Computer Technology Review: Homecare Homebase deploys DataCore storage virtualization solutions

Homecare Homebase [HCHB] deploys DataCore storage virtualization solutions
...HCHB empowers the homecare and hospice industry to be more effective in providing healthcare to patients. Currently 4,375 office workers and over 11,000 field agents rely on applications running on HCHB’s IT systems infrastructure. Everything HCHB customers do is mobile and all of the applications HCHB offers these agents in the homecare industry are both mobile and real-time.

“The combination of the VMware platform along with the DataCore SAN has really given us a lot of flexibility to more rapidly deploy consistent images of systems – especially in the Citrix farm,” explained Chris Kane, director of technical operations, Homecare Homebase. “In addition, the VMware-DataCore combination has given us much improved VMotion capability – where the SAN enables us to do maintenance on the host in the middle of the day, if we have to.”

...“We quickly outgrew the storage we had – both in terms of the amount of space presented by those units as well as the performance of those units,” noted Kane.
HCHB has a big Microsoft SQL Server shop and tended to back-up its customer information using these snap units at each site to replicate for disaster recovery purposes. According to Kane, the units were just not able to keep up with the back-up planning and also the synchronization of the data. “The storage we had before DataCore became troublesome,” commented Kane. “We were in desperate need, not only of space, but also of reliable storage.”

...On its own, HCHB looked at EqualLogic from Dell, LeftHand from HP, as well as EMC and NetApp.
Noted Kane, “The DataCore SAN solution suits our IT administrative style better than the other solutions we saw. The more we looked at traditional SAN solutions – encompassing hardware, software and professional services – for us, these weren’t the type of solutions that we have typically dealt with. We have a lot of skilled technology people in house and we like to be able to get our hands on every piece of technology we bring in. The fact that DataCore is Windows-based gives us a little more control – particularly being able to manage the hardware ourselves. Moreover, DataCore gave us a full, high availability solution. Not to mention that DataCore is very competitive price-wise – so all of this made DataCore the best choice for us.”

...Virtualizing the Citrix environment with VMware and DataCore running in tandem has provided a real, tangible benefit in terms of system maintenance and administration. Before – with the physical, Citrix environment, the IT team at HCHB was very limited in terms of what they could do with those systems during the working day.
“Just the patch management aspect of keeping up with all the physical boxes has been greatly improved in the virtual environment because we can deploy patch templates versus having to constantly update from Microsoft or other vendors,” added Kane.
With the SAN in place, the virtual environment at HCHB has delivered real benefits to customers and system administrators alike. These benefits are a direct result of the improvements made possible through these new virtualization capabilities. For instance, HCHB as a whole is able to roll out new services more rapidly and consistently. The current databases and applications that HCHB uses internally to run its business, such as file servers (documentation that support internal needs) or Microsoft Office Sharepoint (that supports customers), have benefited, either directly or indirectly, from the VMware virtual infrastructure and the DataCore storage virtualization SAN.

...“It has been very rapid growth for us recently,” summarized Kane. “And I am very, very happy with the performance we are getting both out of VMware and the DataCore SAN at this point. The SAN has made a world of difference to us. There were many choices for a SAN – from a variety of SAN vendors. For us, DataCore was the right fit. DataCore gives us the ability to select and maintain the hardware of our own choice. It gives us the ability to have a fully redundant, highly available SAN – not just at the controller-level, but at the storage-level itself. That, combined with the price point DataCore’s portable SAN software offers – even when having to purchase hardware and licensing – is still much more effective than anything else we found on the market.”

New Capabilities for DataCore SANmelody

New Capabilities for DataCore SANmelody
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/software/datacore-sanmelody-30
Aimed at SMBs eager to upgrade their disk subsystems and storage network infrastructure

DataCore Video - 6 years old - content applies

DataCore Video - 6 years old - content applies
Take a look at the following video from DataCore Software created over 6 years ago, the content in this clip is more relevant today that ever. It demonstrates how far ahead DataCore Software was at that time and shows that their core ...DataCore SANmelody tunes - http://sanmelody.blogspot.com/

DataCore Piles on Resources for VARs

DataCore Piles on Resources for VARs
http://www.channelprosmb.com/article/14641/DataCore-Piles-on-Resources-for-VARs/;jsessionid=BF7AD2B261245AC04F57A62E1A43EC16
In the last several months, storage virtualization and recovery innovator DataCore Software has initiated new services and support as well as new products to help SMBs optimize storage solutions.

Powerful new capabilities in latest virtualization release from DataCore Software.

http://www.it-director.com/sme/news_release.php?rel=13724

...The new features are aimed at small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that are eager to upgrade their disk subsystems and storage network infrastructure, but fear the broad business disruptions that such changes typically bring.
The new features, now shipping, in SANmelody 3.0 enable:

Non-disruptive Substitution - Replace storage arrays in the background.
Copies the contents of a designated storage array (or individual drive) to the unit that will replace it while applications continue to use the logical volumes. The new array (or drive) transparently takes over once it matches the contents of the original drives so that the older drives can be taken offline without impacting users.

Redundant Pathing - Configure network paths between storage virtualization nodes.
These paths may be diversely routed to ensure that if one primary network connection is broken or taken offline, synchronous mirroring between nodes will continue uninterrupted over the alternate connection.

Prioritized Recovery - Prioritize resynchronization of mirrored disks.
Ensures that the most critical, volumes are resynchronized first when a node or its storage is taken off-line during an upgrade or unplanned outage.

Group Snapshot and Clone Command - Synchronize online snapshots across inter-dependent volumes.
Coordinates multiple snapshots to occur at the same time across a group of related volumes. This ensures point-time synchronization of file systems and application data that reside on different disks. It ensures that clones created on new equipment are an exact replica of their predecessor.

Content Migration - Relocate Active Drives into Virtual Storage Pool.
Enables existing drives formatted with NTFS, Unix, Linux and other file systems to be incorporated into the SANmelody storage pool. These physical drives are first un-mounted from the application servers where they were once active, and reconnected behind a SANmelody node. The SANmelody node will then act as an intermediary between the application server and these drives. To take full advantage of SANmelody advanced virtualisation features, their contents may be copied to virtual disks using snapshots or synchronous mirroring. The relocated drives can then be wiped clean and included in the physical storage pool as additional capacity, or they may be decommissioned.

FCoE Connectivity - Access Fibre Channel storage pool via the LAN switching infrastructure.
Application servers and other storage consumers can access SANmelody nodes equipped with Fibre Channel SAN connections using their Ethernet Network Interface Cards (NICs). This capability takes advantage of the new Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol and FCoE-compliant switches.

New Features: SANmelody 3.0 PSP 2 Released

New Features: SANmelody 3.0 PSP 2 Released

Good Screenshots and Overview Highlights: http://sanmelody.blogspot.com/2009/10/sanmelody-30-psp-2-released.html

VMware, Hyper-V virtualization leave others in the dust

Interesting post:
The data derives from TechTarget's "Virtualization Decisions 2009 Purchasing Intentions Survey" of 666 IT professionals that have deployed or are evaluating virtualization. Data was collected between June and September 2009.

To no one's surprise, survey respondents reported using VMware Inc. over other virtualization software by a wide margin: 72.4% identified some VMware edition as their primary virtualization platform (ESX 2.x to 4.x or VMware Server), compared with 14.8% that cited a Microsoft offering (Hyper-V or Virtual Server).Blowing away the competition But despite a fair amount of buzz, Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Virtual Iron Software Inc. and open source Xen variants barely registered. Each came in at about 1% market share. OS-level and partitioning-based virtualization platforms (HP VSE, IBM mainframe partitions, Solaris Containers, and Parallels Virtuozzo) fared even worse, failing to garner a mention by even 1% of respondents.VMware is the 800-pound gorilla, and everyone wants to vote for the winner...
Read more: http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid94_gci1369150,00.html#

Virtualization and “the new availability” -John Abbot -The 451 Report

Interesting post:
http://datacenterjournal.com/content/view/3254/40/
Long established techniques addressing application resilience, data availability and disaster recovery are being challenged by server virtualization technologies from companies such as VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. Where do we go from here? ...

Who’s selling what? So who are the market players? The virtualization infrastructure vendors – VMware, Microsoft and Citrix Systems in particular – continue to build functionality to increase availability into their core products, threatening in some cases to squeeze out competition from third-party vendors. A core part of what they offer is the live migration of virtual machines, which can move workloads to a different server while they are running. This has the potential to eliminate the need for planned downtime altogether.

But there is still plenty of room for other vendors to operate. They range from storage array vendors with their own hardware-specific tools (such as EMC, Hewlett-Packard and NetApp) to software-based replication vendors (such as Double-Take Software and NeverFail).
The storage vendors typically provide the best performance, but require an investment in expensive networked storage resources. Modular, iSCSI-based storage systems such as HP's LeftHand and Dell's EqualLogic are capitalizing on the new demand for availability, attracting customers that have previously been frightened away from shared storage by the complexities and expense of classic fiber channel-based storage networks. A related approach is that of the storage virtualizers, such as DataCore Software...

New SANmelody 3.0 Product Review in Network Computing

New Product Review of SANmelody 3.0 in Network Computing.

FCoE Is Ready, Is It Time to Care?

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/ipstorage/features/article.php/3841266
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has been a much-hyped technology, but adoption rates haven't yet lived up to the propaganda.According to Seamus Crehan, an analyst at Dell'Oro Group, only about 10,000 FCoE ports shipped in 2008. While that number is predicted to reach 1 million in 2011, it will still be outgunned by Fibre Channel by a factor of 10 to one. That said, FCoE isn't a technology to ignore...

However, Alexander Nier, product manager for DataCore Software, cautions that an understanding of the underlying technology is a must or implementation headaches will crop up."Don't confuse FCoE with a freshly paved road where everything goes better just because it's new," said Nier. "FCoE is a complementary technology rather than a replacement for existing products. The main prep work is to understand if somebody may or may not benefit from using FCoE."

To his mind, if you are a happy camper today, there is probably no need to switch gear. As FCoE is still in the early stages of adoption, he wouldn't encourage anyone to switch if the technology they have in place is satisfactory. FCoE's primary intention, after all, is to consolidate back-end cabling by using the same physical media (Ethernet cable) for multiple transportation streams in parallel."If the back-end cabling of your server racks looks like a mess, and each server has a bunch of fiber optic and network cables connected to it, you're probably a good candidate," said Nier.

TechWorld: SANmelody Product Review

TechWorld: SANmelody Product Review
http://review.techworld.com/san/3203642/promise-vtrak-e610f-and-datacore-sanmelody-30-san-review/?view=overview

TechWorld: SANs tuned for virtualisation
http://webmail.datacore.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://review.techworld.com/storage/3203647/sans-tuned-for-virtualisation/?view=conclusion

ComputerWorld Test Center: SANs tuned for virtualization pack nice surprises

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138935/Test_Center_SANs_tuned_for_virtualization_pack_nice_surprises?taxonomyId=0&pageNumber=1
Virtualization is moving further into the datacenter all the time, with even critical large-scale applications like Exchange and databases now being virtualized. Whether you're using virtualization to make large applications more manageable or to consolidate many small applications, a server with lots of RAM, lots of processor cores, and lots of I/O is a good thing.

And so is a SAN packed with features that ease the management of storage for virtual machines.From a storage viewpoint, each virtual machine uses a file to simulate a physical hard disk. This file, a VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk Format) under VMware or VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) under Microsoft, can be located on a server's internal drive or on a SAN. There are several advantages to putting the file on a SAN: The file can be duplicated using the storage's snapshot function, the file can be moved easily from one hardware server to another for scalability or fault tolerance, and the storage itself can be more easily made fault tolerant.

I tested five midrange SAN systems that deliver the goods for virtual environments: the Compellent Storage Center 4.0, the Dell EqualLogic PS4000, the HP StorageWorks 2000sa G2 Modular Smart Array, the Pillar Axiom 600 from Pillar Data Systems, and a build-it-yourself pairing of the Promise vTrak E610f hardware and DataCore's SANmelody 3.0 storage software...

The prices (as tested) of these systems range widely, from less than $10,000 for the Promise Technologies and DataCore combination to $130,000 for the Pillar Data system. All the manufacturers have models ranging from inexpensive starters to very high-performance datacenter-ready systems. As you can tell from the range in price, the models I tested don't necessarily compete with each other.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138935/Test_Center_SANs_tuned_for_virtualization_pack_nice_surprises?taxonomyId=0&pageNumber=6

Storage virtualization in Universities and Education around the world

DataCore Software announced new SAN software packages and promotions for academic institutes that deliver price savings of up to 50% and highlighted a host of educational institutions around the world that have already deployed storage virtualisation using its SANmelody and SANsymphony solutions.

http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/business/datacore-ww-customers-in-education

“Most educational enterprises want enterprise-class storage networking functionality but have to settle for a lot less, since they do not have the budgets to implement these solutions due to the high costs and complexity that is involved – especially for fault-tolerant, auto recovery storage systems needed to protect and support virtual server environments,” stated George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software.

VMware vSphere "HCL" listings for DataCore SANmelody / SANsymphony

Both SANmelody and SANsymphony have been "VMware ready Certified" for some time now with detailed support information available. Now, both SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are listed on the VMware "HCL" for both iSCSI and Fibre Channel on VMware ESX 4.0. Simply search the HCL for "DataCore" under the SAN/Storage section to view results. http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php .

Is that a DataCore T-shirt that Brian Madden is wearing? DataCore Offers StorageLink Adapter for XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V

DataCore Offers StorageLink Adapter for XenServer and Hyper-V

www.brianmadden.com/blogs/the_official_citrix_blog/archive/2009/08/03/datacore-offers-storagelink-adapter-for-xenserver-and-hyper-v.aspx

DataCore Software Leverages ROBOs to Cut Business Continuity Costs for VMware vSphere Customers

http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/08/31/datacore-software-leverages-robos-to-cut-business-continuity-costs-for-vmware-vsphere-customers.aspx
DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, used VMworld 2009 to introduce VMware customers to its new Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) solution. The company has developed a distributed and cost-effective way to have IT assets at remote office and branch offices (ROBOs) take over for the main datacenter when the central machines are unable to meet processing obligations. Whether that is during planned facility outage or an unexpected disaster makes no difference.

“We recognize that economic pressures preclude all but the most affluent organizations from dedicating another site to back up their main data center. So we've chosen to tap the horsepower available at the ROBOs during emergencies,” explains Augie Gonzalez, product marketing director at DataCore. “Given a choice, customers will opt to run their business on systems in a remote office or branch office machine versus not doing business at all.”

For VMware vSphere™ customers, remote servers whose primary duty is branch office computing, are given a second “dormant” personality to be awakened as needed. When the main site can’t get the job done, each branch office takes on a piece of the back-up role in line with their processing capacity.

DataCore Software at VMworld 2009

DataCore at Vmworld 2009, for additional information, please visit:http://www.datacore.com/vmworld2009/

DataCore Software Announces Support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

DataCore Software Announces Support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced support for native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for its SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ storage virtualization solutions. The company has added the Emulex and Brocade FCoE converged network adapters (CNAs) and Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches to its FCoE-qualified support list. Additional FCoE CNAs will be announced over the next year. FCoE software drivers are currently available for Microsoft® Windows® and VMware® ESX / vSphere®.

“With the addition of FCoE to our SAN connectivity options, DataCore continues to demonstrate the ease with which our storage virtualization software adapts to new technology and extends the life of existing investments,” stated Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software. “Our customers can immediately take advantage of FCoE in their highly scalable, non-stop storage pools without having to replace or modify their existing back-end storage, which may well include DAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces.

Serious About High Availability?; Virtual Storage Infrastructure – Can Software Take Center Stage?

Virtual Storage Infrastructure – Can Software Take Center Stage?
We’ve been conditioned to think of infrastructure as hardware. Is it time to rethink?...

Serious About High Availability?
Solutions like DataCore 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…

Virtualise storage through SANs, says IDC

Industry Analyst Articles/Reports on DataCore
http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_industry_analysts_reports.asp

Virtualise storage through SANs, says IDC
Analyst recommends firms create SANs with storage virtualisation software rather than shelling out for new equipment
http://www.techcentral.ie/article.aspx?id=13895

The best way to virtualise your storage is through a storage area network (SAN), according to IDC.

In a new report entitled "Removing storage-related barriers to server and desktop virtualisation," the analyst firm claimed there is no need for high-end expensive systems to reap the benefits of virtualisation - just create a SAN with storage virtualisation software.
Carla Arend, analyst for European storage software and services at IDC, said in the report: "This hardware-independent approach complements server and desktop virtualisation without compromising availability, speed, or project schedules."

"Properly implemented, value-added functions like replication and snapshots can be used in a heterogeneous storage environment across storage model and manufacturer boundaries. Just as importantly, it can significantly lower capital and operational expenditure for physical and virtual environments alike."

The report said moving to a virtual environment will simplify management, improve disaster recovery and cut costs, but warned there were pitfalls too. These included initial investment and overlooking needs like shared storage.

Most importantly, IDC said any virtualisation software your firm purchases should not be tied to any one set of hardware. As well, make sure the storage virtualisation software you pick properly addresses your physical servers.

"Otherwise, you may end up fragmenting the IT environment that you are eager to consolidate," said Arend.

Create SAN with storage virtualisation software: IDC
http://www.ciol.com/Technology/Networking/News-Reports/Create-SAN-with-storage-virtualisation-s/w-IDC/21809123918/0/

Virtual Storage Infrastructure - Can Software Take Center Stage?

http://www.datacore.com/downloads/SoftwareCentricStorageInfrastructure-Handout.pdf

...Comprehensive storage virtualization software offerings like those from DataCore Software, a pioneer in the storage virtualization space, offer a superset of the advanced feature/functionality found on high-end storage systems, yet can be utilized across disparate disk resources and centrally managed. The same rich set of functions cover direct-attached and SAN-connected storage arrays, regardless of model or manufacturer. This software typically runs on standard x86/x64 servers and is fully portable between hardware generations so that customers are not faced with the usual obsolescence of proprietary storage appliances.

This capability provides data center managers with a number of distinct advantages.

Firstly, whenever a storage asset needs to be retired or upgraded, the migration process is non-disruptive and greatly simplified. The new array is presented to the storage virtualization engine and the data that was contained on the old array is transparently moved to the new array. No scheduled downtime is necessary.

Secondly, since command and control of the storage environment is in the hands of the overarching storage virtualization software, the backend storage can be purchased “bare bones”, without all the costly embedded firmware licenses. This has the effect of commoditizing storage and empowering the IT buyer to negotiate very aggressive discounts from multiple storage vendors.

Another interesting advantage of software-based storage virtualization kicks in when the software leverages “Moore’s Law” through the use of increasingly faster CPUs to speed up I/O processing. In effect, the storage virtualization server puts its internal processors and memory to use as high-speed caches for accelerating disk I/Os from anywhere in the virtual storage pool. Furthermore, this extra processing capacity helps offload advanced functions from the application hosts and the disk subsystems to ensure better quality of service across the board. This insulates the business from needing to incur costly proprietary disk controller storage upgrades and helps greatly extend the usable life of all storage assets on the data center floor.

What’s more, certain storage virtualization software can run as a virtual machine (VM) instance, alongside application VMs helping customers to further improve server resource utilization and truly maximize efficiencies throughout the data center...

Is the Sky falling on VMware?; Citrix XenServer a Suprise Hit; DataCore Teams with Citrix

Interesting articles from last week:

Citrix XenServer Virtualization a Surprise Hit with Fortune 500 Companies
http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/08/12/citrix-xenserver-virtualization-a-surprise-hit-with-fortune-500-companies.aspx

Citrix Systems, Inc. announced that more than 10 percent of Global Fortune 500 companies have downloaded and activated its Citrix® XenServer™ virtualization platform for production use in the last four months, with activations among large enterprises spiking significantly after the release of XenServer 5.5 in June. Since making XenServer available for free unlimited production deployment earlier this year, more than 150,000 users have downloaded the product...A big reason for the recent surge among large enterprise organizations has been the release of XenServer 5.5 in June, adding a wide range of new enterprise-class capabilities. The Burton Group, in fact, recently certified Citrix XenServer 5.5 and its Citrix Essentials™ 5.5 management add-on as one of only two hypervisor platforms in the industry to meet 100 percent of the analyst firm’s required features for enterprise production.

Is the sky falling on VMware?
Good overview of the Microsoft and VMware Battle: http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid94_gci1364388,00.html#

..."Microsoft is clearly gunning for the virtualization space, and they have a pretty good track record of making a dent in a space that they want to be in," he said. Another real problem for VMware is that Hyper-V R2's management tools now manage VMware's ESX hypervisor, while VMware's tools won't manage Hyper-V R2. That's big for users who want to use both hypervisors, because only Hyper-V R2 will be able to manage the entire environment, Cappuccio said. "I would hope [VMware is] paying attention," he added. "My fear is that 'good enough' always wins out in the long run, and if it's good enough and pervasive, VMware may lose out."VMware most stands to lose with companies that are not yet using any virtualization and are shopping for the right vendor, Wolf said. Those customers will likely look at VMware, Microsoft and Citrix Systems Inc.'s XenServer to decide on the right choices. "Microsoft and Citrix both, I think, are going to get a reasonable part of the market," said Chris Wolf, Burton Group...

DataCore, Citrix Make Virtualization Easy for XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V
http://www.bsminfo.com/index.php?option=com_content%26task=view%26id=1508%26Itemid=170
The DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance and StorageLink Adapter can be downloaded at: http://www.datacore.com/virtualSANappliance.

Citrix and DataCore team up to help Customers and Cut Storage Costs

DataCore, Citrix Team Up To Cut Storage Costs and help Customers
http://www.tek-tools.com/wordpress/index.php/948/san-management/datacore-citrix-team-up-to-cut-storage-costs
In the same vein as networks like Small Business Web, two IT companies have joined forces in an effort to actually help customers.

DataCore Software and Citrix Systems - both located down there in balmy Florida - are now working together to cut storage costs.Companies that use Citrix's virtual server tools can now try out DataCore's virtual storage software, the DataCore Virtual SAN appliance: http://www.datacore.com/virtualSANappliance/, for free.

Basically, instead of losing stored data in a horrible virtual server crash, the customer can safely store data elsewhere by means of DataCore software. And it's free!

DataCore CEO and president George Teixeira said a big hurdle for Citrix customers was the cost to store that data."A company that wants to go to virtualization might get excited, they might see a cost savings," Teixeira said. "But when they go to buy the storage, they find the cost is actually high."He said storage hardware equipment costs, on average, $100,000.

This is a brilliant business move by Citrix and DataCore. Not that they need it, Ctirix especially.Last month, the company reported that second-quarter revenue was nearly flat, at $393 million, but profit grew 22% to $43 million.

A move like this means Citrix will only get bigger - and DataCore is happily going along on the ride.

DataCore Offers Virtual SAN Appliance plus New Citrix StorageLink Adapter for Microsoft Hyper-V and XenServer

DataCore Offers StorageLink Adapter for XenServer and Hyper-Vposted in XenServer
- Server Virtualization by Simon Crosby
Download the Virtual SAN Appliance now: http://www.datacore.com/virtualSANappliance/
To find out more information about Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V, please visit: http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1855667

....We're pleased to announce availability of the first 3rd party developed adapter for Citrix StorageLink™ adapter, offered by DataCore™. This takes the form of a fully featured tiral SANMelody virtual appliance that is fully integrated in Citrix StorageLink v1.0.5 and above. The free trial license extends for 30 days.The DataCore™ SANMelody virtual appliance (download here: ) allows the user to perform storage management tasks directly out of the Citrix StorageLink user interface. It unifies management of virtual machines and DataCore virtual storage into one single console, whether you're using XenServer or Hyper-V. It offers both FC SAN and iSCSI support. The cool thing about the virtual appliance is that it lets you experience a full blown SAN without having to roll in expensive new SAN disk arrays, since it acts as a network-based appliance that provides rich storage management features for a wide range of storage systems... Simon Crosby Blog:http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/simoncr

Download it now: http://www.datacore.com/virtualSANappliance/
To find out more information about Citrix Essentials, please visit: http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1855667.

Citrix Community BLog:http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/simoncr/2009/08/03/DataCore+Offers+StorageLink+Adapter+for+XenServer+and+Hyper-V

Brian Madden: DataCore Offers StorageLink Adapter for XenServer and Hyper-V
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/the_official_citrix_blog/archive/2009/08/03/datacore-offers-storagelink-adapter-for-xenserver-and-hyper-v.aspx
Citrix StorageLink is a powerful set of technologies that completely automates the storage related functions for virtual infrastructure, including SAN management, and leveraging array or storage-appliance features for pooling, snapshots, and fast clones ...

DataCore Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) Solution Delivers a More Flexible and Powerful Approach to DR for VMware vSphere 4

DataCore Software highlighted recently the power of its new ASR solution for VMware environments. DataCore ASR allows organizations to leverage readily available IT assets between different sites, to minimize or eliminate business disruptions and data loss attributed to planned and unforeseen site outages. ASR builds on DataCore's universal storage virtualization software to move IT operations from a central site to one or more distributed contingency locations - and back again.

For a recorded podcast on DataCore ASR from SearchDisasterRecovery.com featuring commentary from SearchStorage.com's Beth Pariseau and IDC's Rick Villars, click here:http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid190_gci1361899,00.html

"Unlike some other site recovery approaches that are limited to just virtual machines, DataCore ASR enables both physical and virtual servers to be protected across multiple sites," stated George Crump, president, Storage Switzerland. "This advanced approach to DR - one that encompasses distributed disaster recovery, is an important milestone and I am happy to see companies like DataCore reaching it."

Designed for both virtual and physical IT infrastructuresA new addition to DataCore's comprehensive business continuity portfolio - DataCore ASR enables businesses to embrace Distributed Disaster Recovery (D-DR). The solution allows organizations to cost-effectively spread disaster recovery (DR) responsibilities across several smaller sites. Additionally, the solution makes no distinction between physical and virtual servers, unifying their DR operations in a common, automated process.

New Data Sheet on Advanced Site Recovery [ASR] from DataCore

Advanced Site Recovery (ASR): Advanced Site Recovery software enables businesses to embrace Distributed Disaster Recovery (D-DR) that allows organizations to cost-effectively spread disaster recovery (DR) responsibilities across several smaller sites. ASR makes it practical to move IT operations from a central site to one or more distributed contingency locations - and back again. Additionally, the solution makes no distinction between physical and virtual servers, unifying DR operations in a common, automated process.

See Advanced Site Recovery DataSheet

Disaster Recovery News: Rick Villars from IDC and Beth Pariseau of SearchStorage discuss DataCore's Advanced Site Recovery

DataCore Software debuts Advanced Site Recovery for physical and virtual disaster recovery http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid190_gci1361899,00.html
DataCore Software Corp. recently introduced a new product, Advanced Site Recovery (ASR), that allows organizations without a secondary data center devoted to disaster recovery (DR) to fail over physical and virtual servers to multiple remote or branch offices (ROBOs) in a disaster.

Beth Pariseau, senior news writer for SearchStorage.com
Rick Villars, vice president of storage systems and executive strategies at IDC

They will answer questions about Advanced Site Recovery such as:

What are the main features of Advanced Site Recovery, and what do users need to set it up?

This product is meant for organizations without a secondary data center devoted to disaster recovery, so is DataCore going after the SMB market?

Do you think SMBs that may not currently have a DR plan in place need this level of protection?

What are the drawbacks of this setup?

What are the differences between Advanced Site Recovery's functionality and what VMware is working on?

Play the Interview

Storage Virtualization in Local Governments Worldwide Booms. Cities and Towns Around the Globe Optimize Storage with DataCore

http://www.it-director.com/enterprise/public_sector/news_release.php?rel=12421
As governments around the globe feel the economic pinch, many are realizing the benefits of storage virtualisation - risk avoidance, productivity increases, cost containment, investment protection, and more.

DataCore Software announced that the City of Atascadero in California and the Town of South Windsor in Connecticut have become two of the latest cities to embrace the benefits delivered by DataCore's storage virtualisation solutions.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region are also increasingly turning to storage virtualization just as they have embraced server virtualization. Local governments are no exception. Notable cities that are using DataCore as the foundation of a virtual infrastructure span Australia - City of Greater Dandenong, Kingston City Council, Upper Hunter Shire Council; Korea - Paju City, DaeGu City, Damyang Provincial Government, Gangjin Provincial Government, Kwangyang City, Suncheon City, Youngju City; and Taiwan - Taipei City Government, Information Management Center.

The list of local governments continues to expand (see below addtional worldwide listings).

The City of Atascadero investigated other vendors and, according to Systems Administrator Ken Phillips, DataCore gave the IT department the best combination of the features that he needed with a price point that the city could afford. The city is now using DataCore's SANmelody™ storage virtualisation solution to serve as its storage area network (SAN).
"DataCore SANmelody has been 100% reliable," noted Phillips. "The biggest benefit we have seen is the fact that we can add storage without bringing anything down. Now we are not paying for any storage that we are not using. We were also looking for a product that would give us the ability to facilitate DR and thin provisioning. Both of these requirements were met with the DataCore SANmelody product."
See full release on The City of Atascadero: Click here or visit http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_live.asp?date=07/22/2009

Town of South Windsor in Connecticut has also realized tremendous benefits after deploying DataCore's SANmelody storage virtualisation software as its SAN. Prior to DataCore, the Town of South Windsor was grappling with an older, converted Novell network that the IT Department had migrated to Microsoft. In the words of the current network administrator for the town, this was literally riddled with "single points of failure" everywhere. After being sold on VMware to address the IT Department's server-sprawl, it knew a SAN was needed to support the virtual machines.
"However, the hardware SAN approach was just not going to happen," said Scott Roberts, IT director, Town of South Windsor. "Traditional SAN vendors were asking upwards of $250,000 just for the storage piece of the infrastructure puzzle. Our entire budget was $125,000 - for virtual servers, storage, new equipment, everything. The fact that DataCore allowed us to repurpose servers we already had on hand was a tremendous advantage as well."
See full release on Town of South Windsor: Click here or visit http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_live.asp?date=07/08/2009

Other local governments and government entities using DataCore SAN solutions in the US include: Alabama Department of Public Health (AL), Alameda County Medical Center (CA), Brockport Central Schools (NY), California School Employees Assn. (CA), Charter Township of Canton (OH), City & County Of Honolulu (HI), City of Carmel (IN), City of Elk Grove (CA), City of Elk Grove Police Department (CA), City of Hampton (VA), City Of Inverness (FL), City of Marysville (OH), City of Newport News (VA), City of Norfolk (VA), County of Butte (CA), Dinwiddie County Government (VA), Douglas County Circuit Courts (OR), Jefferson County Library Cooperative (AL), Los Angeles County Office of Education (CA), Los Rios Community College District (CA), Meridian Board of Education (CT), Mississippi Department of Health (MS), New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJ), Oolagah-Talala Schools (OK), Orange County Data Center (CA), Oswego County School District (NY), Owasso Public Schools (OK), Peoria Unified School District (AZ), Rankin County (MS), Rocklin Unified School District (CA), Sacramento County District Attorney's Office (CA), San Diego Housing Commission (CA), San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office (CA), Seminole County Sheriff's Office (FL), Stanislaus Union School District (CA), State of South Dakota (SD), The City of Newport Beach Fire Department (CA), Thurston Regional Planning Council (WA), Town of Branford (CT), Town of Clinton (CT), Town of Jackson (WY), Town of South Windsor (CT), Town of Westford (MA), and Wayne County Government (IN), among others.

City and local governments worldwide benefit from the benefits of storage virtualisation powered by DataCore
Central Europe: In Central Europe, Germany is leading the pack in terms of adoption at the city and local government level. German cities and states that have deployed DataCore include: Aalen, Ahaus, Ahrweiler, Altoetting, Aurich, Bad Hersfeld, Bad Kreuznach, Baden-Baden, Barsinghausen, Belm, Bramsche, Bremen, Cuxhaven, Deggendorf, Dresden, Emsdetten, Erlangen, Erlangen-Hoechstadt, Frankfurt a.M., Geesthacht, Georgsmarienhuette, Greven, Guetersloh, Heidelberg, Hermsdorf, Hof/Saale, Ingolstadt, Kaufbeuren, Kleinmachnow, Koblenz, Kronberg im Taunus, Lambrecht, Langenau, Langenfeld (Rhld.), Lippstadt, Mannheim, Merzig, Muenchen, Neustadt a.d. Weinstrasse, Nordhorn, Oldenburg, Osnabrueck, Osterholz Scharmbeck, Peine, Ploen, Rheine, Rhein-Lahn Kreis, Ruegen, Ruesselsheim, Siegburg, Speyer, Steinburg, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Sylt, Traunstein, Troisdorf, as well as Witten, among others.
Other cities in Central Europe include the Dutch city of Oost-Groningen and Bern in Switzerland.
Northern Europe: DataCore's products are equally well-represented in Northern Europe, particularly the UK. Local governments in Britain using DataCore storage virtualization software include Ashfield District Council, Borough of Poole, Bournemouth Borough Council, Mole Valley District Council, Shepway District Council, Waverley Borough Council, and West Dorset District Council, among others.

Southern Europe: Towns and cities across France are equally prolific in their adoption of DataCore. Representative cities and towns include: Mairie d'Asnieres Sur Seine, Communauté du Pays Voironnais, Conseil General de la Martinique, Communaute Agglomeration de Douai, La communauté d'agglomération de La Rochelle, Mairie de Maisons Laffitte, and Mairie de Chelles, among others. Other cities in Southern Europe include the Italian cities of Cervia, Lugo di Romagna Rivoli, and Sala Bolognese.

DataCore Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) Software

Article: DataCore Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) SoftwareSome approaches to high availability and disaster recovery require that an organization maintain a separate datacenter, DataCore’s approach is to utilize excess capacity in current datacenters. This approach is likely to be appealing to small to medium sized organizations that don’t have the luxury of maintaining a separate datacenter for disaster recovery...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1028

For more information on ASR, see:http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_live.asp?date=05/11/2009

FUJIFILM Focuses on DataCore's SANmelody for Storage Virtualization Cost Savings and Disaster Recovery

“Consolidation was becoming increasingly necessary to stem the pressure on the team having to backup, manage and ultimately move redundant servers,” stated Manish Amriwala, network and desktop support team manager, FUJIFILM UK. “We needed a dedicated SAN and virtualized servers that would accommodate our growth and transition us from the restrictions of disk space provided by direct-attached storage.”

Rollout commenced in March 2008 and within two months all major applications were transferred onto the 12 virtual servers. The network carries 3.4 TB or 1.7 TB mirrored of data – with a further 50% expansion remaining available. Installation was a seamless and relatively painless process noted Manish. “Within just 2-3 hours we had an operational business continuity and disaster recovery solution up and running,” he said. “Now maintenance and allocating storage is much easier. Using SANmelody in a mirrored configuration, patches and new applications and servers can be easily uploaded; as one SANmelody box can be taken down without any interruption to business applications as the other SANmelody takes over.”

In addition, there have been notable financial benefits in terms of cost savings managing the new virtualized data center environment. The team has equated the reduction of costs for the entire virtualization campaign to be roughly GBP 50,000 - GBP 80,000 per annum – in terms of reduction of man days for management and maintenance.

http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/07/01/fujifilm-uk-focuses-on-datacore-s-sanmelody-for-storage-virtualization-cost-savings-and-disaster-recovery.aspx

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.