Value Add Reseller Partners can get more information on DataCore and Citrix Solutions by contacting itX distribution at 1300 36 25 25 or www.itx.com.au/contact or email Email: ANZinfo@datacore.com
"Storage is critical to rapidly deploying virtualisation solutions, and DataCore's storage virtualisation solutions have been validated with Citrix XenServer and are deployed with XenServer in a growing number of customer installations. DataCore's affordable, flexible, high availability SAN storage solutions will help our mutual customers to overcome the cost barriers and complexity that SAN storage can present," says James McNab, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at Citrix.
Citrix XenServer for Free; What does server virtualization for free mean for storage virtualization?
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Washington Archives Management Deploys DataCore for a High-Availability Storage Virtualization Solution to Safeguard Citrix XenServer
“The bigger picture here is that technology like this has previously been prohibitively expensive for a small to mid-size business customer. Sure, large companies have been deploying virtual servers and virtual SANs, but they have had to pay a huge price for doing so. DataCore’s SANmelody enables the small business to get this kind of virtualization environment built and to do so without paying for Fibre Channel or paying over $100,000 for the SAN alone, which is what has made having a SAN unattainable for a large number of customers – before DataCore paved the way.” - Summarizes Radford, System Administrator, Washington Archives Management,
WAM is a 50-person archiving service that stores, archives and manages paper records.
“A forward-thinking approach combined with technological advances in virtualization has meant that our firm could avoid past failures,” says Tom Radford, System Administrator, Washington Archives Management. “And by deploying redundancy in our network – as well as leveraging advances like automated failover and multi-pathing, XenMotion and – above all – a software-based SAN that delivers on the promise of virtualization, WAM has made it possible to eliminate costly, storage related downtime.”
"When a hardware failure occurred we took that failure as an opportunity to upgrade and grow our infrastructure,” explains Radford. “DataCore partner Moose Logic was tapped to re-architect how our company addressed storage and did so by deploying a SAN solution from DataCore.”
A hardware failure leads to a fresh start on the storage front (read the full story)
WAM is a 50-person archiving service that stores, archives and manages paper records.
“A forward-thinking approach combined with technological advances in virtualization has meant that our firm could avoid past failures,” says Tom Radford, System Administrator, Washington Archives Management. “And by deploying redundancy in our network – as well as leveraging advances like automated failover and multi-pathing, XenMotion and – above all – a software-based SAN that delivers on the promise of virtualization, WAM has made it possible to eliminate costly, storage related downtime.”
"When a hardware failure occurred we took that failure as an opportunity to upgrade and grow our infrastructure,” explains Radford. “DataCore partner Moose Logic was tapped to re-architect how our company addressed storage and did so by deploying a SAN solution from DataCore.”
A hardware failure leads to a fresh start on the storage front (read the full story)
Thursday, 19 March 2009
DataCore & VMWare Storage VMotion - Solving Troublesome Migration Problems
An interesting day in the life story...submitted today from one of the DataCore Technical Account Managers in the UK...
March always presents an interesting time in local government; the end of the financial year sees the opportunity for the IT managers to get the projects that they've always wanted to do out of the way. This was no different for a NHS client that I visited this morning. They have purchased DataCore and were at the stage of the project that most IT Managers dread... Attempting to calculate the downtime and risk of the implementation of a brand new SAN environment.
Lists of application servers had been drawn up, tiers had been assigned, timescales were mooted and several small conversations were taking place amongst the people involved as to what needed to go first and what could be coped without when. The migration was to move from CX300 hardware to a DataCore SANsymphony environment housed upon large storage servers. Initially a 2 node configuration, with a primary production SAN and a DR SAN housed 8 miles away at the sister hospital, the purpose of the project was to provide an initial DR strategy and Storage expansion for a virtualised environment, culminating in the implementation of a Microsoft Sharepoint environment to improve the efficiency and end user experience within the PCT.
So after about 15 minutes of discussion I asked what version of ESX they were on... 3.0.1 came the reply. This quickly turned into a discussion regarding the upgrade path of VMWare from 3.0.1 to 3.5 and when the ease of this became apparent the solution became a no-brainer. Use Storage VMotion! By provisioning the DataCore Virtual Volumes to the ESX hosts as datastores, we can then Storage VMotion from one datastore to the other! There will be NO downtime at all! Having gone through the idea in a little more detail it became obvious that it was watertight and what was a potentially awkward, convoluted meeting with tight schedules became an easy discussion about just how flexible the solution was.
The icing was the cake was the point at which we decided that we could "chuck a 4GB HBA into the storage server" for the time that the 3rd node is to be implemented... "It'll just mean we can bang it in without any downtime again..." was the final comment on the matter.
March always presents an interesting time in local government; the end of the financial year sees the opportunity for the IT managers to get the projects that they've always wanted to do out of the way. This was no different for a NHS client that I visited this morning. They have purchased DataCore and were at the stage of the project that most IT Managers dread... Attempting to calculate the downtime and risk of the implementation of a brand new SAN environment.
Lists of application servers had been drawn up, tiers had been assigned, timescales were mooted and several small conversations were taking place amongst the people involved as to what needed to go first and what could be coped without when. The migration was to move from CX300 hardware to a DataCore SANsymphony environment housed upon large storage servers. Initially a 2 node configuration, with a primary production SAN and a DR SAN housed 8 miles away at the sister hospital, the purpose of the project was to provide an initial DR strategy and Storage expansion for a virtualised environment, culminating in the implementation of a Microsoft Sharepoint environment to improve the efficiency and end user experience within the PCT.
So after about 15 minutes of discussion I asked what version of ESX they were on... 3.0.1 came the reply. This quickly turned into a discussion regarding the upgrade path of VMWare from 3.0.1 to 3.5 and when the ease of this became apparent the solution became a no-brainer. Use Storage VMotion! By provisioning the DataCore Virtual Volumes to the ESX hosts as datastores, we can then Storage VMotion from one datastore to the other! There will be NO downtime at all! Having gone through the idea in a little more detail it became obvious that it was watertight and what was a potentially awkward, convoluted meeting with tight schedules became an easy discussion about just how flexible the solution was.
The icing was the cake was the point at which we decided that we could "chuck a 4GB HBA into the storage server" for the time that the 3rd node is to be implemented... "It'll just mean we can bang it in without any downtime again..." was the final comment on the matter.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
ROI and Cost Savings from Virtual Storage
Full Use: Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned StorageBoth SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. With DataCore, once-occupied, thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. In this way, the SAN gives back capacity that may have been temporarily needed, further optimizing resource utilization.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
DataCore's 'solid state SANs' with mega-caches to make storage virtualisation performance soar
IT Director: Peter Williams, Practice Leader - IT Infrastructure Mgmt., Bloor Research http://www.it-director.com/enterprise/content.php?cid=11109
Enterprises with virtual environments should be intrigued by DataCore Software's developments for its venerable software-with upcoming SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualisation releases due for general availability around month end. These include a massive boost to SAN-wide performance and improvements to high availability...
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony will now support for 64-bit "mega-caches" providing up to one terabyte (TB) of cache memory per node; so performance will scale linearly with each node added to the fabric. It means that the entire SAN operation for many virtual machines can be kept in SAN-wide caches avoiding the vast majority of disk I-O.
"This is a solid state SAN," James Price, vice president channel and product marketing told me, adding that this would dwarf anything in the market. "There will be a 600-1200% performance increase."
He explained that while the number one bottleneck for virtualisation was memory (CPU cycles and pure capacity), next came storage performance-limited by I-O to virtualised disk. So the need was to scale and deliver I-O at native speeds or more. This boost should be worth watching!
Previously DataCore has offered up to 20 GB of cache, which Price said had been competitive, but, driven by increasing virtualisation, 16-32 GB cache would be a common requirement with a lot of customers. That's a long way from the TB maximum so provides oodles of expansion for those who find they need more...
Enterprises with virtual environments should be intrigued by DataCore Software's developments for its venerable software-with upcoming SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualisation releases due for general availability around month end. These include a massive boost to SAN-wide performance and improvements to high availability...
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony will now support for 64-bit "mega-caches" providing up to one terabyte (TB) of cache memory per node; so performance will scale linearly with each node added to the fabric. It means that the entire SAN operation for many virtual machines can be kept in SAN-wide caches avoiding the vast majority of disk I-O.
"This is a solid state SAN," James Price, vice president channel and product marketing told me, adding that this would dwarf anything in the market. "There will be a 600-1200% performance increase."
He explained that while the number one bottleneck for virtualisation was memory (CPU cycles and pure capacity), next came storage performance-limited by I-O to virtualised disk. So the need was to scale and deliver I-O at native speeds or more. This boost should be worth watching!
Previously DataCore has offered up to 20 GB of cache, which Price said had been competitive, but, driven by increasing virtualisation, 16-32 GB cache would be a common requirement with a lot of customers. That's a long way from the TB maximum so provides oodles of expansion for those who find they need more...
Saturday, 7 March 2009
DataCore Unveils Improved Performance, Availability and Utilization for Citrix's XenApp, XenDesktop and XenServer
DataCore and Citrix Users Laud the DataCore and Citrix Combination for Their Virtualization Environments
At CeBIT 2009, the leading business event for the digital world, DataCore highlighted the newest features in the forthcoming releases of its SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions. In particular, DataCore touted that the new versions of its solutions deliver SAN-wide performance boosts and provide radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for Citrix® XenServer™, XenDesktop™ and XenApp™ environments. At the show, Citrix will showcase its recent announcement “New Citrix XenServer Release Makes Enterprise-Class, Cloud-Proven Virtualization Free for Everyone.”
We are pleased to welcome DataCore to showcase their solutions on our booth during CeBIT," says James McNab, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at Citrix. "Storage is critical to rapidly deploying virtualization solutions, and DataCore's storage virtualization solutions have been validated with Citrix XenServer and are deployed with XenServer in a growing number of customer installations. DataCore's affordable, flexible, high availability SAN storage solutions will help our mutual customers to overcome the cost barriers and complexity that SAN storage can present."
High availability Solutions for Citrix
DataCore’s lineup of solutions, which are Citrix Ready™ for XenServer 5, have been met with broad appeal worldwide and the momentum keeps rolling for DataCore storage virtualization solutions delivered in combination with Citrix XenServer.
Recently announced DataCore and Citrix customers include Washington Archives Management, Statewide Title Company, Inc., and Alameda County Medical Center, just to name a few. These customers are each testifying that DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from their storage assets, making it an essential element of Citrix configurations. A case in point is Statewide Title Company, Inc. “The selection of DataCore was designed to pave the way for the Citrix XenServer implementation that we are now in the process of deploying,” explains George Overstreet, systems administrator, Statewide Title, Company, Inc. “For purposes of ease of management, efficiencies and centralizing storage, we went with SANmelody. With DataCore, you just have greater flexibility. And on top of this, with DataCore we can also meet all of our disaster recovery (DR) requirements as well.”
Moreover, according to Benjamin Crill, partner, ESI Technology Advisors, “DataCore is the perfect complement to server virtualization with XenServer. They are hardware independent, portable - and above all, 'open' solutions. Both DataCore and XenServer are feature rich and value-packed. DataCore's storage virtualization solutions make storage management easy. They enable customers to maximize resources and lower costs, while delivering high availability, better utilization as well as enhanced performance and productivity.”
Enhancements in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore Software enhancements in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 aimed at Citrix shared storage requirements include the following new features and functionality:
64-bit “Mega Caches” Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are support for 64-bit mega caches. “In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king,” comments James Price, Vice President of Channel and Product Marketing, DataCore Software. “DataCore’s solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache – per node. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric.” Entire working sets of numerous virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide caches for unheard of performance. Behind the caches, Citrix customers can grow their storage pool from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage
Needless to say, storage pools of such immensity are in constant flux. With this in mind, the new product enhancements are fully integrated into DataCore’s radically simple, high availability solutions for Citrix disk farms. Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications.
Full Use: Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. With the new releases, once-occupied, thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. In this way, the SAN gives back capacity that may have been temporarily needed, further optimizing resource utilization.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. Citrix servers and virtual machines (VMs) needing storage, connect to the DataCore controllers using iSCSI or Fibre Channel. All of the popular operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, 2008, Unix, Linux, NetWare and MacOS can take advantage of DataCore’s SAN-wide storage virtualization features. In small configurations, the DataCore controller is hosted on a VM as a virtual appliance alongside application VMs. The SAN is completely virtual needing no external storage. Larger configurations dedicate physical servers to this storage virtualization role and typically include both internal disk drives and external arrays. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of 64-bit Windows Server 2008 virtual and physical platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support
DataCore’s “Transporter” time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems – eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions
All DataCore Packages for Citrix will be Updated to SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore has a suite of SANmelody-based Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) packages available for Citrix environments, ranging from Feature Packed BC/DR SAN Starter Virtualization Bundles to a Feature Packed BC/DR 32 Terabyte SAN Virtualization Bundle to virtually unlimited capacity SANsymphony Bundles. For more details on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery packages, please visit: www.datacore.com/SANpackages.
DataCore's virtual SAN appliance and storage virtualization software are Citrix Ready™ for XenServer 5. The Citrix Ready program recognizes Citrix partner products that have been validated by Citrix and/or partners to work in Citrix environments, making it simpler for customers to identify solutions that can be used with confidence in Citrix environments.
At CeBIT 2009, the leading business event for the digital world, DataCore highlighted the newest features in the forthcoming releases of its SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions. In particular, DataCore touted that the new versions of its solutions deliver SAN-wide performance boosts and provide radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for Citrix® XenServer™, XenDesktop™ and XenApp™ environments. At the show, Citrix will showcase its recent announcement “New Citrix XenServer Release Makes Enterprise-Class, Cloud-Proven Virtualization Free for Everyone.”
We are pleased to welcome DataCore to showcase their solutions on our booth during CeBIT," says James McNab, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at Citrix. "Storage is critical to rapidly deploying virtualization solutions, and DataCore's storage virtualization solutions have been validated with Citrix XenServer and are deployed with XenServer in a growing number of customer installations. DataCore's affordable, flexible, high availability SAN storage solutions will help our mutual customers to overcome the cost barriers and complexity that SAN storage can present."
High availability Solutions for Citrix
DataCore’s lineup of solutions, which are Citrix Ready™ for XenServer 5, have been met with broad appeal worldwide and the momentum keeps rolling for DataCore storage virtualization solutions delivered in combination with Citrix XenServer.
Recently announced DataCore and Citrix customers include Washington Archives Management, Statewide Title Company, Inc., and Alameda County Medical Center, just to name a few. These customers are each testifying that DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from their storage assets, making it an essential element of Citrix configurations. A case in point is Statewide Title Company, Inc. “The selection of DataCore was designed to pave the way for the Citrix XenServer implementation that we are now in the process of deploying,” explains George Overstreet, systems administrator, Statewide Title, Company, Inc. “For purposes of ease of management, efficiencies and centralizing storage, we went with SANmelody. With DataCore, you just have greater flexibility. And on top of this, with DataCore we can also meet all of our disaster recovery (DR) requirements as well.”
Moreover, according to Benjamin Crill, partner, ESI Technology Advisors, “DataCore is the perfect complement to server virtualization with XenServer. They are hardware independent, portable - and above all, 'open' solutions. Both DataCore and XenServer are feature rich and value-packed. DataCore's storage virtualization solutions make storage management easy. They enable customers to maximize resources and lower costs, while delivering high availability, better utilization as well as enhanced performance and productivity.”
Enhancements in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore Software enhancements in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 aimed at Citrix shared storage requirements include the following new features and functionality:
64-bit “Mega Caches” Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are support for 64-bit mega caches. “In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king,” comments James Price, Vice President of Channel and Product Marketing, DataCore Software. “DataCore’s solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache – per node. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric.” Entire working sets of numerous virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide caches for unheard of performance. Behind the caches, Citrix customers can grow their storage pool from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage
Needless to say, storage pools of such immensity are in constant flux. With this in mind, the new product enhancements are fully integrated into DataCore’s radically simple, high availability solutions for Citrix disk farms. Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications.
Full Use: Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. With the new releases, once-occupied, thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. In this way, the SAN gives back capacity that may have been temporarily needed, further optimizing resource utilization.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. Citrix servers and virtual machines (VMs) needing storage, connect to the DataCore controllers using iSCSI or Fibre Channel. All of the popular operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, 2008, Unix, Linux, NetWare and MacOS can take advantage of DataCore’s SAN-wide storage virtualization features. In small configurations, the DataCore controller is hosted on a VM as a virtual appliance alongside application VMs. The SAN is completely virtual needing no external storage. Larger configurations dedicate physical servers to this storage virtualization role and typically include both internal disk drives and external arrays. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of 64-bit Windows Server 2008 virtual and physical platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support
DataCore’s “Transporter” time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems – eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions
All DataCore Packages for Citrix will be Updated to SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0
DataCore has a suite of SANmelody-based Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) packages available for Citrix environments, ranging from Feature Packed BC/DR SAN Starter Virtualization Bundles to a Feature Packed BC/DR 32 Terabyte SAN Virtualization Bundle to virtually unlimited capacity SANsymphony Bundles. For more details on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery packages, please visit: www.datacore.com/SANpackages.
DataCore's virtual SAN appliance and storage virtualization software are Citrix Ready™ for XenServer 5. The Citrix Ready program recognizes Citrix partner products that have been validated by Citrix and/or partners to work in Citrix environments, making it simpler for customers to identify solutions that can be used with confidence in Citrix environments.
Friday, 6 March 2009
Server plus Storage Virtualization; Virtual Iron and DataCore
Server plus Storage Virtualization; Virtual Iron and DataCore
Comments on DataCore from Industry Storage Guru Jon Toigo's Blog
Server plus Storage Virtualization. I am not a huge fan of the former, but I like the latter. And when I stack up two together, I want my servers virtualized with Virtual Iron (for reasons of cost and stability and functionality) and I want my fabric virtualized with DataCore - because it freakin' works.
Comments on DataCore from Industry Storage Guru Jon Toigo's Blog
Server plus Storage Virtualization. I am not a huge fan of the former, but I like the latter. And when I stack up two together, I want my servers virtualized with Virtual Iron (for reasons of cost and stability and functionality) and I want my fabric virtualized with DataCore - because it freakin' works.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Eweek: The Value of Storage Virtualization Software
"...virtualization is popular because it helps IT organizations get more out of their existing hardware investments. In order for storage virtualization to be equally as popular, the tools that are brought to bear need to provide an equal level of instant benefit. Right now, the only thing that does that in the realm of storage virtualization is a software-only approach to creating virtual pools out of existing storage investments."
http://blogs.eweek.com/masked_intentions/content/storage/the_value_of_storage_virtualization_software.html
...The folks at DataCore, which makes software that allows IT organization to turn existing storage arrays from multiple vendors into a shared pool of disk storage, have two theories about why storage virtualization is evolving much more slowly than server virtualization.
The first theory is that most storage hardware vendors require customers to buy new storage arrays that support storage virtualization. In these difficult economic times, it's hard to make an argument that basically says an IT organization should spend a lot of additional capital now in order to save money later.
The second theory is that when IT organizations introduce storage virtualization, they are worried about performance penalties. Too often there are database and e-mail applications that don't perform so well when virtualization is introduced. To specifically deal with storage virtualization performance issues, DataCore is now adding aupport for up to 1TB of cache to a new 64-bit implementation of its SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 software.
http://blogs.eweek.com/masked_intentions/content/storage/the_value_of_storage_virtualization_software.html
...The folks at DataCore, which makes software that allows IT organization to turn existing storage arrays from multiple vendors into a shared pool of disk storage, have two theories about why storage virtualization is evolving much more slowly than server virtualization.
The first theory is that most storage hardware vendors require customers to buy new storage arrays that support storage virtualization. In these difficult economic times, it's hard to make an argument that basically says an IT organization should spend a lot of additional capital now in order to save money later.
The second theory is that when IT organizations introduce storage virtualization, they are worried about performance penalties. Too often there are database and e-mail applications that don't perform so well when virtualization is introduced. To specifically deal with storage virtualization performance issues, DataCore is now adding aupport for up to 1TB of cache to a new 64-bit implementation of its SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 software.
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