The quest for software-defined storage has branched into three distinct approaches to storage virtualization...

From Enterprise Storage Forum -The Virtual San Buying Guide: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/san-nas-storage/virtual-san-buying-guide.html

“The quest for software-defined storage has branched three distinct approaches to storage virtualization; hypervisor-based, device-dependent, and agnostic, software-only,” states Steve Houck, COO DataCore Software. “vSAN is an example of hypervisor-based, EMC ViPR and IBM SVC are device-dependent, and DataCore SANsymphony–V is an example of software-only storage virtualization.”
DataCore has been in the virtual storage space for a long time. Its virtual SAN platform is called SANsymphony-V, which is hardware-agnostic storage virtualization software that abstracts and pools internal and external disks along with flash/SSDs. The company said thousands of data centers around the globe deploy DataCore.

Features include in-memory DRAM caching, auto-tiering, synchronous mirroring, asynchronous replication, thin-provisioning, snapshots, and CDP. Pricing for an HA (high-availability) cluster of 2 SANsymphony-V nodes is under $10,000, including 24x7 annual support.

“The SANsymphony-V platform is designed for mission-critical, latency-sensitive applications in companies large and small, where downtime is not tolerated,” said Steve Houck, COO, DataCore Software.

He believes that VMware vSAN takes advantage of inexpensive internal disk drives, which drives more customers, especially SAN-averse ones, to virtualize their apps. However, he added that it requires the use of more expensive flash memory, a minimum of three hosts, and doesn’t work on physical machine that are also be in the mix, or other hypervisors such as Microsoft Hyper-V.

SANsymphony-V, said Houck, is transparent to applications, so no code changes are necessary. It installs on a virtual machine in two or more nodes to create a tiered storage pool. The software can also run on dedicated x86 machines to offload all storage-intensive tasks from the application hosts

“The quest for software-defined storage has branched three distinct approaches to storage virtualization; hypervisor-based, device-dependent, and agnostic, software-only,” said Houck. “vSAN is an example of hypervisor-based, EMC ViPR and IBM SVC are device-dependent, and DataCore SANsymphony–V is an example of software-only storage virtualization.”

Software Update Notice: VMware vSphere Plug-in v1.3 for SANsymphony-V released

The following software update is now generally available for download from the DataCore Software Customer Support website:

Software: VMware vSphere Plug-in
Version: 1.3 (Replaces version 1.2)
Enhancements: Several important bug fixes and support for Internet Explorer 10.0

To download the updated plug-in from the DataCore Software Customer Support website:
Go to Software Downloads and select the following options from the pull down menus when prompted:
Select a Product Line to View Related Software Downloads: SANsymphony-V
Select a Version: 9.0
Select Software: Plug-in: VMware vSphere Plug-in for SANsymphony-V

Please download the Release Notes for VMware vSphere 1.3 Plug-in from the same page for more details on the Fixes and Enhancements included in this update.

You may also download the updated plug-in from www.datacore.com
Select SOFTWARE > Closer Technical Look > DOWNLOADS & TEST DRIVE

http://www.datacore.com/Software/Closer-Look/software-downloads.aspx
Scroll down to VMware vSphere Management Plug-in for SANsymphony-V

The direct link to the download request form is:
http://pages.datacore.com/VMware-vCenter-Management-Plugin.html

36 Reasons To Adopt DataCore Storage Virtualization and Software-defined Storage Architectures

Learn the Reasons Why 1000’s of Customers Have Chosen DataCore Software

“When asked for 10 reasons, I just couldn’t stop…”
–George Teixeira, CEO & President, DataCore Software

1. No Hardware Vendor Lock-In Enables Greater Buying Power
With DataCore, you gain the freedom to buy from any hardware vendor, and aren’t forced to pick and stick with one. This is a major advantage in negotiating your best deal and “right sizing” your purchase to buy what you need instead of what just one vendor has to offer. It’s easy to add, replace or migrate across storage platforms with a minimum of IT pain and best of all you can avoid disrupting users and business applications. Purchasing flexibility is a major advantage of a software-defined infrastructure.

2. Future-Proof Your Storage with Software-defined Flexibility; Be Ready for Whatever is Next
A flexible DataCore software defined storage infrastructure also lets you bring in new storage and new storage technologies non-disruptively, so you are ready for whatever comes next. Whether it is incorporating new flash storage or cloud storage into your infrastructure or gaining the competitive advantage that the next new storage innovation brings, your infrastructure is ready to bring it in and put it to work. On the other hand, hardware vendors have no interest in allowing you to bring in new technology to work with the storage you’ve have already purchased from them. Their reason for being is to sell you, each year, year after year, on ripping and replacing your last purchase from them with the newer model.

3. Get the Most from What You Already Own Before Buying More
Virtualization = Highly Efficient Utilization. Flexible and smart, DataCore virtualization software lets you optimize the utilization of your storage resources, extending the time to hardware refresh. This is another huge advantage over a hardware-defined infrastructure that forces you to over provision, oversize and buy more hardware to meet unknown demands before you have fully utilized what you already have. When you do buy new storage hardware, the DataCore advantage is that there is no waste—you can fully utilize what you buy so you buy only what you need.

Read more: Reasons and Benefits of Storage Virtualization and Software-defined Storage Architectures.

A Virtual Discovery Delivers Ongoing: Australian municipality grows and saves with DataCore Storage Virtualization Software

"The real beauty of DataCore is that it fulfills the full range of storage requirements - such as management, high-availability and disaster recovery - with hardware independent software that runs on any standard Intel or AMD based system."
- Anand Karan Managing Director, Lincom Solutions
 
To learn more, please read the Full Case Study on Kinston City Council: http://www.datacore.com/Libraries/Case_Study_PDFs/KingstonCouncil.sflb.ashx

DataCore Partner Lincom Designed and Implemented the Kingston City Council Solution:

Lincom Solutions holds DataCore implementation/engineering certifications and have worked with DataCore for nearly 7 years in designing and implementing DataCore solutions for various organisations, ranging from not for profit to global airlines.
 
One example of such an implementation is Kingston City Council.
For more information on Lincom, please see: http://www.lincom.net.au/25-DataCore.htm