Oxford University Computing Services uses DataCore's SANmelody™ solution to provide storage for automated 'VM4 rent' virtual infrastructure.

http://www.it-director.com/technology/data_mgmt/news_release.php?rel=11646

Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) is implementing DataCore's SANmelody™ as the storage platform to sit behind their VM4 Rent service.

OUCS Network Systems Management Service (NSMS) provides high quality and cost effective IT services for all members of Oxford University by centrally operating, developing and supporting the University's primary computing infrastructure and services on a charge back basis across 25 colleges and 15 departments across many campuses throughout Oxford. As a department, NSMS' time is frequently spent supporting smaller departments with very limited IT resources.

To this end, NSMS is moving towards adoption of a totally self automated, self provisioning, web based virtualised model known internally as "VM4rent" by, in effect, renting Virtual Machines to their customers (Previously NSMS' data centre would provide storage services out across Fibre Channel SANs served by IBM/EMC direct attached storage). The infrastructure behind the VM4rent model includes two centralised VMware ESX 3.5 servers and virtualised storage through DataCore's SANmelody™, supporting VMware applications and seamlessly provisioning storage on demand. This virtualised computing on demand service is extremely useful for those departments who require a temporary service - such as a research project that has been granted funding for a year.

...Jon Hutchings, Senior Systems Engineer, OUCS Network Systems Management Service, notes of SANmelody, "The principles behind our VM4rent scheme are perfectly echoed and served by SANmelody; allowing us to plug in storage and support virtual servers as and when we need, ultimately providing a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend"

Delivering Storage Virtualization into Private Clouds

http://www.oncloudcomputing.com/en/2009/06/datacore-software-announces-external-it-to-deliver-storage-virtualization-into-private-clouds/
"I was first exposed to DataCore at a Brian Madden conference," said Joseph Stedler, senior engineer and Dallas data center manager, External IT.

Stedler summarizes the value of a storage virtualization approach as follows, "I have worked with traditional SANs for eight years and have had firsthand experience with every major hardware SAN under the sun - EMC, HP, NetApp, etc." he said. "There are various, major drawbacks to hardware SANs. One is the fact that there is a single point of failure at the disk level. This is particularly the case when doing, for example, firmware upgrades - on the controllers, on the disks, on the shelves - whereby you have to take the SAN down to perform that task. The second most irksome characteristic of hardware SANs is their cost. These EMC SANs, these HP EVAs are inherently expensive, particularly during upgrade time."

The Value of DataCore: Uptime, Performance and Much More

"There are capabilities that DataCore brings to the table that I absolutely love," commented Stedler. "The concept of having two SANs as your one SAN environment is just elegantly simple. You have an 'A' side and a 'B' side." The beauty of this is that if you need to do hardware maintenance or firmware upgrades, an administrator can actually take down half of the SAN and still have the other half serving production traffic - completely uninterrupted. The second, major benefit of DataCore for External IT has to do with performance. "With DataCore, you will experience enormous performance gains," noted Stedler. "The performance that DataCore delivers is nothing short of awesome."

DataCore Announces Updated Partner Program; Targets Virtualization and Microsoft Hyper-V Partners

To learn more about the DataCore SANvantage Partner Program and find out how you can 'Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualization' please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore.

DataCore Unveils Advanced Site Recovery Solution for Virtual and Physical IT Infrastructures

ASR builds on DataCore's universal storage virtualization software to switch IT operations from a central site to one or more distributed contingency locations and back

http://www.echannelline.com/usa/brief.cfm?item=16552

"The industry is conditioned to think of DR as a one-to-one proposition. They place unreasonable demands on a single recovery site, asking them to suddenly take over much larger workloads under very stressful conditions," said James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software.

"But most organizations aren't structured that way. They look more like a hub and spoke, with smaller branches emanating from the central data center. For this reason, DataCore's Advanced Site Recovery distributes the disaster recovery workloads among these smaller entities, allowing each of them to accept a more manageable role in keeping the business going."

DataCore's unique one-to-many approach fits well within the networking, computational and storage capacity constraints found in branch locations. And it also factors in staff and real estate limitations.

ASR works whether the servers are purely physical, or have been virtualized with Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware or other popular hypervisors. Moreover, it supports the use of dissimilar storage devices between the data center and its branches. In contrast, lack of such heterogeneous features in competing, and much pricier, disk array-based replication products makes them unsuitable for many customers.

DataCore and StorageLink - storage management for the Citrix and Microsoft Hypre-V virtual infrastructure worlds

http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/05/06/datacore-announces-citrix-essentials-storagelink-integration-and-showcases-non-stop-storage-solutions-for-microsoft-hyper-v-and-xendesktop-vdi.aspx
"StorageLink provides a rich integration point between DataCore's Storage Virtualization Software and Citrix Essentials," stated James Price, vice president of product and channel marketing, DataCore Software.

Citrix StorageLink is a component of the new Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V products - enabling simpler, integrated deployment of virtualization and storage solutions.

"Most virtual environments encompass diverse storage devices with disparate or non-existent management tools," continued Price. "DataCore consolidates the configuration, control and monitoring of these dissimilar disk subsystems under one unified management interface. This reduces complexity and costs by allowing administrators to satisfy the varied capacity, availability and performance needs of XenServer and Hyper-V virtual machines through coordinated and consistent requests, irrespective of the underlying storage hardware."

DataCore makes high availability SANs practical - offering non-stop storage and high performance for Citrix and Microsoft Hyper-V environments

"Many customers are stunned by the high costs and major overhaul generally proposed to put a new shared storage configuration in place," cautions Price. "And there's no getting past the sticker shock after hearing that 90% of their virtualization budget will be chewed up just to roll in a new SAN."
"Instead, DataCore storage virtualization software recasts all of their storage and any extra servers they may have into a fully virtualized, highly available, shared storage pool at a fraction of the cost, without compromising performance, functionality or peace of mind."

TechTarget: Retail Giant Co-op Jersey opts for low-cost DataCore Software SAN

UK Retail giant Co-Op opts for DataCore Software
http://searchstorage.techtarget.co.uk/news/article/0,289142,sid181_gci1357657,00.html

Co-Op Jersey has implemented DataCore Software's SANmelody software-based storage-area network (SAN) as shared storage to support a VMware-based server virtualisation project. The resulting iSCSI SAN -- which replaced existing direct-attached storage (DAS) -- runs on two IBM servers in which all disk writes are replicated instantly across the wide-area network to provide total redundancy.

"Downtime for maintenance and provisioning new servers isn't acceptable," said Don Le Clercq, IT manager at Co-Op Jersey. "To enable this, we have used a combination of two IBM servers along with DataCore's SANmelody to provide a synchronously mirrored high-availability architecture."

DataCore ships 64-bit SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage software solutions

Computer Technology Review Article
http://www.wwpi.com/storage/storage/7028-datacore-ships-64-bit-sanmelody-30-sansymphony-70-storage-solutions

For presentation on latest capabilities, please see: DataCore New Release Presentation

The new product highlights include x64 versions, a new "Transporter" feature allowing for conversion between the different flavors of physical and virtual servers, a pioneering, waste-free space reclamation capability for thin provisioning, and ground-breaking support for "mega caches" that deliver lightning-fast (electronic memory speed), storage performance.

"The x64 versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony materially improve performance, and utilization for virtual infrastructure shared storage especially through their ability to create very large memory-based caches," said Jack Fegreus, CEO, openBench Labs, a Southborough, Massachusetts-based consultancy and product testing firm. "More importantly innovations such as the new Transporter continue to make DataCore a provider of simplifying and consolidating virtual infrastructure management, which is the most critical area for IT cost savings. DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach is the wave of the future for virtual infrastructure as integration increases between SANs and servers."

"DataCore is one of a few vendors that is answering user demand to do more with less. With solutions like this you can not only drive down capital (capital expenditure) costs, while improving reliability you can also improve administrator and operational (operating expenditure) efficiency by centralizing storage operations to a single platform," states George Crump, founder and senior analyst, Storage Switzerland.

DataCore solutions enable customers to enhance, optimize and consolidate their storage infrastructure and to get more productivity out of their existing systems. DataCore consolidates and optimizes storage resources by 60 percent, while accelerating performance. For lightning-fast performance, DataCore enables memory speed caching to accelerate read/write access, so more work can be accomplished in the same given time.

DataCore Ships 64-bit SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0; Advances in Performance, Migration, Thin Provisioning, and High-availability Improve Storage

DataCore Ships 64-bit SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0; Advances in Performance, Migration, Thin Provisioning, and High-availability Improve Storage for Virtual Servers
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=10691

For more details on the newest versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony, access the following presentation: www.datacore.com/software2009

'Mega Cache' for SAN performance, Simple & Fast 'Transporter' Option, 'Waste-free Reclamation' of Storage Space, and Non-Stop High-availability are now shipping

DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced the general availability of the newest versions of its flagship SANmelody(tm) and SANsymphony(tm) storage virtualization solutions. SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 deliver SAN-wide performance boosts, radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for virtual server and virtual infrastructure users. Product highlights include x64 versions, a new "Transporter" feature allowing for conversion between the different flavors of physical and virtual servers, a pioneering, waste-free space reclamation capability for thin provisioning, and ground-breaking support for "mega caches" that deliver lightning-fast (electronic memory speed), storage performance.

DataCore: Non-stop, Lightning Fast, Waste-Free Storage Solutions

"The x64 versions of SANmelody and SANsymphony materially improve performance, and utilization for virtual infrastructure shared storage especially through their ability to create very large memory-based caches," said Jack Fegreus, CEO, openBench Labs, a Southborough, Mass.-based consultancy and product testing firm. "More importantly innovations such as the new Transporter continue to make DataCore a leader in simplifying and consolidating virtual infrastructure management, which is the most critical area for IT cost savings. DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach is the wave of the future for virtual infrastructure as integration increases between SANs and servers."

Save More. Do More.

"DataCore is one of a few vendors that is answering user demand to do more with less. With solutions like this you can not only drive down capital [CapEX] costs while improving reliability you can also improve administrator and operational [OpEX] efficiency by centralizing storage operations to a single platform," states George Crump, founder and senior analyst, Storage Switzerland.

DataCore solutions offer incredible value since they enable customers to enhance, optimize and consolidate their storage infrastructure and to get more productivity out of their existing systems. DataCore consolidates and optimizes storage resources by 60%, while greatly accelerating performance. For lightning-fast performance, DataCore enables memory speed caching to accelerate read/write access so more work can be accomplished in the same given time.
Learn more about ROI and cost savings with DataCore at: www.datacore.com/costsavings .

New features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 include:

* Lightning-fast, 64-bit "Mega Caches" Boost SAN-wide Performance

Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are native 64-bit controller software with support for mega cache capacities, which is ideal for Database, Exchange and other I/O demanding applications "In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king," commented James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software. "DataCore's solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric." The entire working set of a large number of virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide cache for unprecedented performance. Behind the cache, VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and other virtual server customers can grow their storage pools from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.

* Non-stop, Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage Virtual Infrastructure

Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications. According to George Crump, "The result is that you can confidently take half of your storage infrastructure out-of-service for routine maintenance any time of day without suffering downtime. And of course, you can sustain a major storage hardware failure without disturbing users" (Excerpted from George Crump's article "Are you serious about high availability?"). Link to full article: www.datacore.com/downloads/SeriousHA.pdf .

* Waste-free, Efficient Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage

Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks and storage (independent of vendor brand name) rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. In the new releases, previously allocated or thinly provisioned space can be reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems no longer need it.

* Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers

Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for either virtual or physical x86 and x64 platforms as universal storage controllers.

* New Hypervisor Migration Support and Tighter Integration to VMware Virtual Center

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. A plug-in for VMware's Virtual Infrastructure Client is a no-charge option that allows administrators to non-disruptively provision, share, clone, replicate and expand virtual disks among physical servers and VMs.

SANmelody and SANsymphony Make Non-stop High Availability PracticalDataCore does high-availability better - making business continuity and disaster recovery solutions practical.

* Simple, fail-safe SAN data protection
* Unique, automatic failover and failback
* Priced right for Small and Mid-size Business
* Full-featured, HA SAN software (Thin provisioning, Snapshots, Synchronous and Asynchronous Replication)
* No-penalty upgradeability and a "future proofed" growth path

For more information, please go to www.datacore.com/SANpackages .

DataCore Announces Updated Partner Program at Microsoft Management Summit 2009: Targets Virtualization and Microsoft Hyper-V Partners

DataCore Encourages Resellers to "Knock Down Storage-related Barriers to Virtualization" with New Partner Benefits
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=10690

DataCore Software is using the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2009 to announce updates to its SANvantage(tm) Partner Program. The updated Partner Program includes new lead registration incentives, as well as a new "open-door" model that helps encourage more resellers to sell DataCore solutions. DataCore is also using the occasion to demonstrate how new, ground-breaking features in the newest releases of SANmelody(tm) and SANsymphony(tm) benefit Microsoft users and therefore greatly increase opportunities for Microsoft resellers. The bottom-line: new partner incentives as well as new enhancements to DataCore's industry-leading storage virtualization technology solutions will enable virtualization and storage partners to fast-track sales of DataCore's business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) software solutions.

Why Solution Providers and Resellers Should Partner with DataCore

DataCore is committed to the reseller community and working with solution providers to stimulate, accelerate and grow their virtualization business. DataCore's updated Partner Program and incentives serve as a stimulus program for partners - enabling them to accelerate their virtualization business.

* First, with its "open door" model, DataCore has made it far simpler for first-time solution providers to become a DataCore reseller.
* Second, as part of its updated Partner Program, DataCore has increased and simplified lead registration incentives. The lead registration incentives now apply to all software product sales - new customers, upgrades and follow-on sales.
* Third, DataCore has established "SAN starter" promotions for its industry-leading BC and DR packages that are designed for resellers to kick-start business and grow with DataCore's "value protection, upgrade path" model.

To learn more about the DataCore SANvantage Partner Program and find out how you can 'Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualization' please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore .

Accelerate Your Sales and Empower Users to "Do More and Save More"
DataCore yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from your storage assets, making it an essential element of Microsoft Hyper-V configurations. DataCore's storage virtualization software solutions provide unmatched return on investment and help clients "Do More and Save More." Learn more at: www.datacore.com/costsavings .

DataCore's new solutions provide unmatched performance; particularly for those solution providers supplying Microsoft Hyper-V, Exchange and SQL based solutions. The newest, x64 versions of DataCore's flagship SANmelody(tm) and SANsymphony(tm) storage virtualization solutions include advances in performance, migration, thin provisioning, and high-availability that improve storage. Among the new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 that will certainly serve to benefit the demanding needs of Microsoft users are large 'mega cache' support to accelerate SAN performance, non-stop high-availability, universal storage controllers that are Windows Server 2008-based, a simple and fast 'Transporter' option, and 'waste-free reclamation' of storage space.For more details on these newest versions of DataCore's high-performance storage solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/software2009 .

Get on Board with a DataCore Distributor - Today!
VARs and system integrators that want to learn more about the new benefits of DataCore's Partner Program should contact any of DataCore's ANZ distributors:

In Australia: Call itX at Phone 1300 36 25 25 or visit www.itx.com.au/contact

In New Zealand: Call Datastor Phone + 649 415 6220 www.datastor.co.nz/ or Email: sales@datastor.co.nz

See DataCore at Microsoft Management Summit 2009
MMS 2009 is the premier event of the year for IT Professionals seeking deep technical information and training on the latest IT Management solutions from Microsoft, Partners and Industry Experts. Microsoft Management Summit 2009 runs April 27 - May 1, 2009 at the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. DataCore Software is an Exhibiting Sponsor and may be found at Booth 617. For more, visit http://mms-2009.com/.

Datastor Forum in New Zealand

Virtualization is hot in New Zealand too!

And like just about everywhere else in the world, storage virtualization seems to be at the forefront of everyone's mind. DataCore will be joining our distributor there for their annual Forum, and invite everyone over to our booth for a chat about storage virtualization and how it could fit into your business.

For more information, Email DataCore at: ANZinfo@datacore.com
Or contact Datastor in New Zealand at:
Phone: +649 415 6220
Email: sales@datastor.co.nz
http://www.datastor.co.nz/

DataCore Software Empowers Partners to Knock Down Storage-related Barriers to Virtualisation

Resellers Register to Learn How to Remove the Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualisation and Empower Customers to "Do More and Save More"

DataCore offers new partner benefits and encourages solution providers to visit www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore and attend a webinar so that they can learn how to "knock down storage-related barriers to virtualisation"

Accelerate Your Sales; Get on Board with a DataCore Distributor:

DataCore is committed to the "Power of Partnering" and working with solution providers to stimulate, accelerate and grow their virtualisation business. For more information on DataCore solutions in ANZ, please contact:

In Australia: Call itX at Phone 1300 36 25 25 or visit www.itx.com.au/contact

In New Zealand: Call Datastor Phone + 649 415 6220 www.datastor.co.nz/ or Email: sales@datastor.co.nz

How to Capitalise on the Current Economical Climate: Why Partner with DataCore?

DataCore has established "SAN starter" promotions for its industry-leading BC and DR packages that are designed for resellers to kick-start business and grow with DataCore's "value protection, upgrade path" model.

In addition, DataCore's storage virtualisation software solutions provide unmatched return on investment and help clients "Do More and Save More."

Learn more at: www.datacore.com/costsavings

Partner Spotlight: A Radically Simple, High Availability Storage Virtualisation Solution

Designed for Virtualised IT Environments:"DataCore has helped us to get our foot in the door with a lot of customers," said Lak Gill of Interware Systems, a VMware and DataCore Gold partner. "With a DataCore foundation, we can easily upgrade these customers later on - enabling their infrastructures to grow as their companies grow." The flexibility to grow with DataCore was a key consideration in the decision of The State Group to select a combined DataCore and VMware solution implemented by Interware Systems.

SANs are essential for virtual server environments. However, the high costs of most SANs put them beyond the reach of most customers. In particular, true-high availability between physically separate locations, even when located in the same building, can be prohibitively expensive. "DataCore allows us to put together solutions for our clients that do the job right within their budgets," explained Tim Rettig, President, LAN Solutions, a DataCore reseller partner. "What is more, we feel strongly that our clients are getting robust, enterprise-level SANs at SME prices."Continued Rettig, "With DataCore, the client can pick among hardware offerings from their favourite hardware vendors, and even mix and match them," Rettig said. "When their requirements approach their systems' limitations, we can non-disruptively upgrade them to faster, newer technology, possibly from a different supplier who then offers a better price/performance alternative. Because it offers an adaptable enterprise solution to our clients - in terms of capabilities, performance and reliability, all for a reasonable price, we feel that DataCore helps our firm to build lasting relationships with our clients."

Prospective Partners Should Attend A "How To" Webinar Titled "Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualisation"

DataCore has made it easy to learn about the benefits of its partner program, please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore . The brief introduction and new monthly webinars are available exclusively for solution providers and IT consultants advising clients on server and desktop virtualization.

Click here to register: www.datacore.com/partner or email: ANZinfo@datacore.com

Thin provisioning and Reclamation

From Informationweek's Storage Blog

What keeps many organizations from seeing significant improvement generally centers on two areas that have plagued some thin provisioning implementations; conversion to thin and reclamation....

The second issue that has plagued thin provisioning is that during use, deleted items do not properly get reclaimed. This is because most file systems do not really delete data when you give the delete command, they just set the data as eligible to over write. If you go through a big house cleaning operation on a volume, that freed up space is not reallocated to the global storage pool that thin provisioning storage systems count on. It stays with the volume.

The result of these two factors is that thin provisioned systems put on a little weight both initially and over time. While some thin provisioning is better than no thin provisioning these challenges lead to the poor results on the survey. Companies like 3PAR, HDS and DataCore have all announced technologies that can address both the conversion to thin issues as well as the ongoing space reclamation issues.

With these technologies companies can intelligently convert to thin to see immediate storage savings and can keep their volumes thin over time. Thin provisioning is more than a check mark feature, it is a serious technology that when all the challenges are properly addressed can save significant storage costs in the enterprise.

See also: Full Use with Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage

Partner with DataCore: "Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualization"

Partners Are Building Their Practices Around DataCore

DataCore makes it easy for partners to build their virtualization and business continuity practices around DataCore™ software solutions. The BIG REASON: because DataCore makes high-availability SANs practical.

According to Tim Rettig, President of LAN Solutions, "A real differentiator for DataCore is their elegant approach to dual-node redundancy, coupled with auto-failover and auto-failback, as well as physical separation of disk arrays to eliminate storage-related disruptions." He also admits that a big advantage of DataCore is that it is an open platform, which enables his team to tailor the hardware components to meet each customer's manufacturer preferences.

For information on the benefits of becoming a DataCore partner and how DataCore can help you "Knock Down Storage-Related Sales Barriers to Virtualization", please visit: www.datacore.com/stepuptodatacore/

Solution Providers should contact the Value-add Distributors in ANZ providing DataCore solutions:

In Australia itX: Click for itX Contact Info

In New Zealand Datastor: sales@datastor.co.nz

DataCore SANmelody Storage Virtualization Software Wins 2009 Network Computing Award for 'Software Product of the Year'

DataCore SANmelody Storage Virtualization Software Wins 2009 Network Computing Award for 'Software Product of the Year'

UK's leading networking awards recognize SANmelody's dramatic impact on software storage management, provisioning and utilization for network managers.

DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced that it has scooped the Software Product of the Year Award at Network Computing Magazine's prestigious 2009 Annual Awards dinner held last week at the Tower Hotel in London, beating stiff category competition from finalists EMC, CA and Attempo, among others.

Keith Joseph, Regional Manager, Northern Europe, DataCore Software, commented, "It's great to receive this award as it demonstrates that network managers are moving away from the traditional hardware-based solutions that disk manufacturers advocate in favor of a software storage solution that operates on anything and reutilizes the storage and disk already in the network to provide greater utilization, manageability, productivity, uptime and performance."

The Awards, voted on by thousands of Network Computing Magazine's readership, signifies the readers' appreciation of SANmelody and how it easily and cost-effectively converts physical Intel/AMD servers -- as well as virtual machines (VMs) -- into fully capable, virtual storage servers that are able to optimize, protect and manage storage over existing networks to fulfill the needs of application servers.

Other features that enticed winners' votes include SANmelody's thin provisioning for disk space capacity automation, point-in-time snapshots for fast disk-based backups, and powerful data protection services that provide auto failover across redundant disk servers and long distance, asynchronous replication for disaster recovery over IP WANs.

The Network Computing Awards were established in 2004 to recognize best-in-breed, easy-to-use solutions that make the working lives of network managers easier and more effective.

Do more, save more - try DataCore for your storage today!

For more information on the full-line of Feature-Packed Virtual Storage Solutions, please visit: www.datacore.com/SANpackages.

DataCore's 'Transporter' Hypervisor Migration Option

DataCentre Times - DataCore demonstrates new SAN solutions
Tony Lock, Programme Director and Analyst from Freeform Dynamics states:
...the most interesting announcement concerns DataCore's "Transporter" which supplies Hypervisor Migration capabilities and better Integration to VMware Virtual Center." These functions could prove to be very useful as organisations begin to look at using multiple hypervisors in their environments and try to manage them as a pool rather than as a number of isolated islands of virtualisation. However DataCore needs to be very active to educate interested parties in how such functionality, and indeed the capabilities of its entire portfolio, can be exploited."

To learn more about DataCore migration capabilities, please visit: http://www.datacore.com/solutions/migration.asp

The Storage Management Gap

http://entmag.com/reports/article.asp?EditorialsID=142
In the world of storage solutions, management remains a huge gap in the administration of storage subsystems. It's a challenge to manage storage at any level, because data center hardware growth is typically heterogeneous.

Although many strategies exist to help manage the terabytes, the proprietary solutions available today only rarely interoperate. "To date," says Jon Toigo, an expert on storage management, "the industry has shown only limited interest in making products work together in any sort of coherent management scheme. Until some of the incompatibilities in array controllers and fabric switches are fixed, the success of a storage virtualization strategy in delivering these values may be limited. As with most technologies, try it before you buy it."

Solutions for these incompatible systems range from simple backup, to archives and replication, to single-instancing. But one of the tools that has seen growth is storage virtualization. In fact, more and more products such as SANmelody from DataCore Software Corp. ...

Are you serious about high availability?

Check out the new white paper by noted storage expert George Crump of Storage Switzerland:
Are you serious about high availability?

How can we entertain such mirrored HA configurations when budgets are tight?

A possible solution is found in storage virtualization. DataCore Software, as an example, offers a straightforward and affordable software solution for organizations of all sizes. It runs on standard x86 servers, or on a virtual machine in an existing server virtualized by one of the popular hypervisor products from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Parallels and Virtual Iron.
Solutions like these enable non-stop data access using commodity-priced storage devices from vendors of your choosing. Each side of the mirror can use different types of storage; they need not be from the same supplier. In fact, some of the solutions can reconfigure the equipment that you already have to eliminate storage downtime.

What are the performance implications when mirrors are stretched?
DataCore as an example employs advanced caching techniques that enable data to be written simultaneously to a perfectly mirrored pair at higher speeds than you would experience with the standalone array. When one side of the pair has to be taken down or suffers an unexpected outage, all the storage I/O is sustained from the second mirror without manual intervention. Nothing needs to be scripted or reconfigured. Read more...

Reseller Partners? Find out about DataCore and the new Free Citrix XenServer

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?

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)

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.

ROI and Cost Savings from Virtual Storage

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 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.

http://www.datacore.com/solutions/thin_provisioning.asp

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...

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.

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.

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.

SearchStorage report: DataCore announces powerful new releases

DataCore has been previewing the next major release of its SANmelody and SANsymphony storage virtualization software at VMworld Europe 2009 this week. SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 will ship next month with 64-bit software architectures and new features for virtual server users.

SearchStorage has done a good write up hitting some of the highlights and also included comments from Jack Fegreus, CEO at Southborough, Mass.-based openBench Labs.

He is in agreement with most of the other analysts who tout storage virtualization as the area of focus in 2009 as he says that DataCore's combining these features into a server-centric approach looks like the wave of the future for networked storage as integration increases between SANs and servers.

Product highlights include:

• x64 versions which support up to 1TB cache
• Transporter feature allowing for offline conversion of any to any physical or flavors of virtual servers.
• Space reclamation capability for DataCore's Thin Provisioning feature
  

Read the entire article here.