cloud."

That's how powerful the cloud metaphor has become. It uses a level of abstraction (the picture of a cloud) to represent in a simple, nonthreatening, "I don't need to think about that" way the complex hardware and software components, and internal network connections, that are actually required to provide the services delivered. When people refer to cloud computing, what they are really talking about is the ability to simplify IT by abstracting the complexity of the data center from a bunch of individually managed elements into a service that is offered as part of a holistic "cloud."

This simplification through abstraction is also the cornerstone of virtualization. In fact, the clamor for the cloud is both a compliment to the attributes of virtualization and a criticism of its progress to date. Virtualization is the key to cloud computing because it is the enabling technology allowing the creation of an intelligent abstraction layer that hides the complexity of underlying hardware or software. In the call for clouds, I hear an industry being challenged: "OK, we see what is possible through virtualization, so fill in the missing pieces and deliver on the promise already."

Software is the key to making clouds work because, in the cloud, resources (e.g., server computers, network connections, and desktops) must be dynamic. Simply put, only software can take a collection of static hardware devices that are not flexible and create from them flexible resource pools that can be allocated dynamically. Hypervisor solutions, like those from VMware and Microsoft, demonstrated the benefits of working devices as software abstractions at the server level (and to a lesser degree the desktop) and the importance of interchangeable servers that now have become the norm. It really does not matter whether a Dell, HP, IBM or an Intel server is the resource involved, that is a secondary consideration subject to price or particular vendor preference. From this experience, the market has become familiar with what is possible with virtualization.

Virtualization gives us greater productivity and faster responses to changing needs because software abstracted resources are not static and can be deployed flexibly and dynamically. It also gives us better economies of scale because these resources are pooled and can be easily changed and supplemented "behind the curtain" to keep up with growing and changing user demands. Yes, with a hypervisor we have freed our servers and desktops from their physical binds.

Still, it's just a taste of freedom; a removal of the handcuffs, but not the ankle chains; merely a lengthening of the leash, because eventually you hit the end and get yanked back to reality by the confines of your storage. Even amidst the great, industry-wide, liberation-through-virtualization movement of recent years, the answer when it comes to storage, unfortunately, has been to continue building traditional physical architectures that severely limit and, in fact, contradict the virtual infrastructures they are intended to support. They propagate locked-in, vendor specific hardware "silos" instead of decoupling storage resources from physical devices with a software abstraction layer.

In my view, that is the big hole in the ground that we keep falling into while desperately scanning the skies for clouds and a user experience free from physical architecture and hardware. Just what is it that can bridge the state of virtualization today and that unfettered reality we seek from clouds?

The answer: a Storage Hypervisor. In 2012, this critical piece to the fluffy puzzle will fill that gap in virtualization's march forward, clarifying how to bring that cloud future home to our storage today.

A Storage Hypervisor enables a new level of agility and storage hardware interchangeability. It creates an abstraction layer between applications running on servers and the physical storage used for data. Virtualizing storage and incorporating intelligence for provisioning and protection at the virtualization layer makes it possible to create a new and common level of storage management that works across the spectrum of assets including server attached disks, SSDs, disk systems, and storage in the cloud. Because it abstracts physical storage into virtual pools, any storage can work with any other storage, avoiding vendor hardware lock-in ensuring maximum ROI on existing resources and greater purchasing power in the future.

What is a "true" Storage Hypervisor? It's a portable, centrally managed, software package that enhances the value of multiple and dissimilar disk storage systems. It supplements these systems' individual capabilities with extended provisioning, replication, and performance acceleration services. Its comprehensive set of storage control and monitoring functions operates as a transparent virtual layer across consolidated disk pools to improve their availability and optimize speed and utilization.

A true Storage Hypervisor also provides important advanced storage management and intelligent features. For example, a critical Storage Hypervisor feature is automated tiering. This feature migrates and optimally matches the most cost-effective or performance-oriented hardware resources to application workload needs. Through this automated management capability, less-critical and infrequently accessed data is automatically stored on lower-cost disks, while more mission-critical data is migrated to faster, higher-performance storage and solid-state disks, whether those disks are located on premises or in the cloud. This enables organizations to keep demanding workloads operating at peak speeds while taking advantage of low-priced local storage assets or pay-as-you-go cloud storage. The Storage Hypervisor management layer makes it easy to incorporate new disk devices into existing data centers, providing enterprises, and, a fast and easy on-ramp to cloud resources, among other benefits.

It's clearly time for storage to acquire these cloud-like characteristics. Clouds are, after all, supposed to be pliant and nimble -- and that is what we need our storage to be. The whole point of cloud computing is delivering cost-effective services to users. This requires the highest degree of flexibility and openness, as opposed to being boxed-in to specific hardware that cannot adapt to change over time. That's the goal and it is what is driving such an interest in clouds. Hypervisors for virtual servers and desktops have mapped the way -- illustrating how portable software solutions can virtualize away complexity, constraint, and hardware-vendor lock-in. Only a Storage Hypervisor can do likewise for storage.

That's why 2012 will be the year storage goes virtual and the market learns Storage Hypervisors are the next level in flexible storage management. Already, they are being widely deployed and are enterprise-proven. A true Storage Hypervisor turns multiple, dissimilar, and static disk storage systems into a "what I want, where I need it, when I need it, without complexity" storage infrastructure. It gives our storage today what we've been looking for in the clouds of the future: a highly scalable, flexible infrastructure with real hardware interchangeability and the next level of virtual resource management. This is what is required to create virtual data centers or so-called "private clouds" and make practical the incorporation of external cloud services.

DataCore Software and Hitachi Team Together to Make IT Management Easier; Operations Analyzer for both physical and virtual IT assets

http://www.storagereview.com/datacore_and_hitachi_team_together_make_it_management_easier

The Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer now integrated with DataCore's storage hypervisor enables detailed monitoring of IT infrastructures including those under control of DataCore SANsymphony-V software. Enterprises will gain a holistic, single-pane view of their entire data center if a tight integration of the software is implemented, including virtualized storage resources, servers, networks and applications. This gives IT administrators the ability to easily maintain high levels of infrastructure availability, performance, as well as conducting fast problem diagnosis and resolution.

By unifying advanced services like provisioning, auto-tiering, replication and performance acceleration through a common storage virtualization layer, the DataCore SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor improves the value of diverse storage resources. Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer is an integrated availability and performance monitoring tool that can reduce complexity, streamline operations, and increase IT staff efficiency by monitoring availability and performance of heterogeneous physical and virtual server stacks, applications and network, and storage devices through a single screen.

SANsymphony-V plugs into IT Operations Analyzer through the integrated solution, regularly requesting inventory data and updates from the storage hypervisor. The single monitoring screen of IT Operations Analyzer is then populated with the latest information, keeping IT administrators up-to-date with all relevant changes in resources. It also alerts them to potential problems that require a proactive resolution.

DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor overcomes many existing issues by insulating users and applications from the constant upheaval in the underlying storage devices and physical plant where they reside. IT Operations Analyzer monitors all components that make up a dynamic, virtualized data center, while maintaining an inventory and collecting vital status and alerts.

With both the SANsymphony-V and the IT Operations Analyzer, administrators are now able to monitor every device in their data center infrastructure on a single screen, enabling them to quickly identify and resolve issues before they impact productivity.

The following are a few of the key benefits offered through with the integration of SANsymphony and IT Operations Analyzer:

• Fast Problem Diagnosis & Resolution: the dashboard of IT Operations Analyzer features proactive alerting and a root cause analysis (RCA) engine, enabling IT administrators to reduce mean time of diagnosing problems by up to 90 percent, and the ability to process large numbers of event alerts in minutes.
• Isolating Bottlenecks, Elevating Performance: IT Operations Analyzer allows thresholds to be set on devices to prevent bottlenecks. Congestion points can also be isolated, such as when reduced performance in a set of servers occurs; the single-pane console might show too many competing for the same resource. Administrators can then easily fix the issue by using SANsymphony-V to redistribute tasks.
• Ease-of-Use: The integration of SANsymphony-V into IT Operations Analyzer provides visibility into storage assets that enables staff to identify issues without a high level of storage expertise and then resolve these before productivity suffers.

Storage Magazine/SearchStorage.com Storage System Software: 2011 Products of the Year Finalists

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/Storage-system-software-2011-Products-of-the-Year-finalists

DataCore Software Corp. SANsymphony-V R8.0 Storage Hypervisor

DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage virtualization product added automated storage tiering, enhanced continuous data production (CDP), faster asynchronous replication and an improved wizard-driven central console. The software runs on physical or virtual Windows servers and allows users to maintain, upgrade and expand their storage without disrupting applications.

Prediction #6: Storage Hypervisors will make storage virtualization and Cloud storage practical.

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) recently authored a Market Report that I believe addresses the industry focus for the year ahead. In "The Relevance and Value of a ‘Storage Hypervisor'," it states "...buying and deploying servers is a pretty easy process, while buying and deploying storage is not. It's a mismatch of virtual capabilities on the server side and primarily physical capabilities on the storage side. Storage can be a ball and chain keeping IT shops in the 20th century instead of accommodating the 21rst century."

While enterprises strive to get all they can from their hardware investments in servers, desktops and storage devices, a major problem persists - a data storage bottleneck. Ironically, even as vendors promote and sell software-based, end-to-end virtualization and Cloud solutions, too often the reaction to handling storage is to throw another costly hunk of hardware at the problem in the form of a new storage array or device.

The time has come to resolve the storage crisis, to remove the last bastion of hardware dependency and to allow the final piece of the virtualization puzzle to fall into place. Server hypervisors like VMware and Hyper-V have gone beyond the basics of creating virtual machines and have created an entire platform and management layer to make virtualization practical for servers, desktops and Clouds.

Likewise, it's time to become familiar with a component quickly gaining traction and proving itself in the field: the storage hypervisor.

A storage hypervisor is unique in its ability to provide an architecture that manages, optimizes and spans all the different price-points and performance levels of storage. Only a storage hypervisor enables full hardware interchangeability. It provides important, advanced features such as automated tiering, which relocates disk blocks of data among pools of different storage devices (even into the Cloud) - thereby keeping demanding workloads operating cost-efficiently and at peak speeds. In this way, applications requiring speed and business-critical data protection can get what they need, while less critical, infrequently accessed data blocks gravitate towards lower-cost disks or are transparently pushed to the Cloud for "pay as you go" storage.

I think ESG's Market Report stated it well:

"The concept of a storage hypervisor is not just semantics. It is not just another way to market something that already exists or to ride the wave of a currently trendy IT term...Organizations have now experienced a good taste of the benefits of server virtualization with its hypervisor-based architecture and, in many cases, the results have been truly impressive: dramatic savings in both CAPEX and OPEX, vastly improved flexibility and mobility, faster provisioning of resources and ultimately of services delivered to the business, and advances in data protection.

"The storage hypervisor is a natural next step and it can provide a similar leap forward."

DataCore announced the world's first storage hypervisor in 2011. We built it with feedback gained in the real world over the last decade from thousands of customers. We saw this advance as a natural, but necessary, step forward for an industry that has been fixated on storage hardware solutions for far too long. 2012 will be the year that true hardware interchangeability and auto-tiering will move from "wish list" to "to do list" for many companies ready to break the grip by which storage hardware vendors have long held them.

Prediction #5: "Big Data" will get the Hype, but "Small Data" will continue to be where the action is in 2012.

Yes, Big Data is getting all the attention and yes Big Data needs "Big Storage," so every storage vendor will make it the buzz for 2012. Big Data has many definitions but what is obvious is that the growth rates and the amount of data being stored continue to grow. This Big Data requires better solutions in order for it to be cost-effectively managed. Analyst firm IDC believes the world's information is doubling every two years. By the end of 2011, according to IDC, the world will create a staggering 1.8 zettabytes of data. By 2020, the world will generate 50 times that amount of data, and IT departments will have to manage 75 times the number of "information containers" housing this data. Clearly, the largest companies managing petabytes, exabytes and beyond are the main focus of the talk, but the small and mid-size businesses that deal in terabytes of data comprise the vast majority of the real world. And it is these small-to-midsize companies that need practical data storage and management solutions TODAY. These business consumers can't afford to wait until tomorrow, nor can they afford to throw out their existing storage investments. Rather, they need solutions that build on what devices they currently have installed and make those more efficient, highly-available and easier to manage.

Software technologies, such as thin provisioning, auto-tiering, storage virtualization and storage hypervisors that empower users to easily manage all the storage assets they require - whether located on-premise, at a remote site or in the Cloud - will be key enablers in 2012. Big Data will be the buzz and will drive many new innovations. Big Data will also benefit greatly from these same software-based enablers, but the Small Data opportunity is extremely large and that is where I'm betting the real action will be in 2012.

Prediction #4: Software will take center stage for storage in 2012 empowering users to a new level of hardware interchangeability and commodity-based "buying power."

"Throw more hardware at the problem" is still the storage vendor mantra; however, the growth rate and the complexity of managing storage are changing the model. The economics of "more hardware" doesn't work. Virtualization and Clouds are all about software. With the high-growth rates in storage, virtualization and Cloud computing, it is becoming increasingly clear that a hardware-bound scale-up model of storage is impractical. The "hardware mindset" restrains efficiency and productivity, while software that enables hardware interchangeability advances these critical characteristics. The hardware model goes against the IT trends of commoditization, openness and resource pooling, which have driven the IT industry over the last decade. Software is the key to automating and to increasing management productivity, while adding the flexibility and intelligence to harness, pool and leverage the full use of hardware investments.

As the world moves to Cloud-based, to virtualization-based and to "Big Data" environments, software models that allow for hardware interchangeability, open market purchasing and better resource management for storage will be the big winners.

Prediction #3: The real world is not 100% virtual. Going virtual is a "hot topic," but the real world requires software that transcends both the virtual and physical worlds.

Even VMware, the leading virtualization company in the world, as well as the most ardent virtualization supporters in the analyst community, predict that in 2012 over 50% of x86 architecture server workloads will be virtual. Different reports point out that only 25% of small businesses have been virtualized, and others highlight the many challenges of virtualizing mission critical applications, new special purpose devices and legacy systems. The key point is that the world is not 100% virtual and the physical world cannot be ignored.

I find it interesting to note the large number of new vendors that have jumped squarely on the virtualization trend and have designed their solutions solely to address the virtual world. Most do not, therefore, deal with managing physical devices or support migrating from one device type to another, or support migrating back and forth between physical and virtual environments. Some nouveau virtual vendors go further and make simplifying assumptions akin to theoretical physicists - disregarding real world capabilities like Fibre Channel and assuming the world is tidy because all IT infrastructures operate in a virtual world using virtual IP traffic. These virtualization-only vendors tend to speak about an IT nirvana in which everyone and everything that is connected to this world is virtual, open and tidy - devoid of the messy details of the physical world. Does this sound anything like your IT shop?

Most IT organizations have, and will have for many years to come, a major share of their storage, desktops and a good portion of their server infrastructure running on physical systems or on applications that are not virtualized. This new "virtual is all you need" breed of vendors clearly does not want you to think about your existing base of systems or those strange Fibre Channel-connected, UNIX or NetWare systems running in the shadows. All the virtual upstarts have a simple solution - buy all new and go totally virtual. But this is not the real world most of us live in.

Virtualization solutions must work and deliver a unified user experience across both virtual and physical environments. Solutions that can't deal with the physical device world do not work in the real world where flexibility, constant change, and migrations are the norm. While those solutions that "do" virtual will be "hot," I predict those that can encompass the broad range of physical and virtual worlds will be even "hotter."

Prediction #2: Hybrid data storage environments will need storage virtualization and auto-tiering to combine Cloud storage with existing storage.

Cloud storage has already become a viable option for businesses that don't have the room to add storage devices or are looking for "pay-as-you-go" storage for less critical storage needs, backups and archiving. Industry analysts have already proclaimed that Cloud gateways and heterogeneous storage virtualization solutions combined with auto-tiering functionality can provide a seamless transition path to the Cloud that preserves existing storage investments.

For most companies, the notion of moving all of their data to the Cloud is inconceivable. However, continuously expanding data storage requirements are fueling a need for more capacity. One way to address this growth is to include Cloud storage in the mix. The benefits of Cloud storage are numerous. Cloud storage can provide virtually limitless access to storage capacity and obviate the need for device upgrades or equipment replacements. Cloud storage can also reduce capital expenses. Look for continued advances in auto-tiering and storage virtualization technologies to seamlessly combine hybrid Cloud and on-premise environments in a way that operates with existing applications.

Prediction #1: SSD cost trade-offs will drive software advances. Auto-tiering software that spans all storage including flash memory devices and SSDs will become a "must-have" in 2012.

The drop in cost of SSDs (solid state drives) and flash memories has already had a sizable impact on IT organizations and this will continue in 2012. The latest models of storage systems incorporate these innovations and tout high performance and high-availability, but they remain beyond an acceptable price point for most companies. In addition to price, SSDs and flash memory useful lifetimes are impacted by the amount of write traffic and need to be monitored and protected to avoid potential data loss.

However, the big driver for SSDs is the need for greater performance, but performance needs do not apply equally to all data. In fact, the majority of data, on average 90%, can reside on low-cost archives or mid-tier storage. Meanwhile, the major storage vendors continue to implore us to throw new hardware systems and more SSDs at the problem because they want to sell higher priced systems. These innovations are great, but they must be applied wisely. To get the most value out of these expensive devices, software that can protect and optimally manage the utilization of these costly resources as well as minimize write traffic is now a "must-have."

In 2012, businesses will gain a better understanding of why software is needed to expand the range of practical use cases for SSDs and to automate when, where and how best to deploy and manage these devices. Auto-tiering and storage virtualization software is critical to cost-effectively optimize the full utilization of flash memory and SSD-based technologies – as an important element within the larger spectrum of storage devices that need to be fully integrated and managed within today's dynamic storage infrastructures.

DataCore Software 2012 Predictions: Storage Hypervisors, Virtualization, SSDs, "Big Data," Clouds and Their Real World Impacts

Storage has been slow to adopt change and still remains one of the most static elements of today’s IT infrastructures. I believe this is due to a history of storage being driven from a hardware mindset. The storage industry, for the most part, has been controlled by a few major vendors who have been resistant to disruptive technologies, especially those that can impact their high profit margins. However, the time is ripe for a major shift and some disruption. An understanding of how software liberates resources from devices and a perfect storm of forces – success of server virtualization, new Cloud models, increasing data growth, greater complexity and unsustainable buying practices – are driving a mind-shift and forcing real changes to happen at a much faster pace. Therefore, it is a great time to be at the helm of a storage software company, and I am pleased to share my personal observations and 6 predictions for the New Year in a series of blog posts, the first one will directly follow this post.

DataCore’s SANsymphony-V 8.1 Chosen by Virtualization Review’s Readers as a 2012 Readers Choice Preferred Product Award Winner

http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2012/01/03/2012-buyers-guide.aspx#StorageVirt

Storage Virtualization
Based on the strength of its storage hypervisor approach, DataCore SANsymphony-V 8.1 was chosen by Virtualization Review as a 2012 Readers Choice a Preferred Product Award Winner for storage virtualization. EMC, NetApp and DataCore Software were the top 3 chosen by the readership.

DataCore Software Celebrates New Year By Offering Free Storage Hypervisor Software To Microsoft Certified And System Center Professionals

DataCore Software is welcoming the new year by offering free license keys of its SANsymphony™ -V storage hypervisor to Microsoft Certified and System Center professionals. The not-for-resale (NFR) license keys – may be leveraged for non-production uses such as course development, proof-of-concepts, training, lab testing and demonstration purposes – are intended to support virtualization consultants, instructors and architects involved in managing and optimizing storage within private clouds, virtual server and VDI deployments. DataCore is making it easy for these certified professionals to benefit directly and learn for themselves the power of this innovative technology – the storage hypervisor – and its ability to redefine storage management and efficiency.

To receive a free license key, please sign up at: http://pages.datacore.com/nfr-for-experts.html.

 The SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor is a portable, centrally-managed software suite capable of enhancing the combined value of multiple disk storage systems, including the many purpose-built storage appliances and solid state disks (SSD) type devices arriving to the market daily. The storage hypervisor supplements the individual capabilities of specialized equipment with a broad range of device-independent, integrated services. The SANsymphony-V software executes on physical and virtual servers or can co-reside with server hypervisors. Other major features include, but are not limited to, “Quick serve” storage provisioning, automated tiering across SSDs, disk devices and different cloud storage providers and continuous data protection (CDP).

The free NFR license keys of SANsymphony-V are available for the new year and this offer will expire on January 31, 2012. The licenses may be used for non-production purposes only and the software can be installed on both physical servers and Hyper-V virtual machines as a virtual storage appliance.

Proof of certification as a Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Microsoft Certified Master (MCM), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) or Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) is required.

Premier Auto Insurance Company and International Law Firm Turn to DataCore Software

Direct Line, leading Car Insurance Company, achieves Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Achieved with DataCore's SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor.
http://www.it-director.com/technology/storage/news_release.php?rel=28889

DataCore Software announced that premier German insurance company, Direct Line Versicherung AG, has implemented its business continuity and disaster recovery architecture on a storage infrastructure built on the DataCore storage hypervisor SANsymphony™-V foundation. The high-speed and highly–available synchronous mirroring functionality of the DataCore solution enables Direct Line to set up a backup and disaster recovery data centre located 40 kilometers away in order to minimise downtime and to ensure speedy recovery in case of a failure at the primary data centre. The combination of a storage hypervisor with server hypervisors provides a flexible, high-performance and fail safe IT infrastructure that virtualises storage hardware with SANsymphony-V and server hardware with VMware vSphere.

"DataCore SANsymphony-V provides Direct Line a cost-effective and efficient business continuity solution supporting high-availability and disaster recovery across multiple sites, without neglecting performance or data protection aspects. The DataCore solution is a strategic component in our daily business,” says Heiko Teichmann, managing director at IT service provider Teserco and project manager on behalf of Direct Line Versicherung.

...Thanks to its hardware independence and the efficient caching algorithms of the DataCore solution, Direct Line can not only use its existing and cost-effective HP P2000 disk subsystems, but with DataCore also remove the functional or performance limitations that would have prevented them from future use. Today, around 75 terabytes of data are now managed in the main data centre, located in Teltow and at the remote data center in Berlin, which meets the requirements set by the highest data protection category (Tier 4).

Stikeman Elliott LLP implements DataCore Software’s SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor

http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202535402580&Stikeman_Elliot_Adopts_DataCores_SANsymphonyV&slreturn=1

DataCore Software announced that Stikeman Elliott LLP, one of Canada’s leading business law firms, with offices in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver as well as London, New York and Sydney, has deployed DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor at their Montreal and Toronto hubs – eliminating the need for traditional tape backups and providing much greater business continuity through high availability (HA) and improved disaster recovery (DR).

Stikeman Elliott’s IT team has also made great use of SANsymphony-V’s automated-tiering capability – including utilizing the cloud as yet another data storage tier.

One of the things that Marco Magini, network and systems administrator for Montreal-based Stikeman Elliot LLC, worries most about where storage is concerned is downtime. At one of the largest corporate law firms in the world, it may come as a shock, but the cliché “time is money,” is no joke, said Magini.

“Although we started out looking for a solution to a backup problem, we ended up with far more,” says Magini. “We started slowly, but as we became more familiar with the intelligence and stability of the DataCore storage hypervisor, we put more and more mission-critical systems on top of it and now have almost all of our systems behind it. We have every confidence that SANsymphony-V can handle anything we give it.”

DataCore Software Celebrates Holiday Season By Offering Free Storage Hypervisor To Microsoft Certified And System Center Professionals

The free NFR license keys of SANsymphony-V are available for the new year and this offer will expire on January 31, 2012. The licenses may be used for non-production purposes only and the software can be installed on both physical servers and Hyper-V virtual machines as a virtual storage appliance.

To receive a free license key, please sign up at: http://pages.datacore.com/nfr-for-experts.html. Proof of certification as a Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Microsoft Certified Master (MCM), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) or Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) is required.

DataCore Software offers free Storage Hypervisor
http://www.it-director.com/technology/storage/news_release.php?rel=28967&ref=fd_ita_meta

DataCore Software announced that in the spirit of the holiday season it will offer free license keys of its SANsymphony™ -V storage hypervisor to Microsoft Certified and System Center professionals. The not-for-resale (NFR) license keys – may be leveraged for non-production uses such as course development, proof-of-concepts, training, lab testing and demonstration purposes – are intended to support virtualization consultants, instructors and architects involved in managing and optimizing storage within private clouds, virtual server and VDI deployments. DataCore is making it easy for these certified professionals to benefit directly and learn for themselves the power of this innovative technology – the storage hypervisor – and its ability to redefine storage management and efficiency.

To receive a free license key, please sign up at: http://pages.datacore.com/nfr-for-experts.html.

Storage Strategy Magazine 2012 Predictions: DataCore Software

http://www.storage-strategy.com/2011/12/15/2012-prediction-datacore-software

...The time has come for the storage crisis to be resolved, the last bastion of hardware dependency removed, and the final piece of the virtualization puzzle to fall into place.

It’s also time for all to become familiar with a component fast gaining traction and proving itself in the field: the storage hypervisor. This technology is unique in its ability to provide an architecture that manages, optimizes and spans all the different price-points and performance levels of storage. The storage hypervisor allows hardware interchangeability. It provides important advanced features such as automated tiering that relocates disk blocks among pools of different storage devices - even in the cloud - keeping demanding workloads operating at peak speeds. In this way, applications requiring speed and business-critical data protection can get what they need, while less critical, infrequently accessed data blocks gravitate towards lower costs disks or are transparently pushed to the cloud for “pay as you go” storage.

ESG’s Peters states in the Market Report; “The concept of a storage hypervisor is not just semantics. It is not just another way to market something that already exists or to ride the wave of a currently trendy IT term.” He then goes on to make his main point on the next step forward; “Organizations have now experienced a good taste of the benefits of server virtualization with its hypervisor-based architecture and, in many cases, the results have been truly impressive: dramatic savings in both CAPEX and OPEX, vastly improved flexibility and mobility, faster provisioning of resources and ultimately of services delivered to the business, and advances in data protection.

“The storage hypervisor is a natural next step and it can provide a similar leap forward.”

2012: Virtual Storage Gets Some Love

Mark Peters, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), recently authored a Market Report which I believe addresses the industry focus for the year ahead. In The Relevance and Value of a “Storage Hypervisor,” Peters notes: “…buying and deploying servers is a pretty easy process, while buying and deploying storage is not. It’s a mismatch of virtual capabilities on the server side and primarily physical capabilities on the storage side. Storage can be a ball and chain keeping IT shops in the 20th century instead of accommodating the 21st century.”

Storage Hypervisors Boost Performance without Breaking the Budget

One of the magical things about virtualization is that it’s really a kind of invisibility cloak. Each virtualization layer hides the details of those beneath it. The result is much more efficient access to lower level resources. Server virtualization has demonstrated this powerfully. Applications don’t need to know about CPU, memory, and other server details to enjoy access to the resources they need.

Unfortunately, this invisibility tends to get a bit patchy when you move down into the storage infrastructure underneath all those virtualized servers, especially when considering performance management. In theory, storage virtualization ought to be able to hide the details of media, protocols, and paths involved in managing the performance of a virtualized storage infrastructure. In reality the machinery still tends to clank away in plain sight.

The problem is not storage virtualization per se, which can boost storage performance in a number of ways. The problem is a balkanized storage infrastructure, where virtualization is supplied by hardware controllers associated with each “chunk” of storage (e.g., array). This means that the top storage virtualization layer is human: the hard-pressed IT personnel who have to make it all work together.

Many IT departments accept the devil’s bargain of vendor lock-in to try to avoid this. But even if you commit your storage fortunes to a single vendor, the pace of innovation guarantees the presence of end-of-life devices that don’t support the latest performance management features. And the expense of this approach puts it beyond the reach of most companies, who can’t afford a forklift upgrade to a single-vendor storage infrastructure and have to deal with the real-world mix of storage devices that result from keeping up with innovation and competitive pressures.

That’s why many companies are turning to storage hypervisors, which, like server hypervisors, are not tied to a particular vendor’s hardware. A storage hypervisor like DataCore’s SANsymphony-V throws the invisibility cloak over the details of all of your storage assets, from the latest high-performance SAN to SATA disks orphaned by the consolidation of a virtualization initiative. Instead of trying to match a bunch of disparate storage devices to the needs of different applications, you can combine devices with similar performance into easily provisioned and managed virtual storage pools that hide all the unnecessary details. And, since you’re not tied to a single vendor, you can look for the best deals in storage, and keep using old storage longer.

SANsymphony-V helps you boost storage performance in three ways: through caching, tiering, and path management.

Caching. SANsymphony-V can use up to a terabyte of RAM on the server that hosts it as a cache for all the storage assets it virtualizes. Advanced write-coalescing and read pre-fetching algorithms deliver significantly faster IO response: up to 10 times faster than the average 200-300 microsecond time delivered by typical high-end cached storage arrays, and orders of magnitude faster than the 6000-8000 microseconds it takes to read and write to the physical disks themselves.

SANsymphony-V also uses its cache to compensate for the widely different traffic levels and peak loads found in virtualized server environments. It smooths out traffic surges and better balances workloads so that applications and users can work more efficiently. In general, you’ll see a 2X or better improvement in the performance of the underlying storage from a storage hypervisor such as DataCore SANsymphony-V.

Tiering. You can also improve performance with data tiering. SANsymphony-V discovers all your storage assets, manages them as a common pool of storage and continually monitors their performance. The auto-tiering technology migrates the most frequently-used data—which generally needs higher performance—onto the fastest devices. Likewise, less frequently-used data typically gets demoted to higher capacity but lower-performance devices.

Auto-tiering uses tiering profiles that dictate both the initial allocation and subsequent migration dynamics. A user can go with the standard set of default profiles or can create custom profiles for specific application access patterns. However you do it, you get the performance and capacity utilization benefits of tiering from all your devices, regardless of manufacturer.

As new generations of devices appear such as Solid State Disks (SSD) and Flash memories and very large capacity disks; these faster or larger capacity devices can simply be added to the available pool of storage devices and assigned a tier. In addition, as devices age, they can be reset to a lower tier often extending their useful life. Many users are interested in deploying SSD technology to gain performance, however due to the high-cost and their limited write traffic life-cycles there is a clear need for auto-tiering and caching architectures to maximize their efficiency. DataCore’s storage hypervisor can absorb a good deal of the write traffic thereby extending the useful life of SSDs and with auto-tiering only that data that needs the benefits of the high-speed SSD tier are directed there, with the storage hypervisor in place the system self tunes and optimizes the use of all the storage devices. Customers have reported upwards of a 20% savings from device independent tiering alone and in combination with the other benefits of a storage hypervisor, savings of 60% or more are also being achieved.

Path management. Finally, SANsymphony-V also greatly reduces the complexity of path management. The software auto-discovers the connections between storage devices and the server(s) it’s running on, and then monitors queue depth to detect congestion and route I/O in a balanced way across all possible routes to the storage in a given virtual pool. There’s a lot of reporting and monitoring data available, but for the most part, once set up, you can just let it run itself and get a level of performance across disparate devices from different vendors that would otherwise take a lot of time and knowledge to get right.

If you would like an in-depth look at how a storage hypervisor can boost storage performance, be sure to check out the third of Jon Toigo’s Storage Virtualization for Rock Stars white papers: Storage in the Fast Lane—Achieving “Off-the-Charts” Performance Management.

Next time I’ll look at how a storage hypervisor boosts storage data security management.

New Videos on DataCore

Check out the full library at: http://www.youtube.com/user/DataCoreVideos

Dennis Publishing –Why I use DataCore
Video: http://snseurope.info/video/749/Dennis-Publishing---Why-I-Use-DataCore

DataCore Storage Hypervisor
Video: http://snseurope.info/video/756/Datacore-Storage-Hypervisor

New Market Report on The Relevance and Value of a “Storage Hypervisor:” Virtualized Management for More Than Just Servers

http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/10/the-relevance-and-value-of-a-%e2%80%9cstorage-hypervisor%e2%80%9d-virtualized-management-for-more-than-just-servers/

A few vendors have already begun to start thinking in these terms; there are the industry giants - IBM with SAN Volume Controller, EMC with VPLEX, HDS with its Universal Storage Platform-V - as well as some smaller software-only players such as DataCore. As the capabilities of these various approached not only expand but become known and understood better, the end-user opportunity for improving efficiency and simplifying operations is simply monumental...

Solve HDD Shortages with DataCore SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor Software

Amongst the catastrophic flooding in Thailand lie hard drive manufacturing plants that supply about 40% of the world’s hard drives and analysts are expecting an impact on supply well into 2012. This means that prices are rising, supply is falling and you are stuck buying more storage in the midst of the crisis because you can’t afford to run out of space.

But what if there was a different way?

Save Money by Saving Space

DataCore Software Storage Hypervisor enables you to maximize utilization and minimize capacity consumption. It thinly provisions capacity from the virtual storage pool to hosts only as needed. No longer do you strand capacity by pre-allocating space to applications that may never use it.

New disk shelves and disk arrays can be added to the virtual storage pool without disrupting applications or users, even in the middle of peak workloads. You won’t need to worry about backwards compatibility with your other storage devices. DataCore overcomes those differences, allowing you to mix and match different models and even different brands within the same virtual pool.

This unique capability allows you to shop around for the best value and defer purchases until you really need the capacity.

Interested in reducing costs by getting the most utilization out of your storage? Contact us now.

DataCore Storage Virtualization Software Lowers Cost of Ownership and Accelerates Performance at HARTING Technology Group

http://www.dabcc.com/channel.aspx?id=208

DataCore Software, the industry’s premier provider of storage virtualization software, announced today that HARTING Technology Group has deployed its SANsymphony storage virtualization software to realize greater cost efficiency, high-performance and a high-availability enterprise storage environment. A complete case study on the storage challenges that HARTING overcame with DataCore Software is available here: http://www.datacore.com/Testimonials/Harting-Technology-Group.aspx.

HARTING runs on DataCore’s SANsymphony and hardware from Hitachi. The storage solution supports the delivery of business critical applications, such as SAP, MS Exchange, as well as CAD and product lifecycle management software.

HARTING Technology Group is a large global manufacturer and services company specializing in electrical, electronic and optical connection, transmission and networking. It produces technology products and solutions for industries including high-speed rail, automotive and renewable energy such as wind. With over 3,300 employees in 36 countries relying on being able to access the company’s data at all hours of the night and day, a high performance storage environment is paramount.

The company chose a joint solution proposed by solution provider ISO Dataentechnik, which included Hitachi storage hardware and DataCore’s SANsymphony storage virtualization software. By moving from a less-flexible legacy hardware infrastructure to a cost-effective midrange hardware storage system and managing all their storage environment with a DataCore-powered virtualized SAN, HARTING was able to overcome three key challenges:

• Reduce the overall costs of storage and provide greater options and flexibility for adding storage systems in the future.
•  Improve reliability through the addition of DataCore’s high availability for critical business systems.
• Substantially increase enterprise application performance.

A Compelling Combination: High Performance and Low Cost
"Our expectations of the combination of HDS hardware and DataCore software have been exceeded,” said Rudolf Laxa, operations and data center team leader at HARTING Technology Group. “The new HDS midrange systems and the DataCore virtual storage layer have allowed us to lower costs and achieve a significant increase in fail-safety and performance. The excellent interaction between DataCore software and VMware is another reason why we are more than satisfied with the current solution."

According to Laxa, there was initial hesitation to move business-critical SAP applications to the virtualized storage environment – as it represented a significant break from HARTING’s past practices. However, examples of success with similar moves with other DataCore customers and the opportunity to significantly enhance current capabilities ultimately prevailed. Laxa continued, "The benefits of central administration finally provided the impetus for implementation -- a decision we have not had a reason to regret so far.”

In particular, HARTING credits DataCore’s SANsymphony software for an unprecedented level of performance and business agility, especially when combined with the company’s existing VMware-based server virtualization deployment throughout its data center.

"The technical capabilities of DataCore virtualized storage appealed to us almost immediately; it creates high availability, gives us independence from the hardware and makes flexible migration scenarios possible,” said Laxa “The software has proven to be a meaningful extension of our VMware environment and guarantees the highest levels of availability we require from our storage solution."

Arizona State University Selects DataCore to Manage Data Storage Growth

Ensures higher performance and availability

http://www.datamation.com/storage/managing-data-storage-growth-buyers-guide-1.html

Vincent Boragina, Manager System Administration, W. P. Carey School of Business IT Arizona State University, aimed to reach a 100% in server virtualization. Performance from IT assets was imperative. The advance in server virtualisation over the years, alongside desktop virtualization, led the school to dabble in high-end storage I/O needs with sequel databases and file servers (initially kept off the server virtualisation layer as the products were yet to mature). But when they started to virtualize these platforms, they faced a higher degree of latency. The need for I/O had advanced.

Boragina explains, “The issues with virtualization rests not so much with the storage capacity, as much as with how fast and the low latency it requires, to get the data on and off the disc. What is key, are the controllers and the fiber connectivity, etc., that run the disc, which impact the IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) and the latency of that disc. This is where complexity rises, as it is harder to measure latency. Performance was my key criteria.”

The school implemented DataCore’s SANsymphony-V and XIO storage, where XIO was the disk sub system and DataCore was the hypervisor for the storage and the storage I/O controllers. As a result, the school achieved a 50% reduction in latency time and a 25-30% increase in the overall I/O. With the redundancy and I/O requirements met, the school was able to virtualize any platform.

Importantly, to address issues like high performance, one need not overhaul the existing storage stack, added George Teixeira, CEO at DataCore. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V Storage Hypervisor, for instance, utilizes existing storage assets to boost performance with the adaptive caching. Its auto-tiering enables optimal use of SSDs/Flash, and high-availability for business continuity. “This precludes the investments of purchasing additional IT assets and pre-mature hardware obsolescence,” says Teixeira.

Business continuity was the added benefit for the school, as it came built-in within the DataCore solution. An added effect of this implementation: speedier backup due to a faster I/O.

Storage Hypervisor Delivers Just-in-Time Capacity Management

Just-in-time (JIT) production practices, which view inventory not as an asset but a cost, have accelerated the delivery and reduced the cost of products in a wide range of industries. But perhaps the biggest benefit to the companies that adopted them was the exposure of widespread manufacturing inefficiencies that were holding them back. Without the cushion of a large inventory, every little mechanical or personnel hiccup in the assembly line had an immediate effect on output.

Virtualization technology is playing a similar role for IT, and nowhere is this more visible than in storage. Server virtualization has been incredibly successful in reducing the processor “inventory” needed to provide agile response to business demands for more and better application performance. Average processor utilization often zooms from the 10% range to 60-70% in successful implementations. But this success exposed serious storage capacity management inefficiencies.

As Jon Toigo of the Data Management Institute points out in the first of his Storage Virtualization for Rock Stars white papers, Hitting the Perfect Chord in Storage Efficiency, between 33 and 70 cents of every IT dollar expended goes for storage, and the TCO of storage is estimated to be as much as 5 to 8 times the cost of acquisition on an annualized basis. However, as illustrated in that paper, on average only 30% of that expenditure is actually used for working data. This isn’t due to carelessness on the part of IT managers. They are doing the same sort of thing manufacturers did before JIT: in this case using large storage inventories to compensate for inefficiencies in storage capacity management that make it impossible to provision storage as fast as they can provision virtual servers.

This is a major factor driving the adoption of storage virtualization, which can abstract storage resources into a single virtual pool to make capacity management far more efficient. (It can do the same for performance management and data protection management, as well—I’ll look at them in future posts.) I say “can” because, given the diverse storage infrastructures that are the reality for most organizations, full exploitation of the benefits of storage virtualization requires the use of a storage hypervisor. This is a portable software program, running on interchangeable servers, that virtualizes all your disk storage resources—SAN, server direct-attached storage (DAS) and even those disks orphaned by the transition to server virtualization—not just the disks controlled by the firmware within a proprietary SAN or disk storage system.

With a storage hypervisor such as DataCore’s SANsymphony-V, the storage capacity management inefficiencies exposed by server virtualization are truly a thing of the past. Rather than laboriously matching up individual storage sources with applications—and likely over-provisioning them just to be sure of having enough, you can draw on a single virtual pool of storage for just the right amount. Thin provisioning permits allocating an amount of storage to an application or end user that is far larger than the actual physical storage behind it, and then provisioning real capacity only as needed based on actual usage patterns. Auto-tiering largely automates the task of matching the right storage resource to applications based on performance level needs.

The result is true just-in-time storage: capacity when, where, and how it’s needed. And, because the capacity management capabilities reside in the storage hypervisor, not the underlying devices, they’re available for existing and future storage purchases, regardless of vendor. You can choose the storage brands and models needed to match your specific price/performance requirements, and when new features and capabilities are added to the hypervisor, they’re available to every storage device.

For more information on how a storage hypervisor can enable effective capacity management from an architectural, operational, and financial standpoint, check out Jon’s second Storage Virtualization for Rock Stars white paper: Capacity Management’s Sweet Notes – Dynamic Storage Pooling, Thin-Provisioning & More.

Next time I’ll look at how a storage hypervisor boosts storage performance management.

ESG reports 59% Have not Deployed Virtualization on Tier-1 Windows Apps

Respondents to a recent ESG survey indicated that increasing the use of virtualization was their number one IT priority over the last two years and will continue to be the top priority for the next 12-18 months. While server virtualization penetration continues to gain momentum, IT organizations still have numerous hurdles to overcome in order to deploy it more widely and move closer to a 100% virtualized data center. ESG found that 59% have yet to employ virtualization where it will provide the most benefit: their mission-critical tier-1 applications. These tier-1 application workloads include Microsoft Exchange 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, and SharePoint 2010. For IT organizations supporting large numbers of users, hesitation to implement virtualization stems from the perception that it adds performance overhead and unpredictable scalability and availability to the tier-1, multi-user, business-critical applications relied upon by the majority of their users.

http://www.enterpriseittools.com/sites/default/files/ESG%20-%20Hyper-V%20R2%20SP1%20Application%20Workload%20Performance%20-%20March%202011.pdf


DataCore STAR HA Solution Adds Resiliency and Performance to Microsoft Hyper-V Environments
http://www.it-analysis.com/technology/storage/news_release.php?rel=28058

The DataCore STAR HA (high availability) solution is primarily aimed at the large installed base of Microsoft servers running lines of business applications as well as Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint, eager for better data protection and performance.

Many of these IT organisations realise they must move their data from internal server disks to shared storage area network (SAN) to meet growth needs, improve uptime, and enhance productivity. However, some have concluded that this migration could add more risk, disruption, and cost than they can currently afford. Thus, they seek a solution that minimizes these obstacles. They need a simple way to enhance the performance and resiliency of their application servers, while providing easy access and a transition path to the compelling advantages of shared SAN.

The DataCore STAR HA solution is tailored for these IT organisations seeking the benefits of a SAN, while allowing their data to remain safely stored on their servers.

The new business continuity solution enhances the resiliency and performance of Windows server farms enabling those systems to stay up longer, their applications to run faster, and shorten the time to recover from unexpected situations. It is most appealing for customers wishing to keep their data distributed across their server disk drives, while at the same time gaining many of the centralised and advanced services made possible by a SAN.

STAR Topology Leverages Central Server for Faster Recovery from Failures
Rather than migrate server data to an external SAN, the DataCore STAR HA software automatically mirrors the data drives on each Windows server to a central DataCore STAR server for safekeeping. In addition, the Window’s host-resident software speeds up applications by caching repeated disk requests locally from high-speed server memory.

If an application server in the farm goes down, another server can resume its operations by retrieving a current copy of its data drive from the central DataCore STAR server. The DataCore STAR server also offloads replication requests across the farm. It can take centralised snapshots of the data drives and remotely replicate all critical data to a remote disaster recovery site. The solution has the added benefit of automatically redirecting requests to the central DataCore STAR server when a local server data drive is inaccessible.

DataCore Software Offers SAN Alternative for Windows Server Farms; Targets Microsoft Servers Running Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint

http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/110111_DataCore_Software_Offers_SAN_Alternative_for_Windows_Server_Farms

DataCore Software Introduces a New Business Continuity Solution for Windows Microsoft servers running Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint, eager for better data protection and performance.


The DataCore STAR high availability solution is primarily aimed at the large installed base of Microsoft servers running lines of business applications as well as Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint, looking for better data protection and performance.

The DataCore STAR HA solution is designed for IT organizations that are seeking the benefits of a SAN, while allowing their data to remain safely stored on their servers.

DataCore also offers alternative, high-availability, high performance packages for architecting solutions using redundant, two node configurations, and scale-out grid designs.

The new business continuity solution improves on the resiliency and performance of Windows server farms enabling those systems to stay up longer, their applications to run faster, and shorten the time to recover from unexpected situations.

It is most ideal for customers that want to keep their data distributed across their server disk drives, while accessing many of the centralized and advanced services made possible by a SAN.

Instead of migrating server data to an external SAN, the DataCore STAR HA software automatically mirrors the data drives on each Windows server to a central DataCore STAR server for safekeeping.

In addition, the Window's host-resident software speeds up applications by caching repeated disk requests locally from high-speed server memory.

If an application server in the farm goes down, another server can resume its operations by retrieving a current copy of its data drive from the central DataCore STAR server.

The DataCore STAR server also offloads replication requests across the farm. It can take centralized snapshots of the data drives and remotely replicate all critical data to a remote disaster recovery site, as well as automatically redirect requests to the central DataCore STAR server when a local server data drive is inaccessible.

Physical machines hosting standalone applications under Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as systems hosting multiple virtual machines under Microsoft Hyper-V can take advantage of the data protection and performance enhancement benefits.

The DataCore STAR HA software is compatible with Windows server applications including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and line of business applications.

SAN-Averse Customers Can Take Advantage of Business & Financial Benefits
http://vmblog.com/archive/2011/11/01/datacore-software-introduces-a-new-business-continuity-solution-for-windows-server-farms.aspx
“While many IT managers are eager to exploit the benefits of centralized and shared data that SANs deliver, they also often worry that migrating to a central storage system could prove to be risky and disruptive,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “The STAR HA software from DataCore provides a solution to this conundrum by combining the comfort and familiarity of distributed data with the attractive attributes of a central SAN in an efficient manner that is both unobtrusive and cost-effective.”

Storage Hypervisors and the Technology of Freedom: No Automation without Virtualization

Two political movements, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (OWS), have been in the headlines lately. Although they come from very different corners of the political ring, they seem to share a perception that there’s a group of people, however defined, that have more than their fair share of power and influence.

They also have in common a debt to what the brilliant communications scholar Ithiel de Sola Pool called “the technologies of freedom.” When he wrote the seminal book by that name in 1983, that phrase referred to the printing press, radio, television, and the telephone, but he clearly foresaw the transformation of these technologies by the computer, a process he called “convergence.” Both the Tea Party and OWS (not to mention the Arab Spring and similar movements) would have been impossible without the new technologies of freedom that resulted from this convergence: email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the like, which enable those who can’t afford a printing press or a broadcast station to make their voices heard with a volume unlikely or impossible with earlier technologies.

What’s interesting to me is that the computing industry has its own “technology of freedom,” which has proved just as corrosive of vendor control as applications like Twitter have of political control. I’m talking about virtualization, a technique that pervades computing from top to bottom, forever abstracting function away from hardware into software. The abstraction furnished by communications protocols gave us the Internet, and helped blow up telecomm monopolies in the process. The abstraction of processors gave us server and desktop virtualization, making computing power a commodity and undermining the power of hardware vendors.

Now storage virtualization is eroding the power and influence of storage vendors. The 99%--the IT professionals down in the trenches suffering with the complications of managing a balkanized storage infrastructure—are fed up. They’re ready to throw their growing collection of storage devices into the harbor—any harbor. They’ve seen the promise of storage virtualization: better capacity management, better performance management, and better data protection management. But they don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to get these benefits across all their storage assets. After all, hypervisors like VMware, Hyper-V, and Xen work with any server hardware.

That’s why the “big iron” vendors haven’t been able to keep virtualization safely locked up in their disk arrays. The genie is out of the bottle with the rise of hardware-independent storage hypervisors like DataCore’s SANsymphony-V. A storage hypervisor unifying all your storage assets—from SANs to NAS boxes to SCSI disks orphaned by server virtualization consolidation—into an easily managed, high-performance virtual storage pool. By automating many of the tasks involved in efficient storage management, a storage hypervisor frees IT for more strategic operations and transforms storage from a business cost into a business advantage.

I’ll be looking at each of the management advantages a storage hypervisor delivers in posts to come, and outlining the business benefits they deliver: risk reduction, improved productivity, and cost containment.

For a head start on these topics, and more, please plan to attend a complimentary webcast on October 27, 2011 titled “The Storage Hypervisor: Taking Storage to the Next Level.” This webcast starts at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. Get to know DataCore – and take your storage to the next level. Register today.

Jack Spencer Saves Big Bucks with DataCore SANsymphony-V; CIO of American Society Health-System Pharmacists

http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/the-hoard-facts/2011/10/jack-spencer-datacore-san-symphony-v.aspx

Spencer's IBM storage was failing, but DataCore came to the rescue and saved him some money in the process.

Jack Spencer is VP of operations and CIO of the non-profit American Society Health-System Pharmacists. Last Fall, his IBM Fast T 700 storage server, which had been in place for about five years and upgraded numerous times, started to fail during the registration period of one of the organization's national meetings that produce a large portion of its yearly operating budget.

"We had a lot of pain with IBM trying to get something done with that, and of course it turned into more of a sales call than any kind of a support thing, so it came to the point where we knew there had to be a better way," Spencer said.

Fortunately, he was able to stabilize the Fast T 700--which had a controller that was failing and several bad drives that were being masked by the controller's symptoms--it could complete the meeting's registration duties. He then immediately went to work on crafting a new system, which involved implementing a SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software system that used HP EVA disk arrays. DataCore refers to SANsymphony as a "storage hypervisor."

Even though his new storage configuration was up and running, Spencer didn't want to throw out the Fast T 700 because it was still usable, and DataCore told him he could put that plus some Dell MD series disk arrays behind SANsymphony-V.

"DataCore gave me a solution that allowed me to keep all those resources, and not get them out of the architecture, but still use them, maybe not in production, but in a test environment," he said. "So now we don't see the new system as an individual piece of equipment that has storage--we just see storage, and I'll tell you, the training curve for my LAN crew who manages that has decreased by 80 percent at least."

...ROI-wise, Spencer said he saved between $50,000 and $100,000 alone by being able to keep using his legacy storage systems. He claimed to have saved another $20,000 to $30,000 by slashing his training requirements.

Does he go along with the "storage hypervisor" characterization of SAN Symphony-V?

"Oh absolutely. I can go out and look at whatever storage I want and just throw it in behind," he stated. "It's pretty straight-forward, pretty simple, and pretty elegant.

Stikeman Elliott Streamlined its Data with DataCore

ComputerWorld and IT World Canada: http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/stikeman-elliott-streamlined-its-data-with-datacore/144114

Using DataCore’s SANSymphony-V, corporate law firm Stikeman Elliott was able to re-purpose valuable storage devices and add new units into the chain without risking downtime

One of the things that Marco Magini, network and systems administrator for Montreal-based Stikeman Elliot LLC, worries most about where storage is concerned is downtime. At one of the largest corporate law firms in the world, it may come as a shock, but the cliché “time is money,” is no joke, Magini said.

“In terms of business continuity or flow, here, time is money, so data has to be available 24/7. I know everywhere it’s the same, but here, downtime costs a lot. When you do the math for the lawyers’ fee and the legal assistant and everything, we need to keep the data up and running all the time. No disruption at all,” he said.

After using a few bandaid fixes and constantly shopping for storage upgrades, Magini was introduced to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based DataCore Software by TH Consultants.

He’d looked at other products before, but the fact that DataCore was a software implementation with a real emphasis on interchangeability really sold him on it. He and the IT team found themselves asking, “why can’t we pull or stretch the actual hardware that we have (instead of constantly upgrading)? (That’s) why we love the DataCore product; it’s not manufacturer binded. You can throw any type of arrays or storage at it.”

George Teixeira, CEO of DataCore, said that this is one of the key principles his company is known for. “We started off pioneering a lot of the key things that are, today, taken for granted in the whole storage/virtualization space; things like thin provisioning and so forth. The difference is we’ve always done it in software and it’s software that allows hardware interchangeability.”

Teixeira said that DataCore is well positioned because storage isn’t something you can mess around with. You need to utilize whatever you have to keep budgets and downtime from spinning out of control. “As time goes on, people are using different kinds of storage depending on what they need and the cost for these things differ dramatically and the performance differs dramatically. One of the big advantages of DataCore is it’s software that works across all of these,” he said.

He also said it uses “auto-tiering” to intelligently move data between devices by cost and availability. “What (auto-tiering) does is allow you to have a mix of any kind of these purpose-built devices that you already have in your sight or add new ones and we will move the data to where it makes the most economic and pricepoint for your needs.”

Besides this unique take on interchangeability, Magini said his satisfaction in the transition to DataCore’s SANSymphony-V Hypervisor came from the added benefits he hadn’t considered before implementation. “This is a little jewel. Not only does it answer our backup issue, but we can move forward with our disaster recovery and especially high availability.”

My Kingdom for a Storage Hypervisor!... The Latest Woes of Research in Motion (RIM)

The old saying “for want of a nail a kingdom was lost” comes to mind while watching the latest woes of Research in Motion (RIM) and their consumer-focused Blackberry Internet Services (BIS), which apparently went down twice this week. Consumers in EMEA and South America were particularly hard hit, and the outages spread to North America. Early reports indicate that the first outage, at least, may have originated in the company’s data center in Slough, England—network carriers are denying any responsibility.

These outages come less than a month after the company’s stock hit a five-year low, due to investor worries about competition from Apple and Android phones and other concerns. Since consumers aren’t subject to the same lock-in pressures as corporations who have adopted the Blackberry Enterprise Server, this outage could well prompt more consumers to switch, especially with the introduction of the iPhone 4s.

Obviously, until RIM comes clean on the cause of these outages, we can only speculate about how they could have been prevented. But if preliminary reports of them being server-related are true, our customers’ experience suggests that a storage hypervisor might have helped. Storage is the foundation of server operations, so high-availability storage is a must-have for utterly-reliable operation. A storage hypervisor such as DataCore SANsymphony-V can create an easily-provisioned virtual pool of storage that is replicated both synchronously, for immediate, no-interruption failover, and, if desired, asynchronously, for disaster recovery. No change is required to the application servers, making a storage hypervisor an easy and cost-effective way to prevent outages.

For instance, the Ports of Auckland, through which passes 13% of New Zealand’s GDP and almost 40% of its container trade, depends on SANsympony-V to support cargo handling and logistics services on a 24x7, 365-day-a-year basis. As Lead Systems Engineer Craig Beetlestone notes, DataCore let the Ports of Auckland “design out the panic” so that while the port may run 24X7, IT doesn’t have to. “We can suffer a complete site failure and have the systems carry on running without any manual intervention, which is a huge benefit for us,” he says. “Our return to operation is literally only minutes.”

How many customers could RIM have retained if the recent outages had been only minutes? And, would nervous investors even have noticed? The costs of these outages will be nearly incalculable, but one thing seems sure: if a storage hypervisor could have prevented them, it would have paid for itself the moment it was turned on.

DataCore: Storage Virtualization for the Rest of Us

http://juku.it/en/articles/datacore-storage-virtualization-for-the-rest-of-us.html

I’ve been playing around with many storage platforms in the last ten years but I admittedly never had first hand experience with Datacore before now.

Datacore is a private company hailing from sunny Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They sport worldwide presence and 13 years in the competitive storage industry with more than 6000 customers.

Their sole product is called SANsymphony-V and it’s a software-based storage virtualization solution which runs on physical or virtual Windows Server 2008 R2 machines. The product can virtualize whatever storage is connected to itself (both direct attached or connected via SAN) and then export it using iSCSI, FC and FCoE.

SANsymphony-V approach to HA is an interesting one, they’re maintaining synchronous copies between nodes to guarantee high availability, with this approach you can separate the nodes as far as 100 KMs apart and still access them as a single entity (a scenario that vaguely resemble NetApp’s metrocluster)...

SANsymphony-V really struck my interest so I decided to give it a spin in our Juku lab.

During my tests I’ve put SANsymphony-V under stress in two different scenarios: physical (with async replication to virtual) and fully virtual (on vSphere 5 beta), I used both direct attached storage (local disks on Dell servers) and SAN attached storage (running on a trusty HDS AMS500 connected via FC to a Brocade fabric) as backend and VMware ESXi5 servers as clients.

The tests were performed with IOmeter inside virtual machines and performances were consistent across all the tests performed, the aggressive caching that Datacore provides (up to 1TB per node can be used for caching purposes) pushed IOps up to 4x in the tests performed (comparing SANsymphony-V performance against the native backend storage) a metric that is definitely interesting if your workload is cache friendly, especially because Datacore uses standard server RAM as caching platform that is usually cheaper than purpose-built cache modules for storage arrays.

...The product is solid, during my tests I had no issue whatsoever with the Datacore software: no install shenanigans, no strange quirks and no unexpected behaviors, everything went as smooth as it can get and performance were always consistent, even when Datacore nodes were virtualized under VMware.

...Even if I’m not too fond of Windows as a storage platform (even if EMC proved me wrong) I must admit that if the storage layer is solid you can achieve great results, as it’s the case with Datacore and even if I’d really like to see the products bundled with a stripped-down version of Windows server (to maximize physical resource utilization) if you’re in the market for a good software-based storage virtualization solution, Datacore is definitely something to put on your shortlist.

Cloud Storage Partnership: DataCore and TwinStrata

http://www.mspmentor.net/2011/10/05/cloud-storage-patnership-datacore-and-twinstrata/

DataCore Software and TwinStrata are connecting the dots between storage virtualization and cloud storage. Specifically, DataCore’s storage virtualization software will now come bundled with a free TwinStrata CloudArray virtual appliance. How do managed service providers potentially benifit? Here are some thoughts.

The new solution allows enterprises to optimize their on-site data and leverage a pay-as-you-go storage center in a cloud environment, the companies say. DataCore and TwinStrata have been strategic partners for a number of years, according to DataCore Director of Product Marketing Augie Gonzalez. And according to DataCore President, CEO and Co-Founder George Teixeira, the partnership with TwinStrata is really the secondary news here.

“This announcement is not so much about TwinStrata. The bigger picture is that DataCore has been focused on managing and tiering diverse devices,” explained Teixeira. “We are allowing the consumer to have hardware interchangeability. And on a higher level, our architecture lets you get the most out of each level and get better performance out of any device.”

According to Teixeira, the DataCore-TwinStrata solution will “feel” like you’re using on-premise iSCSI disks. But the storage will actually occur in a cloud provider of their choice. That means less critical tiered storage, data backups and archives that can grow on pay-as-you-go-tiers and savings when it comes to space, power, cooling, and ultimately, money, the companies claim.

“Our auto-tiering function lets you promote or demote the storage or data to whatever makes sense economically or whatever meets storage needs,” Teixeira continued. “The one thing that was missing was a low cost storage from a cloud provider that you can get pretty simply today as a pay-as-you-go storage model. So we’ve added a function.”

According to Gonzalez, DataCore reviewed more than 100 different cloud solutions on the market before deciding on TwinStrata’s CloudArray. “They have an outstanding engineering and support staff,” Gonzalez said. “MSPs are trying to offer a complete on-premise and off-premise cloud model. To do that today, they would have to go to a fragmented approach. We are bringing to market a uniform way to do this.”

The Boss Just Asked Me – “Why aren't we using Cloud Storage?”

The US government (the big boss) has enacted a 'Cloud First' policy, which is easy to state but has proven more difficult to do. Likewise CIOs (IT bosses) and businesses of all types are dealing with the challenge of how to effectively use “pay to go” Cloud capabilities to save money and improve productivity.

One especially critical pain point in IT is the growth of storing data and its cost (upfront capital expenditures, space, power, cooling, maintenance, etc.). IT managers who have too much work and too little time are being forced to look for new ways to get the most out of their on-premise storage assets while exploring ways to integrate new Cloud models. The bosses want more...

What to do? Recently, Gartner Group’s Gene Ruth, Research Director and Senior Storage Analyst, published a set of key findings and recommendations on Cloud storage in a recent report titled: Use heterogeneous storage virtualization as a bridge to the cloud. The opening page to the report makes an interesting statement: “Moving a storage infrastructure into a cloud paradigm can be a struggle for data center operators. The use of a heterogeneous storage virtualization solution provides a transition path that preserves investments and adds cloud operating semantics."

Storage virtualization and bridges all sound good, but how can we do it practically is the real question?

The simple answer to the question being asked is…it has to be easy, non-disruptive to operations and cost-effective. DataCore just announced it has extended its storage hypervisor tiering to Cloud storage and of course we believe the combination of storage virtualization and a Cloud gateway makes for a practical and compelling answer. The solution empowers users to manage, offload and augment on-premise storage environments with space and power saving storage located in the cloud.

For more background on the issue, the article in Cloud Computing by Nicos Vekiarides, a real Cloud expert, is a good read and does a good job of outlining how storage virtualization software, smart management to tier storage, and a seamless Cloud gateway can let companies gain the advantages of Cloud storage. You can read the full article here –

Cloud Computing: Combining Storage Virtualization with Unprecedented Cloud Storage Flexibility

The business case for storage virtualization software isn’t new. System administrators have always sought best-of-breed data storage from a choice of storage vendors and a centralized management framework. However, the business case for storage virtualization is currently even more profound for several key reasons.

1. Now, with a variety of data storage devices available today, ranging from high-performance SSD and Flash cards to low-cost SATA arrays, a seamless way to automatically tier data across the diversity of storage devices and purpose-built arrays can maximize utilization and cost-efficiency.
2. Moreover, hardware interchangeability and auto-tiering empower consumers with greater cost controls and buying power.
3. In addition, there are numerous benefits to an enterprise-class software stack that includes data replication and disaster recovery in a footprint that persists across storage system upgrades – with no need to ever change data management interfaces and policies.

Read the full article.

More Coverage on DataCore Extends Storage Hypervisor Tiering to Cloud Storage

Combining Storage Virtualization with Unprecedented Cloud Storage Flexibility
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2007782

The business case for storage virtualization software isn’t new. System administrators have always sought best of breed data storage from a choice of storage vendors and a centralized management framework. With a variety of data storage devices available today, ranging from high-performance SSD and Flash cards to low-cost SATA arrays, a seamless way to automatically tier data across the diversity of storage devices and purpose-built arrays can maximize utilization and cost-efficiency. Hardware interchangeability and auto-tiering empower consumers with greater cost controls and buying power. In addition, there are numerous benefits to an enterprise-class software stack that includes data replication and disaster recovery in a footprint that persists across storage system upgrades, with no need to ever change data management interfaces and policies.

DataCore SANsymphony-V is offered by the pioneer and established leader in the storage virtualization segment and is the industry’s first storage hypervisor that provides all of the above benefits and much more. This week, DataCore’s storage virtualization software added the flexibility of Cloud Storage to its list of features with the announcement that every copy of SANsymphony-V now bundles a TwinStrata Cloudarray virtual appliance. The combination enables companies to achieve true ‘open market’ buying power across their portfolio of storage investments; TwinStrata extends the cost-saving value propostion to a broad and impressive selection of public and private cloud storage providers. Read More...


InfoStor:DataCore Extends SANsymphony-V to the Cloud
http://www.infostor.com/backup-and_recovery/cloud-storage/datacore-extends-sansymphony-v-to-the-cloud.html

DataCore Software announced Tuesday that it has enhanced its SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor product to enable users to store less-important data to be automatically in the cloud, leaving more space on local storage infrastructure for high-priority data.

SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor provides a comprehensive set of storage control and monitoring functions that provide a transparent, virtual layer across consolidated disk pools.

It manages and optimizes different levels of storage, including memory, solid-state drives (SSD), and hard-disk drives (HDD) so that the most appropriate data is stored in the most appropriate tiers -- and now SANsymphony-V also works with cloud storage tiers, according to DataCore.

"Basically, DataCore's SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor has a function called auto-tiering which can set and prioritize data storage tiers ... "The problem, until now, [has been the lack of] the ease in doing this and storage costs ... The cloud is an ideal option because of its low storage costs"...


Enterprise Systems: DataCore Extends Storage Hypervisor Tiering to Cloud Storage
http://esj.com/articles/2011/10/04/datacore-storage-hypervisor.aspx

Architecture manages, optimizes tiers of storage; provides cloud gateway for backup, archive, and low-cost, off-premise tiered cloud storage.

DataCore Software has extended its storage hypervisor architecture with functionality that empowers enterprise customers to optimize the utilization and performance of their on-site assets and take full advantage of low cost, virtually unlimited “pay-as-you-go” storage in the cloud. The DataCore SANsymphony -V storage hypervisor now integrates seamlessly with the CloudArray cloud storage gateway from TwinStrata, a cloud-based data storage provider, allowing a simple, transparent, and cost-effective way to manage, offload, and augment on-premise storage environments with space- and power-saving storage located in the cloud.


Computer Technology Review: DataCore extends storage hypervisor tiering to provide enterprises with cloud storage
http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13750:datacore-extends-storage-hypervisor-tiering-to-provide-enterprises-with-cloud-storage&catid=320:breaking-news&Itemid=2701739


WebHost: Storage Virtualization Provider DataCore Adds TwinStrata CloudArray to Software Package
http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/100411_Storage_Virtualization_Provider_DataCore_Adds_TwinStrata_CloudArray_to_Software_Package

“SANsymphony-V was designed to help customers get the maximum performance, availability and utilization from the storage devices in their data centers,” Carlos Carreras, VP of alliances at DataCore said in a statement. “By bundling the TwinStrata CloudArray appliance with our SANsymphony-V, we give our customers even more flexibility and greater cost control by enabling them to include cloud storage in their virtual storage architecture.”

According to the press release, the bundle includes 1TB TwinStrata Cloud Array Virtual Appliance (a $2995 value), data compression/deduplication, at-rest/in-flight encryption, snapshotting, disaster recovery, bandwidth optimization and scheduling and choice of cloud service providers.

The package is also upgradable to handle perabytes of data and includes 30 days free cloud storage.


SNSeurope: TwinStrata and DataCore deliver industry-first storage virtualization to incorporate Cloud storage

DataCore, the premier provider of storage virtualization software, is bundling a free, one-terabyte TwinStrata CloudArray virtual appliance with the DataCore SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor software to provide a fast and secure way for organizations to scale their storage infrastructure more cost effectively using cloud storage.

http://www.snseurope.com/news_full.php?id=19700

“TwinStrata and DataCore are making it possible for users to easily include cloud storage as a transparent extension of their existing data center storage environment,” said Terri McClure, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “This gives companies greater control over storage performance and helps control costs by making it easy to tier their storage across the absolute widest range of resources, from high-performance SSD arrays and legacy disk arrays, to scalable, cost-effective cloud storage.”


ChannelEMEA: DataCore provides seamless access to cost effective Cloud Storage

DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor is unique in its ability to provide an architecture that manages, optimises and spans all the different price-points and performance levels of electronic and mechanical storage, including electronic memory, SSDs, disk devices and cloud storage tiers. Amongst its comprehensive features is advanced automated tiering of disks. This option automatically relocates disk blocks among pools of different storage devices, keeping demanding workloads operating at peak speeds. Less critical and infrequently accessed disk blocks naturally gravitate towards lower cost disks.

With the transparent integration of CloudArray, DataCore customers use what they believe are on-premise iSCSI disks whose contents are located remotely on a cloud storage provider of their choice. This allows less critical tiered storage, backups and archive data to be cost-effectively placed in cloud storage that can grow almost limitlessly and with pay-as-you-go tiers, while offering additional savings in space, power and cooling.

Additional features include:

Seamless integration between Cloud Array and SANsymphony-V in minutes;
Easily downloadable virtual software appliance;
Data deduplication and compression;
Data backup and recovery - on-site, off-site or in the cloud;
Secure AES 256-bit advanced encryption standard for both at-rest and in-flight data protection;
Disk caching to boost performance and enhance speed-matching to off-site cloud storage;
Bandwidth optimisation and scheduling controls;
Snapshotting;
and Choice of cloud storage providers, including such leaders as Amazon Web Services, AT&T Synaptic Storage, Windstream Hosted Solutions, PEER 1 Hosting, Nirvanix and OpenStack.


Blog Posts:

Combining Storage Virtualization with Unprecedented Cloud Storage Flexibility

DataCore Extends Storage Hypervisor Tiering to Provide Enterprises With Seamless Access to Cost Effective Cloud Storage

DataCore adds support for cloud as storage tier