Tuesday 25 March 2014

IMATION DELIVERS A COMPELLING COST-EFFECTIVE SOLUTION TO EXPENSIVE STORAGE SYSTEMS WITH DATACORE READY NEXSAN E-SERIES STORAGE ARRAYS

Nexsan E-Series storage arrays coupled with the SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software provide powerful and cost-effective storage infrastructure for Microsoft, VMware, Oracle and other virtualized environments


“The combined DataCore SANsymphony-V and Nexsan E-Series solution allows IT administrators to create the optimal virtualized storage architecture on highly reliable, proven Nexsan E-Series hardware,” said Mike Stolz, vice president of marketing and technical services for Imation’s Nexsan solutions.



Mike Stolz continues “Without virtualization, storage and compute capacity are often wasted in application-specific silos. In a virtualized environment, hardware resources can be pooled and optimized from heterogeneous devices, which significantly improves flexibility for the IT administrator.”  

Imation (NYSE:IMN), a global data storage and information security company, announced that its Nexsan™ E-Series™ storage arrays have been certified as DataCore Ready. When combined with the DataCore SANsymphony-V storage virtualization platform, the solution offers data centers rapid ROI through significant improvements in data availability, agility, performance and flexibility.

The integrated solution offers users a variety of benefits, including:

Performance – Using Nexsan E-Series arrays as a high-performing storage foundation, SANsymphony-V further increases performance by supporting RAM caches of up to a terabyte to dramatically accelerate reads and writes. SANsymphony-V also automatically rebalances loads due to hotspots to further improve response and throughput.

Efficient provisioning – The Nexsan E-Series system allows IT professionals to mix-and-match SAS, SATA and solid state drives. SANsymphony-V then provisions virtual disks as required to support different types of workloads. Granular thin provisioning and automated capacity reclamation gives administrators more options for improving efficiency.

Auto-tiering – SANsymphony-V continuously analyzes what blocks of data need higher I/O throughput and automatically assigns those blocks to the appropriate storage tier. Throughout this automated process, priority workloads like SQL databases can be given preference to fast storage including flash, while cooler data or lower prioritized workload data can be moved to lower-cost drives. E-Series storage arrays deliver virtually unlimited flexibility for configuring storage tiers according to capacity, performance and price characteristics, and the solution enables multiple tiers to be configured in a single Nexsan E-Series system or across other existing storage hardware.

Business continuity – By keeping data in two physically separate locations at the same time with the help of synchronous mirroring, the combined solution prevents storage from becoming a single point of failure for stretched cluster configurations. Imation and DataCore offer an appealing alternative to very expensive storage arrays. Disaster recovery scenarios also are supported by enabling asynchronous replication across distant sites.

Migration – Storage investments risk creating more complexity and islands of incompatible devices. DataCore SANsymphony-V and Nexsan E-Series work together to pool existing storage assets, eliminating risk of incompatibility and improving ROI across the entire infrastructure. Also, DataCore SANsymphony-V fully virtualizes data from the underlying hardware, enabling migration of data from legacy systems to Nexsan E-Series with minimal or no interruption to running workloads.

“DataCore and Imation have a long-standing history of collaboration as evidenced by numerous joint customers worldwide who leverage our solutions as a part of their storage architectures,” said Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development at DataCore. “Nexsan E-Series storage arrays combined with SANsymphony-V offer IT departments a highly efficient blueprint for optimizing IT resources and maximizing the effective value of storage investments.”


For the complete announcement, please see:  Imation News Release

Wednesday 12 March 2014

DataCore at Cebit 2014 showcases new solutions and the many advantages of DataCore’s Software-defined Storage platform

DataCore’s latest SANsymphony-V platform is being demonstrated and displayed at one of the world's largest IT exhibits at Cebit in Germany; DataCore's booth is within the “Virtualisation & Storage Forum“ (hall 2, booth A44). 







Additionally, DataCore has also introduced its next release of DataCore Virtual Desktop Server (VDS) with new enhancements and pricing that make it simple to deploy cost-effective and easy to use virtual desktop environments.



Saturday 8 March 2014

ARN: IDS snares A/NZ distributorship for DataCore Software Defined Storage; SANsymphony-V storage virtualisation solutions

The Australian value-added distributor, which was founded in 2004, now has offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra and is close to expanding to Melbourne.
IDS has signed a distributorship with storage virtualisation company DataCore to distribute SANsymphony-V and lists tier one resellers Fujitsu, Datacom, Data#3, Di Data, Hitachi, Fujitsu and AlphaWest on it’s books.
“We doubled our revenue last year and we expect to do the same again this year,” IDS director Ian Deane said.
“We are an expanding company. Two years ago we were unheard of, now the big boys are sitting up and listening.”
ARN: IDS snares A/NZ distributorship for DataCore Software

Wednesday 5 March 2014

SiliconAngle: What’s the future of the data center? What about Software-defined Storage?

 
As detailed in a recent article on Wikibon, “Data centers are at the center of modern software technology, serving a critical role in the expanding capabilities for enterprises.” Data centers have enabled the enterprise to do much more with much less, both in terms of physical space and the time required to create and maintain mission-critical information.

But the technology surrounding the data center is positioned to evolve even more dramatically, in terms of conception, configuration, and utilization. More importantly, the technologies surrounding the data center will both have an impact and be impacted over time. Towards the end of last year, Gartner identified eight areas to consider when developing a data center strategy that balances cost, risk and agility. We wanted to take that analysis further, reaching out to thought leaders across the enterprise technology space, for their perspectives on the future of data center technology.

DataCore CEO on the traditional Storage Model is Broken
George Teixiera, President, DataCore Software The traditional storage model is broken. Behavior has shifted and disrupted how businesses buy storage as they can no longer afford to rip out the old and throw more costly new hardware at their problems. Instead they are seeking smart automated software that runs on lower cost hardware and optimizes their existing investments and provides the agility to easily add new technologies non-disruptively. Bottom-line, the path to a software-defined data center where users gain freedom of hardware choice and control of their resources is inevitable and that means storage must also be software-defined.

Mr. Teixeira creates and executes the overall strategic direction and vision for DataCore Software. Mr. Teixeira co-founded the company and has served as CEO and President of DataCore Software since 1998.

Full story: What’s the future of the data center? The big list of thought leadership perspective