Friday, 27 June 2014

DataCore and CommVault Partnership addresses Software-Defined Storage Momentum and Modernises Backup and Snapshot Management

New partnership with CommVault enables SANsymphony-™V to be the first and only software-defined storage architecture to be fully integrated with CommVault’s Simpana® IntelliSnap® snapshot management technology. Through the combination of their advanced storage software, DataCore and CommVault will deliver industry-leading data protection and recovery operations for today’s dynamic workloads to customers around the world.
CommVault's IntelliSnap technology ensures that IT organisations, including application, virtualisation and storage managers, can perform rapid, granular and consistent recovery of vital VMware and Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and file data through federated search across indexed snapshots. CommVault continues to expand this growing ecosystem by enabling software and disk array vendors to integrate their snapshots with IntelliSnap technology through the IntelliSnap Connect Program.
“Today’s dynamic application workloads require a different type of thinking as data protection needs to be looked at from end to end and centered around mitigating the impact to the business,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO at DataCore. “As a result of our partnership with CommVault, organisations can now leverage the benefits of software-defined storage to accelerate data protection and recovery operations while making hardware maintenance, data migrations and hardware refreshes easier.”
With the integration of SANsymphony-V and Simpana IntelliSnap technology, organisations can:
  • Virtualise and pool access to any type of storage regardless of vendor model or brand, enabling companies to maximise their existing storage investments and boost application performance
  • Automate the creation of indexed, application-aware snapshot copies across enterprise-wide, multi-vendor storage environments
  • Simplify deployment and orchestrate recovery across all snapshots, backup and archive copies, while delivering storage specific reporting and managing replication
  • Minimise downtime with application-aware, point-in-time recovery of Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint, SQL, VMware, Hyper-V and other business critical applications
  • Reduce primary storage costs with automated snapshot backup to open systems, disk, tape or even the cloud for cost-effective retention
“CommVault is committed to working with partners who share a similar vision in helping increase efficiencies and reducing costs in today’s storage environments, while at the same time ensuring data protection and recovery remain top of mind,” said Jeff Echols, senior director of product and solutions marketing at CommVault. “As the software-defined storage market continues to grow, organisations will need data protection and recovery solutions in place that work across multiple-vendors in the same architecture – and we have achieved this through our partnership with DataCore.”
http://www.it-director.com/technology/storage/news_release.php?rel=44454

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Monday, 23 June 2014

Experience the New Virtual SAN Software

To help users evaluate the power of the new Virtual SAN capabilities and further educate themselves on the benefits of software-defined storage, DataCore is providing free access to a non-production use Virtual SAN software license. The free SANsymphony-V10 Virtual SAN software is now available for download at: www.datacore.com/Free-Virtual-SAN.

The new Virtual SAN software is ideal for personal self-education and training, home labs and for evaluation purposes. It is intended primarily for technical specialists, virtualization consultants, certified storage experts, instructors and architects evaluating technologies to manage and optimize existing and new storage infrastructures.
Enterprise-class Virtual SAN Performance, Availability and Scaling
The DataCore™ SANsymphony-V10 virtual SAN software can scale performance to more than 50 Million IOPS and to 32 Petabytes of capacity across a cluster of 32 servers, making it one of the most powerful and scalable systems in the marketplace.
DataCore’s new Virtual SAN is a software-only solution that automates and simplifies storage management and provisioning while delivering enterprise-class functionality, automated recovery and significantly faster performance. It is easy to set up and runs on new or existing x86 servers where it creates a shared storage pool out of the internal Flash and disk storage resources available to that server. This means the DataCore™ Virtual SAN can be cost-effectively deployed as an overlay, without the need to make major investments in new hardware or complex SAN gear.
DataCore virtual SANs are a cost-effective solution for clustered servers, VDI desktop deployments, remote disaster recovery and multi-site virtual server projects, as well as demanding database and business application workloads running on server platforms.
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Thursday, 19 June 2014

One of world's biggest construction projects relies on DataCore Software Defined Storage

One of the largest construction projects in the world, the 18KM Tunnel between Denmark and Germany has deployed DataCore software defined storage. Femern A/S achieves blistering speeds for their critical Microsoft SQL database and mail applications; assures future growth flexibility to handle increased traffic and avoids hardware vendor lock-in with software-defined storage enabled by DataCore.
Full Transcript
I'm Tim Olsson, and I'm the IT director with Femern A/S. Femern A/S is a state owned company in Denmark that has been assigned the task of planning a fixed link (one of the largest tunnel projects in the world) between Denmark and Germany. In 2008 a state treaty was signed between Denmark and Germany making Femern A/S the company in charge of planning the fixed link tunnel.

With DataCore's solution, we have saved about half a million Danish Krona. I think that's about 70,000 Euro.

We know that during the construction phase we have to do a lot of  environmental monitoring and this creates a huge amount of data.

When we were presented with this solution by DataCore, we felt it was very interesting for us because we could keep our Dell Equalogic SAN and we could move forward, at the same time, with new or other storage platforms. And we could do that seamlessly and without suffering any downtime. This made it possible and easy to do migration between our Dell Equalogic SAN to other storage.

All of our applications are based on a Microsoft SQL based platform and we have a lot of applications that are necessary for doing environmental investigations and geological investigations;also all of our documents are very critical for us.

The system has allowed us scalability because we can easily add new storage then present it to DataCore and make it available to provision either to present or future applications.

I think with DataCore we have a very reliable solution, it has been running a couple of years now and we have had a very good experience with it. With the fact that SANsymphony-V can utilize auto-tiering with our fusion-io cards I don't think we have any fears of bottlenecks. So I think we are good to go.

 
 
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Friday, 13 June 2014

Free Virtual SAN Software; Evaluate for yourself the power of software defined storage

Download the Non-Production Use Software and See for Yourself What a High Performance and Cost-Efficient Software-Defined Storage Solution Can Do
To help users evaluate the power of the new Virtual SAN capabilities and further educate themselves on the benefits of software-defined storage, DataCore is providing free access to a non-production use Virtual SAN software license. The free SANsymphony-V10 Virtual SAN software is now available for download at: www.datacore.com/Free-Virtual-SAN.
The new Virtual SAN software is ideal for personal self-education and training, home labs and for evaluation purposes. It is intended primarily for technical specialists, virtualization consultants, certified storage experts, instructors and architects evaluating technologies to manage and optimize existing and new storage infrastructures.
Enterprise-class Virtual SAN Performance, Availability and Scaling
The DataCore™ SANsymphony-V10 virtual SAN software can scale performance to more than 50 Million IOPS and to 32 Petabytes of capacity across a cluster of 32 servers, making it one of the most powerful and scalable systems in the marketplace.
DataCore’s new Virtual SAN is a software-only solution that automates and simplifies storage management and provisioning while delivering enterprise-class functionality, automated recovery and significantly faster performance. It is easy to set up and runs on new or existing x86 servers where it creates a shared storage pool out of the internal Flash and disk storage resources available to that server. This means the DataCore™ Virtual SAN can be cost-effectively deployed as an overlay, without the need to make major investments in new hardware or complex SAN gear.
DataCore virtual SANs are a cost-effective solution for clustered servers, VDI desktop deployments, remote disaster recovery and multi-site virtual server projects, as well as demanding database and business application workloads running on server platforms.

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Thursday, 5 June 2014

Virtual SAN & Storage Virtualization: Insight from the CTO Office of DataCore

Join Roni Putra, Chief Technology Officer and Robert Bassett, Director of Engineering, -masterminds behind the origins of storage virtualisation- and hear their personal opinions on Virtual SAN, where storage technology is today and the future of data storage in general. 



Check out all the DataCore Labs videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5CtcbkwITTYemFS7_fk8EQ 
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Friday, 30 May 2014

DataCore Announces General Availability of SANsymphony-V10, the Next Generation Software-Defined Storage Services Platform

Congratulations to the entire DataCore family! 

Another proud day in the life of the company, as we announce the general availability of our: Next Generation SANsymphony-V10 Software-Defined Storage Services Platform and Enterprise-Class Virtual SANs

Customer downloads and trials are now available and in place, so we are pleased to spread the word.

Also, check out the latest DataCore SANsymphony-V10 Storage Virtualization Overview Video and the updated SANsymphony-V10 Web Page: One Storage Services Platform Across your entire infrastructure

This tenth generation of SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software celebrates sixteen years of research and development, and countless inputs from DataCore customers and partners to yield the most comprehensive storage services platform in the planet. 

We are proud of our new release and we thank you all for making 2014 a special year for us !!

Regards,
George Teixeira
CEO & President 
DataCore Software


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Thursday, 29 May 2014

Software Defined Storage Interview With George Teixeira, CEO, DataCore

"Long term vision is a thing we call data anywhere."

For Teixeira's thoughts on Software-defined Storage, the latest trends and DataCore, please see: DataCore Surpasses 10,000 Customer Sites Globally as Companies Embrace Software-Defined Storage
“The remarkable increase in infrastructure-wide deployments that DataCore experienced highlights an irreversible market shift from tactical, device-centric acquisitions to strategic software-defined storage decisions. Its significance is clear when even EMC concedes the rapid commoditization of hardware is underway. The EMC ViPR announcement acknowledges the ‘sea change’ in customer attitudes and the fact that the traditional storage model is broken,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO at DataCore.
“We are clearly in the age of software defined data centers, where virtualization, automation and across-the-board efficiencies must be driven through software. Businesses can no longer afford yearly ‘rip-and-replace’ cycles, and require a cost-effective approach to managing storage growth that allows them to innovate while getting the most out of existing investments.” 
According to George Teixeira, the momentum for Software-defined Storage continues and the recent VMware VSAN announcements have opened up new market opportunities and use cases that showcase solutions that DataCore has pioneered and developed over the last 16 years. He states, "Our New SANsymphony-V10, the 10 generation of our software sets the standard for Software-Defined Storage":  DataCore Announces Enterprise-Class Virtual SANs and Flash-Optimizing Stack in its Next Generation SANsymphony-V10 Software-Defined Storage Platform
For more insights, please see the excerpts below from the recent StorageNewsletter interview with George Teixeira, CEO DataCore Sofware or read the full article at:
George, do you now embrace totally the three words software-defined storage (SDS) in your marketing approach following the buzz.
Our mission statement when DataCore was founded in 1998 was to create 'software-driven storage architecture'. But, if we had called it 'software-defined' then the industry probably would have called it 'software-driven'; we went with 'software-driven' so the now the industry went 'software defined'. We have always been true to our mission of developing a pure software approach and we have been doing it for over 16 years and have thousands of happy customers to show for it...
Why not use the term storage virtualization software or storage hypervisor?
For a long time we had to evangelize the idea of software. The industry wanted to still buy and think in terms of hardware, the mindset has been hardware biased. We kept trying to find ways to associate with software. Storage virtualization was the correct term in the beginning but when we started storage virtualization as a term meant what today they're calling 'software-defined', meaning it could not be sold as part of the hardware, it was totally hardware independent. Instead all the storage hardware vendors hijacked the term. So all of a sudden IBM SVC, Hitachi, everybody began to use the term even if it was not downloadable software and required a customer to buy specific vendor hardware to make it run. 

Then, a few years back, because of the success of VMware, I said "let's start using storage hypervisor" so that we could at least talk to the people who were using VMware, Microsoft and understood the software layer was separate from hardware. But the term had a short life. The big change (turning point in mindset) was early last year or right before when EMC announces ViPR and they start talking software-defined storage. The largest player in the storage market says two big things: commodity and software are the future of storage. And then VMware comes along and announces Virtual SAN, again promoting a pure software approach.

Two huge companies, and EMC the number one storage company in the world, say the future is about commodity and software. All of a sudden, my business, and the interest and opportunity in DataCore has gone up by 50%. Because people are looking up ViPR and VSAN and searching to find out "what else is out there?" and they find us. But the funny part is that, these terms, in fact they are all crazy, since we've been doing the same thing for 16 years.

What is the roadmap for SANsymphony storage virtualization software?
The long-term vision is a thing we call 'data anywhere'.
The idea is that we've been able to do a lot of things with SANsymphony V-10 especially where the data can move from being on the server side to the SAN, into the cloud. And we believe that there is so much different types of storage -its a specturm from Flash to disk to Cloud storage, and that companies will have different types. And the funny part is that every vendor talks convergence but if you look at what they do, they're selling divergence.

Today everybody is creating 'isolated storage islands'. And they only work within their own stuff, our features and software work across all of them. Our view is, we UNIFY all these isolated storage islands.

DataCore was formed in 1998 and you've been its president and CEO since the very first day. For how much longer?
I still find it exciting. What's amazing now is that the vision we had has become real; I don't have to explain what it is anymore. However, it  took three times longer than I thought to get to this point...
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Friday, 23 May 2014

The IT Businesse Edge: DataCore Empowers Flash and Creates Virtual SANs Out of Server Storage

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/it-unmasked/datacore-creates-virtual-san-out-of-server-storage.html

One of the benefits of using a storage management application is that the location of the actual storage device doesn’t matter all that much.

Taking advantage of that benefit, DataCore’s release of SANsymphony-V10 has added a Virtual-SAN capability that turns all the Flash memory and magnetic storage attached to a server into a shared resource for the applications that access that server.
As of late, there has been a lot of interest in Flash storage on a server, and DataCore CEO George Teixeira notes that most of the Flash storage deployed today on a server is allocated to a single application. Teixeira says that this is a comparatively expensive way to solve an application performance issue because most of the time the Flash storage device is just sitting idle.
SANsymphony-V10 turns Flash and magnetic storage on the server into a resource that can be shared by a cluster of 32 servers, accessing up to 32PB of storage at speeds of up to 50 Million IOPS, says Teixeira.

DataCore is not the only vendor to have turned Flash memory into a shared resource. But Teixeira says the rise of Flash validates a software-defined approach to storage that allows IT organizations to mix and match third-party storage devices as they see fit.

Of course, DataCore would be the first to admit that most IT organizations have only a fraction of their data running in Flash memory. But the percentage of the data that does run in Flash tends to be really hot in terms of how often it needs to be accessed across what is usually a broad application portfolio.
For more details please see:
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Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Check out the new DataCore Labs and Catching the Software-Defined Storage Wave

New  http://www.datacorelabs.com/  web site!
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Friday, 16 May 2014

DataCore SANsymphony V10 ups the ante in the storage virtualisation market

http://kusnetzky.net/analysts-take/sansymphony-10-ups-the-ante.html 
George Teixeira, CEO of DataCore and his colleague Augie Gonzalez, Director of Product Marketing, stopped by to discuss how the company has done since our last chat and to introduce version 10 of SANsymphony. They believe that this is the best software for flash storage, DRAM storage and all fashion of rotating media.

What does SANsymphony do?

SANsymphony is a storage virtualization (call it software defined storage if you prefer) product that executes on x86-64 servers, sits in the data path between applications and a huge selection of storage devices and offers significant performance improvements, better utilization of storage devices and significantly improves reliability through redundancy.
The software does this by offering the following capabilities:
  • Auto-tiering to automatically move data to the appropriate storage tier to optimize both performance and cost
  • Caching that is designed to optimize how data is stored and retrieved regardless of the type of storage device
  • Synchronization and Mirroring to assure that data is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there and is highly reliable as well
  • Thin provisioning that allows storage to be allocated as needed rather than provisioning the largest space an application is likely to need at some point in the future
  • and a long list of other features
Like all virtualization technology, the goal is creating an artificial, virtual view of storage that is different than what the physical storage hardware provides.

What's new with version 10?

DataCore has extended SANsympony's virtual SAN capabilities in a number of ways and describes the product in the following way:
The spotlight on SANsymphony-V10 is clearly on the new virtual SAN capabilities, and the new licensing and pricing choices. However, a number of other major performance and scalability enhancements appear in this version as well:
  • Scalability has doubled from 16 to 32 nodes; Enables Metro-wide N+1 grid data protection
  • Supports high-speed 40/56 GigE iSCSI; 16Gbps Fibre Channel; iSCSI Target NIC teaming
  • Performance visualization/Heat Map tools add insight into the behavior of Flash and disks
  • New auto-tiering settings optimize expensive resources (e.g., flash cards) in a pool
  • Intelligent disk rebalancing, dynamically redistributes load across available devices within a tier
  • Automated CPU load leveling and Flash optimizations to increase performance
  • Disk pool optimization and self-healing storage; Disk contents are automatically restored across the remaining storage in the pool; Enhancements to easily select and prioritize order of recovery
  • New self-tuning caching algorithms and optimizations for flash cards and SSDs
  • ‘Click-simple’ configuration wizards to rapidly set up different use cases (Virtual SAN; High-Availability SANs; NAS File Shares; etc.)

Snapshot analysis

I've spoken with a number of customers who use SANsymphony on a daily basis. If I told you exactly what they've said, you would believe this post was really a marketing message from DataCore in disguise. I often hear stories of huge performance improvements, significant improvements in storage utilization and much better storage reliability.
Although I'm sure that DataCore's competitors would disagree, Teixeria asserts that SANsymphony is "the ultimate storage stack that simply accelerates everything."
He also asserts that all DataCore needs to do is get people to try it and they're hooked. Although I'm usually very skeptical of such claims, after talking with DataCore's customers, I'm beginning to believe it is true.


There are a large number of suppliers in the storage and storage virtualization market. Players such as IBM, EMC, NetApp, HP, HDS and a growing list of other competitors offer products that appear similar. DataCore has to get ahead all of these large and small suppliers to get the ear of IT decision makers. If the company is able to break through all of the noise, the strengths of their product are likely to be convincing.
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