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TAG: Storage Virtualization

May 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sifau Software Brings Swarm Encrypted SAN Storage Appliances to VMware

Siafu Software is trying to make storage in virtualized environments easy and cost effective. The company just announced that its Siafu Swarm Series of IP SAN Appliances for affordable, easy-to-manage encrypted iSCSI storage are now available for VMware Infrastructure 3 environments.

By using Siafu Swarm as the virtual storage solution for VMware infrastructures, companies can efficiently and affordably consolidate their storage while taking advantage of high performance and powerful data security features. "Customers deploying VMware require the security of true business continuity without any risk of interruption," said John Matze, president and CEO, Siafu Software. He added, "We've designed our Swarm Series of iSCSI appliances to deliver true data security, without compromise -- all for an affordable price."

The Siafu Swarm is designed to help companies increase storage utilization, enhance corporate data protection methods and simplify disaster recovery processes. To help assure disaster tolerance for VMware environments, it features powerful RAID 5/6 protection and RAID 51/RAID 61 active/active protection for redundant appliances.

Key features of the Siafu Swarm for VMware include:

Active/Active failover for continuous data access
1 - 7.5TB of storage in single or high availability configurations
Snapshots with Microsoft VSS consistency
AES 256-bit encryption
Intuitive user interface to manage multiple Swarms from a single console

Siafu Swarm IP SAN solutions for VMware are available now and start at $8,995.

Posted by David Marshall on May 15, 2007 04:08 PM

March 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Cisco Acquires Storage Virtualization Firm

Cisco Systems moved further into the file virtualization arena when it announced a definitive agreement to purchase privately held NeoPath Networks, a network storage and virtualization firm. NeoPath's patented SMART virtualization technology and its File Director family of products simplify the management of network attached storage (NAS) and other file servers.

Cisco has been aggressively moving into the storage networking space since it acquired Fibre channel switch maker Andiamo back in 2002. Cisco is not alone in this endeavor. Rival Brocade recently acquired NuView, and EMC recently purchased Rainfinity. The more Cisco plays in this space, the more the rumor mill will continue to charge that Cisco may yet acquire one of the many NAS vendors such as NetApp or ONStor.

In a recent statement, Jayshree Ullal, Senior Vice President of Cisco's Datacenter Switching and Security Technology Group (DSSTG), said, "Enterprise customers are asking Cisco how they can make better use of their existing IT infrastructure, and NeoPath is part of the answer. "NeoPath's technology will enhance Cisco's Services Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) direction and vision by establishing tighter linkages between file based data and network accelerated services."

Cisco expects that the deal will close in the current quarter, which ends April 28. However, terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Posted by David Marshall on March 19, 2007 04:20 AM

January 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Virtual Iron Certifies DataCore's SANmelody

Virtual Iron has announced that they have now certified DataCore's virtual storage solution, SANmelody, for use with Virtual Iron's server virtualization software.

The combined offering delivers an enterprise-class server virtualization and storage virtualization solution to the mainstream market at a very attractive and affordable price. Virtual Iron prides itself on its very competitive pricing, and yet still seems to be able to offer enterprise-class server virtualization solutions to meet the demands of server consolidation, development and test, business continuity and dynamic capacity management. At the same time, DataCore meets similar needs by virtualizing storage at a reasonable price as it converts PC servers into cost-effective disk servers and virtual SANs.

"SANmelody allows customers to build cost-effective and flexible storage networks delivering the highest levels of data protection using standard servers and networks," said George Teixeira, President and CEO, DataCore Software. "Together, Virtual Iron and DataCore are dramatically changing the economics of virtualization and delivering enterprise-class capabilities and ROI to the mainstream market."

"Networked storage unlocks the power of virtualization by allowing virtual servers to freely migrate to any server in the data center," said John C. Thibault, President and CEO, Virtual Iron Software. "However, to date, the price of existing networked storage has excluded much of the market from these benefits. DataCore SANmelody and Virtual Iron together deliver advanced capabilities at a fraction of the cost, enabling enterprise-class virtualization for the mainstream market."

Posted by David Marshall on January 31, 2007 04:26 PM

January 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Incipient, Inc. Makes Storage Industry History in 2006

In 2006, Incipient, Inc. made storage industry history by bringing to market its switch-resident storage virtualization software for Storage Area Network (SAN) environments.

With the 2006 release of its flagship product, the Incipient Network Storage Platform (iNSP) software suite, the company is poised to meet the growing enterprise demand for data migration, automated storage provisioning and copy services. These iNSP capabilities, now delivered from the network, allow companies to reduce the overall cost of managing, deploying and operating SAN-based storage, resulting in a lower SAN Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

"Eventually all data layer functions such as storage, databases, and file systems will sit below a unified virtualization layer, which is critical to making the promise of IT as a service oriented infrastructure real. Incipient is certainly playing a key role in this vision with the release of iNSP for enterprises," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "iNSP automates and delivers storage services consistently across the SAN - making time consuming and error prone tasks such as data migration and storage provisioning, simple and strategic. It is only a matter of time until service oriented architectures within IT are commonplace."

Incipient announced that it had taken several steps to further establish itself as a storage industry innovator and leader in 2006 highlighted by these significant accomplishments:

Completed iNSP Beta and Early Access Programs with successful deployments at large enterprises within financial services and healthcare sectors.
Displayed iNSP software at the Storage Decisions conference in New York City in September. An InfoWorld article dated October 5, 2006, referred to the iNSP announcement as "one of the most significant releases in recent storage news."
Announced GA of iNSP in December supporting Cisco MDS 9000 Series of intelligent Fibre Channel (FC) switches with the 32-Port Storage Services Module (SSM).
An Incipient customer participated in the storage virtualization panel discussion moderated by Arun Taneja, Taneja Group, at the Storage Decisions conference.
Participated in the Storage Virtualization Hands-On Lab at Storage Networking World Fall 2006 in Orlando, FL. The standing room only sessions gave end-users unprecedented direct access to the benefits of iNSP software.
Expanded sales and service teams to provide 24/7 support for Incipient's growing customer base. This included the opening of a new sales office in New York City to better serve the needs of financial services industry customers and establishing an in-country presence in the United Kingdom.
Certified iNSP's interoperability with arrays from top tier storage vendors including EMC, HP, HDS and IBM.
Secured two additional patents to protect various storage virtualization innovations, bringing the total number of core-issued patents held by Incipient, Inc. to four with several others pending.
Enterprise Strategy Group published a Storage Virtualization Report dated September 2006 which states that Incipient is delivering to customers what they have long been asking for - a storage virtualization software solution that runs natively in a leading SAN switch.
Raised $24 million in Series D financing bringing the total equity capital raised to $79 million.
Secured its initial customers for its iNSP breakthrough solution.

Posted by David Marshall on January 19, 2007 10:08 PM

October 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

LSI gets Virtual with StoreAge Acquisition

LSI Logic Corporation announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire StoreAge Networking Technologies Ltd. for something in the neighborhood of $50 million in cash.

StoreAge Networking Technologies, a privately held company based in Nesher, Israel, provides enterprise SAN storage management and advanced, multi-tiered, data protection solutions that centralize and simplify storage network administration.

"We are excited to add the significant capabilities of the StoreAge product portfolio to our industry-leading storage silicon, systems and software building block offerings," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI Logic president and chief executive officer. "We look forward to welcoming StoreAge employees and continuing to serve the needs of StoreAge channel partners and OEM customers."

"With the rapid growth in data storage capacity, enterprise customers are seeking enhanced levels of data protection, highly effective storage management tools and reduced cost of ownership," said Phil Bullinger, senior vice president and general manager, Engenio Storage Group, LSI Logic. "Through the acquisition of StoreAge, we anticipate offering our OEM and channel customers a richer set of products and features that fully address these important end user requirements."

StoreAge products included solutions for high availability, disaster recovery, backup enhancement, storage consolidation and dynamic storage provisioning, and storage services consolidation. The company offered:

SVM (Storage Virtualization Manager) - an out-of-the-data-path (asymmetric) SAN appliance that provides virtual volume management and storage management across all storage within a SAN.

multiView - a low-capacity snapshot copy application that creates multiple read/write point-in-time image copies of any virtualized volume on any storage device in a SAN

multiCopy - a data replication application that creates multiple read/write point-in-time physical copies of any virtualized volume on any storage device in a SAN

multiMirror - offers enterprises an advanced Disaster Recovery solution via Asynchronous and Synchronous Mirroring, as well as Local and Remote Mirroring

multiMigrate - a tool for migrating a volume from one storage device to another while the applications stay on-line

SVM Report Generator - an external utility, which analyzes data collected by SVM to generate reports on various aspects of storage usage on the SAN

SVM App-Pack - offers the required integration between storage-intensive applications and the powerful StoreAge SVM suite of storage services

Posted by David Marshall on October 29, 2006 07:34 AM

October 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

SANRAD Announces VMware Support

One of the side effects with using server virtualization to deliver on IT server consolidation projects is the need for larger amounts of storage. And when navigating through the murky waters of high availability and disaster recovery, the need for network storage becomes even more important. Vendors providing these types of storage solutions are lining up to gain VMware's favor with the hopes of then being added to VMware's supported list.

SANRAD Incorporated, a supplier of open enterprise IP SANs, announced that its product portfolio of IP SAN solutions now fully supports VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. With the announcement, SANRAD's solutions should provide support for VMware customers to utilize their existing IP network and storage resources to consolidate storage management and data recovery.

The SANRAD and VMware alliance offers clients:

An IP SAN for multiple ESX servers

Continuous real-time data access during component, storage or system failure

Low scalability costs using any type or brand storage

Ability to deliver high peak load performance

According to the company's press release:

Using the open, scalable architecture of SANRAD's IP SANs extends VMWare's consolidation and virtualization benefits to server storage. With SANRAD solutions, any brand or type of storage, including FC SAN resources, can be pooled and managed with a single platform. VMware customers can then divide the virtualized storage pool into unique iSCSI volumes for VMware ESX server datastors. By combining virtualization with open storage pooling, customers can create different storage tiers, acquire the specific storage capacity and performance they need, and utilize existing storage investments, thereby reducing overall costs and simplifying scalability.

SANRAD's unique IP solution increases resource availability with real-time data, path and system redundancy and provides for low cost scalability. It also provides decreased storage costs on a per terabyte (TB) basis as capacity increases. SANRAD's GDR supports VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 delivering business continuity and enabling customers to replicate data to a remote site for disaster recovery. All storage services for VMware are delivered and managed from SANRAD's consolidated IP SAN solution using a single graphical user interface.

"Our enterprise customers require a fully integrated storage solution for VMware. We are pleased we have created a unique solution that delivers a high reliability IP SAN architecture well suited for multiple VMware ESX servers." said Uli Gal-Oz, CEO of SANRAD. "VMware is the leader in server consolidation and virtualization solutions, and we look forward to working together closely as a VMware Technology Alliance Partner program member to deliver a complementary storage consolidation and virtualization solution."

SANRAD provides enterprise iSCSI platforms with a broad complement of embedded and simple to manage storage services. Its unique solution offers open storage pooling, virtualization, local and long distance data replication and disaster recovery services at the network layer. This in turn provides customers with greater scalability, interoperability and vendor independence in their storage solutions. SANRAD's V-Switch is compatible with solutions from Brocade, Engenio, HP, Veritas, IBM, Microsoft and others.

Posted by David Marshall on October 13, 2006 04:49 PM

October 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

DataCore Offers SMB Friendly SANmelody Solution

DataCore Software announced a new entry level version of its SANmelody storage software. The SANmelody Virtual Infrastructure Foundation software enables any enterprise to leverage existing Ethernet and IP/LAN network interconnections through its iSCSI support and to optimize storage space and automate capacity utilization across many servers.

The new product serves as a simple and affordable way for users to enter the world of virtualized infrastructures. The software represents a major industry first in breaking the $1000 price point for a software SAN solution that includes automated virtual capacity functionality.

DataCore's president and CEO, George Teixeira, said "virtualization means flexibility, faster response to change, better resource utilization and hardware independence." He continued, "This is our way of helping enterprises get started in embracing virtualization. DataCore's Virtual Infrastructure Foundation is ideal for entry-level users and small-to-medium sized business (SMBs). It offers true, virtual storage networking with advanced auto-grow virtual capacity that automates disk provisioning to systems and does so at a breakthrough price under $1,000."

Additional features and benefits of the product include:

The ability to consolidate and manage up to 3TB (Terabytes) of storage

Virtual Capacity Flexibility - "Auto-Grow" provisioning of disk space

The ability to utilize existing Ethernet IP/LAN connectivity and networks

Simple iSCSI SAN storage networking

Storage I/O caching and performance acceleration support

A hardware independent platform enabling user choice in storage devices and the ability to serve many different servers and types (Windows, MacOS, Linux, UNIX, Netware, Solaris, etc.)

SANmelody Virtual Infrastructure Foundation is priced at $948.00 and is available immediately. Visit their Web site for more information.

Posted by David Marshall on October 5, 2006 04:38 PM

August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

LeftHand Networks to Support VI3

LeftHand Networks, a provider of iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, has announced support for VMware Infrastructure 3, which includes VMware ESX Server 3.0 and its native iSCSI initiator.

LeftHand's Open iSCSI SAN technology combined with VMware offers customers virtualized, highly available and scalable server and storage environments, thereby reducing IT costs and simplifying overall IT management.

VMware's virtualization software allows customers to divide individual servers into multiple virtual machines, offering customers greater hardware utilization and flexibility. The company claims its LeftHand SAN/iQ software transforms industry-standard platforms into virtual storage modules, allowing users to easily consolidate storage and manage data protection.

Customers can benefit from LeftHand's storage clustering, and scale their Open iSCSI SANs as they add more applications and/or virtual machines to the virtualized server infrastructure.

When VMware and the LeftHand SAN are used together, both server and storage environments are protected from hardware failure by leveraging VMware's ability to restart a virtual machine on a different platform and LeftHand's ability to stripe and mirror data across the cluster using SAN/iQ Network RAID. This allows a customer to have a highly available virtual server and storage solution that will grow together over time.

"VMware and LeftHand are both leaders in server and storage virtualization. We have consistent goals: to simplify and consolidate IT management for customers," said Karl Chen, LeftHand vice president of marketing. "Virtualization and storage clustering have proven to help LeftHand's 1500-plus customers reduce their IT costs and we're thrilled to continue to support VMware's latest product offering."

LeftHand has been a member of VMware's Technology Alliance Partner Program since late 2004. And according to LeftHand, the two companies have a number of mutual customers benefiting from the partnership.

Posted by David Marshall on August 22, 2006 04:02 PM

June 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

DataCore Reveals Top Ten "Lessons Learned"

DataCore Software announced that it has published key findings from a series of global user group roundtables that took place over the past six quarters, wherein DataCore customers have identified their key "lessons learned" while working with DataCore's products for storage control, storage management, and storage consolidation.

According to the company's press release, the key lessons learned include:

Keep it simple and avoid complexity - While hardware independence is crucial for purchasing advantages, within a given site users were in heated agreement to standardize on common hardware where practical (i.e. a maximum of 2 or 3 models/vendors), to zone by function (i.e. backup) or by application type so it makes it simpler to isolate problems; to set up a simple and obvious naming convention; and to protect systems with redundant paths and mirror key elements of your configuration wherever possible.

Flexibility is key. Avoid vendor lock-in and proprietary hardware - Participants in our user roundtables also reinforced the benefits derived from selecting hardware independent, portable management software that enables flexibility to meet change and greater purchasing choices on what hardware to incorporate. It was interesting to note that many virtual storage users were first introduced to the benefits of virtualization through seeing the benefits of virtual server technologies.

Document your storage area network (SAN) environment - Often ignored, this was a key point that many users cited that they wished they had known earlier. Planning and documenting the naming convention of your SAN environment can enable you to avoid complexity as your network grows. Take the time to think through the naming convention and make it simple and logical so it can grow with your systems.

Test, test, test - Users worldwide hailed the benefits in setting up a test or pre-production SAN.

People, Product and Procedure are all equally important - Storage management requires an understanding of skill sets, training and procedures of your organization. Don't expect miracle software cures; software is important but it is only one dimension of the solution. If you are going virtual, you should also rethink many of your processes to exploit the new benefits and cost savings possible.

Good fences make good neighbors - Segregate your storage traffic from your internal/public network (e.g. security) and limit access to "trained" personnel who understand the SAN. SANs support many servers and users; best practices and training must be embraced and instituted.

Deploy a SAN with advanced storage management features to get more than connectivity - Today's state-of-the-art features for storage management include storage virtualization, automated tools, snapshots, CDP technologies, storage pooling, "Auto-Grow" virtual capacity and remote replication. These advanced features enable a great deal of automation and allow your SAN to scale as well as to meet new requirements.

Deploy a SAN solution with redundancy throughout - A SAN architected correctly will achieve much higher levels of availability. Obviously, to get best results, your SAN solutions should be fully redundant and have dual controllers, power supplies, fans, network connections, as well as hot-swappable disk drives and components.

Future-proof for storage management - Computers are advancing every year, disk prices are dropping dramatically, new innovations like iSCSI and SAS are now practical - make sure your infrastructure is hardware independent and can absorb new innovations when they make sense. Select storage management software and a SAN that can start small, that can ensure easy and cost-effective growth, and that can offer upgrades that do not require downtime.

Keep it simple and avoid complexity for backups and disaster recovery - Where practical, simplify and reduce backup procedures using continuous data protection (CDP) technologies, disk-to-disk copy and snapshots that give users greater control of their data protection and backup process as well as make it possible for users to utilize disk technologies to buffer storage and avoid the ever shrinking backup windows. Also where practical, utilize simple synchronous mirroring of your storage pool for disaster recovery (cross campus, cross town) or new Asynchronous IP-based mirroring for cost effective replication across longer distances.

Posted by David Marshall on June 17, 2006 06:53 PM

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