SANmelody 2.0 PSP 4 and SANsymphony 6.0 PSP3

New PSP releases available:
• Reclaim unused storage in Thin Provisioning/NMV pools. A new command line utility,
DcsNMVcleanup.exe, is now provided. Please see Technical Bulletin 16 for details on how to prepare your application servers, and how use this tool on storage servers. In a future release, this feature will be invoked via a GUI option.
For more info:
http://www.datacore.com/forum/thread/313/what-about-thin-provisioning-and-space-reclamation-.aspx
• Improved AIM performance and usability; improve event message logging for group operations at the destination.
• Improve the speed of Thin Provisioning/NMV pool initialization.
• Allow the Persistent Reserve option to be set per virtual volume. This may be set on the Virtual Volume Properties dialog box.
• Do not perform unnecessary full mirror recoveries following a storage server crash for virtual volumes that do not need to be recovered. Improve event log messages for this scenario.

Powerful Migration Capability - Transporter for SANmelody & SANsymphony

SANmelody & SANsymphony Transporter Option

Transporter Presentation and Migrqation Information
Key points:
1. Fastest and most general way to migrate/import Windows images, including the boot drive, between dissimilar physical or virtual platforms without waiting for lengthy disk‐to‐disk copies or error prone conversions.See Transporter Presentation (includes animations so view in slideshow mode).
2. A one time cost option for SANmelody or SANsymphony platforms - thereafter unlimited migrations.
3. Doesn’t modify original disk images on source machine to avoid irreversible migrations

What about Thin Provisioning and Space Reclamation?

Sneak preview - The new update releases for SANmelody and SANsymphony scheduled for December 2008 will include a new utility for Thin Provisioning Space Reclamation.

For a sneak preview see Thin Provisioning and Space Reclamation

VMware Integration Toolkit - Virtual Center Plug-in

The first release of the documentation is now available. Click Here: Help Doc for VMware Integration Toolkit - Virtual Center Plug-in

VMware Virtual Center Integration Plugin & Toolkit and Harmony Launcher

See post on the User Forum: http://www.datacore.com/forum/thread/298/sanharmony-and-vmware-toolkit.aspx
The VMware Integration Toolkit and Harmony launcher software and help docs are now available through requests directed to DataCore partners (who can access the software through the Partner Portal/SANvanatage site). The software is now available for partners to download and distribute.
Brief overviews follow:
DataCore VMware Integration Toolkit VMware Virtual Center Plug-in Presentation
The presentation link below previews the new VMware Virtual Center Plug-in. VMware Integration Toolkit and Virtual Center Plug-in
The DataCore VMware Integration Toolkit aids in the integration of DataCore storage services and management applications and the virtualization world of VMware Infrastructure (VI) Client. Tools in the toolkit automate the discovery of ESX hosts and virtual machines, adding them as application servers in the SAN, and the configuration of adapters and channels. Providing storage resources and monitoring them is conveniently provided by links in the snap-in to SANsymphony or SANmelody tools. The DataCore VMware Integration Toolkit provides tools to remotely monitor VMware Infrastructure Client via connection to VirtualCenters. The toolkit provides storage configuration, allocation, and monitoring from one convenient location to aid in the administration of virtual storage and virtual machines. The DataCore VMware Integration Toolkit includes two features: the DataCore Plug-in for VMware Infrastructure Client and the VMware Infrastructure Snap-in.

Harmony Overview - a Framework (Launch pad) for Adding New Storage Capabilities
Harmony has been developed as a framework (a launch pad) to make it convenient to supply new software capabilities for SANmelody and SANsymphony platforms. The basic Harmony framework is made available for DataCore customers via DataCore authorized partners. Harmony software integrates and delivers storage services and management applications from within a single Microsoft Management Console (MMC) framework. The Harmony framework allows new capabilities, like the VMware Integration Toolkit and forthcoming toolkits for other virtual server management systems, to be easily and rapidly integrated and made available to DataCore Partners. Partners can select which capability or "plug-in" is needed and add it to the SANharmony framework. The new Harmony framework delivers powerful storage services and management from within a simple-to-use MMC snap-in environment. Standard Microsoft Windows services and tools, Windows File Server Management services and tools, and DataCore SAN management services and tools have been conveniently provided under one umbrella in the Harmony Unified Storage Management Console.

OpenBench Labs: SANmelody Analysis & Performance Report

New SANmelody Report - OpenBench Labs Performance Report
Author: Jack Fegreus, Ph.D.Managing Director OpenBench Labs
Eliminating Storage-Related Disruptions and Slow Downs via Storage Virtualization
Download the full report at: http://www.datacore.com/forum/thread/287/new-sanmelody-report---openbench-labs-performance-report.aspx
OpenBench Labs Test Briefing:
SANmelody Storage Virtualization Software
1) SANmelody consolidates resources and virtualizes storage at the disk-block level: Logical blocks are served from tiered storage pools that can be based on such characteristics as drive performance or dataavailability.
2) MMC Snap-in provides a unified single-pane-of-glass management for all storage resources: With storage resource management IT's biggest cost driver, SANmelody provides the means to manage heterogeneous storage resources centrally rather than as isolated devices.
3) HA and DR made practical: IT is no longer constrained to use identical hardware and can mix and match servers and storage at their disposal to assemble a highly-available storage infrastructure that also covers disaster recovery needs.
4) Dynamic virtual disk pools support thin provisioning: SANmelody efficiently automates thin provisioning across an entire SAN by consuming virtual disk blocks only when non-zero data is written by application servers rather than when virtual volumes are assigned.
5) SANmelody caching improves throughput: Running Iometer, SANmelody caching boosted I/O throughput by upwards of 33%.

Volume Shadow Copy Services VSS 3.1 and MPIO 3.0 - Supports Windows 2008 and 32/ 64bit

Multipath I/O
MPIO 3.0 is released and available today. It includes support for Windows 2008 on x86 - on x32 or x64 servers. Microsoft clusters are also supported.

Volume Shadow Copy Services
Likewise, Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) 3.1 is released.

Release notes are available for review on the support site:
http://datacore.com/support/support_home.asp

SANmaestro 2.0.2 released

An updated version of SANmaestro 2.0.2 is released and now available - SANmaestro versions are available for both SANmelody and SANsymphony. For more information on SANmaestro visit: http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANmaestro.asp

With SANmaestro software you can:
-Collect system performance and utilization metrics across many systems in real-time
-Analyze historical data accumulated over long periods (up to 2 years)
-Chart, tabulate and analyze selected metrics with spreadsheet simplicity and flexibility to assist in visualizing trends, hot spots and system historical behaviour
-Perform "what if" analysis
-Develop customized reports and charts with SANmaestro's extensible development toolkit - A simple-to-use dynamic spreadsheet with an integrated graphics editor.
-Export historical data to 3rd party tools and network management frameworks for further analysis, processing or audit reports.
-Output may be directed to custom billing and/or charge-back applications

SANsymphony on VMware HCL Certification

See page 7 of the latest VMware Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_san_guide.pdf

DataCore SANmelody Testing - New OpenBench Labs Report

...We fully expected to see some loss in throughput at the virtual disk server due to the inherent overhead of our topology; however, what we encountered was a measurably significant drop in I/O workload at the storage array as a sizeable number of read requests were satisfied out of SANmelody’s cache. Using 8KB random read requests, we were able to handle 50,000 I/O requests per second (IOPS)...
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/VSM-Labs/DataCore-SAN-Melody/-2.html

VMware Virtual Center Plug-in Presentation

Presentation delivered at Storage Expo previews the new VMware Virtual Center Plug-in. Release is expected in November. Stay tuned for more...
http://www.datacore.com/forum/thread/237/vmware-virtual-center-plug-in-storage-expo-presentation.aspx

Sneak Preview - Powerful Migration Capability - Transporter for SANmelody & SANsymphony

SANmelody & SANsymphony Transporter Option

Fast and most general way to import Windows images, including the boot drive, between dissimilar physical or virtual platforms without waiting for lengthy disk‐to‐disk copies or error prone conversions.

See Sneak Preview Presentation (includes animations so view in slideshow mode) from Storage Expo.

The DataCore Software Community User Forum is now live!

DataCore has just activated a new DataCore Software Community User Forum: http://www.datacore.com/forum/forum.aspx

From the DataCore web site, you can also link and enter the forum - Links are located under the General Resources, the Support landing page or Blogs & Communities button on lower left side of Home page.

Please check out the site and help pass the word on to other DataCore users - let's get everyone participating and make this the best user forum and information site possible.

VMware Virtual Center Plug-in & Transporter Option

A new flyer prepared for Storage Expo provides screen shots and overview information.
A PDF is available at: http://www.datacore.com/forum/attachments/10142008153454_SNW_preview_VI_Transporter_7Oct08_(2).pdf

DataCore storage virtualization & Citrix's 'XenApp-optimized' XenServer 5

http://vmblog.com/archive/2008/10/14/datacore-storage-virtualization-and-citrix-s-xenapp-optimized-xenserver-5.aspx

DataCore's SANsymphony™ and SANmelody™ products have been certified on Citrix’s newest XenServer 5 release as virtual SAN appliances, as well as on both standard servers and blades. With XenServer 5, Citrix has optimized Citrix XenApp performance on XenServer virtual machines. According to Citrix, this enables XenApp workloads to be virtualized with as little as 7% overhead and as many as 73% more users than XenApp workloads virtualized with competing products. Citrix XenApp (formerly Citrix Presentation Server) is used by more than 100 million users and 99% of the Fortune Global 500.

DataCore Latest Updates, Tech Bulletins and Releases

Customer Support has added the links on the main page:
http://www.datacore.com/support/support_home.asp
Update 1 for SANmelody was recently released, some info & latest post on the user forum: http://www.datacore.com/forum/thread/8/sanmelody-2-0-3-psp-3-.aspx

DataCore Transporter for SANmelody & SANsymphony

Time Saving Migration – Transport System Images between Physical and Virtual Machines Quickly and Automatically in VMware, Citrix and Microsoft Virtual Environments

At VMworld 2008, DataCore announced a new migration capability for its SANmelody and SANsymphony software.
Availability is expected at end of October/early November. Pricing = $998.

Migrating disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems has always been a difficult and time consuming task involving lengthy backups and restores followed by complicated format conversions. James E. Price III, Vice President, Product and Channel Marketing, DataCore Software, notes, “Unlike inferior alternatives, DataCore takes advantage of its intrinsic ability to generalize virtual disks to make source images from one Windows environment immediately available to a dissimilar physical or virtual platform.” The migration takes place in background without modifying the original source, avoiding potentially irreversible migrations.

These new and advanced capabilities have been packaged as a $998 “Transporter” option to SANmelody and SANsymphony software licenses. Transporter can be used to perform an unlimited number of migrations. Transporter is the quickest and most general way to import Windows images, including the boot drive, between dissimilar physical or virtual platforms without waiting for lengthy disk-to-disk copies or error prone conversions.

VMware SAN Compatibility Guide Certification -Updates DataCore

VMware SAN Compatibility Guide Certification – DataCore High-Availability and Automatic Failover
The latest release of DataCore SANmelody software has been certified with the newest release of VMware ESX Server 3.x. The certification covers base iSCSI connectivity as well as the more rigorous automatic storage port failover scenarios required in high-availability configurations.
Links and further information are located at: http://www.datacore.com/case_studies/casestudies_vmware.asp

VMware Virtual Center Integration - New DataCore Storage Management Plug-in

At VMworld, DataCore introduced a new SAN and storage management plug-in for VMware Virtual Center. Availability is expected at end of October. Pricing = no charge.

The DataCore VMware Virtual Center Plugin gets installed on the Virtual Center Client system. This plugin enables the Virtual Center user to access a DataCore storage management control center for SANsymphony or SANmelody. The control center includes a Vmware Virtual View Snapin that accesses Virtual Center and displays VMware host and virtual machine information. This snapin also allows the user to auto configure the VMware host(s) or VM(s) into the SANsymphony or SANmelody storage configuration so that DataCore Virtual LUN's can be easily delivered to the Vmware Host(s) or VM(s).The plug-in is being made available as a no cost option for DataCore SANmelody and SANsymphony users via authorized DataCore partners who can provide expertize on implementation.

The storage management plug-in gives system administrators the option to allocate and manage capacity from their DataCore virtualized SANs directly to their ESX host machines or virtual machines from the same console they use to control other VMware virtualization parameters. It also accesses a powerful and extensive DataCore management control center for SANsymphony and SANmelody that meets the needs and objectives of even the most demanding virtual and physical storage consumers.

DataCore Updates SANsymphony and Traveller CDP

Get more details & technical info at: http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_070207.asp

DataCore Software has updated its SANsymphony enterprise-class, open storage networking platform and its Traveller CDP (continuous data protection) add-on capability. The new update releases are available immediately.

Notable Enhancements: New 8GB Fibre Channel SAN Support, Faster CDP and Replication, Better Usability, Improved Thin Provisioning Monitoring, Live Data Migration Services and Greater Virtual Server Integration

Announcement info release is at: http://www.datacore.com/pressroom/pr_live.asp?date=08/25/2008

Some highlights:

1. With this update DataCore has qualified its dual-mode driver solution for SANsymphony enabling both host initiator and target connectivity support for the latest Emulex and Q-logic high speed 8Gb/s HBAs. These new HBAs offer twice the performance of today's leading products, providing the I/O scalability necessary to support an increase in the number of applications running on a virtualized server.

2. Over-subscription monitoring services for thin provisioning. Customers want to know while they are creating and configuring thin provisioned virtual volumes if they are about to oversubscribe in terms of physical disk space. This enhancement has been requested by customers to enable them to be more cognizant of physical usage while they are configuring their systems as opposed to when they are running hot that they have oversubscribed. Thereby they will know in advance of hitting the thin provisioned pool threshold about to be out of disk space early notification wall that they will need to add more physical disks as opposed to finding out after pool space has been actually allocated. While SANsymphony already has the ability to provide threshold alerts for growth rates and level of storage, this new service is built into the SAN configuration manager interfaces and shows users what they have requested against the physical amount of storage before hitting a threshold alert under actual use conditions. This enhancement goes a long way to showing users just how much of the physical resource they have requested to use, as opposed to having already physically-used.

3. Thin provisioning Hot-Swap migration. This is the ability to migrate data on physical disk devices within a thin provisioning pool from one device to another and then hot swap (replace) that device. If you imagine a storage pool with existing devices, the thin provisioning migration facility is of great value when it comes to adding new disks or storage arrays to the pool. This facility enables users to take the data that resides on existing disks and migrate it to the new added disks. The old devices can remain in the pool for new uses, or they can be removed from the pool and repurposed for other uses in the system. Either way, system and network administrators need not worry about impacting high availability, disrupting the application servers, or interfering with virtual machines that have access to the data.

4. Live data migration. Live Data Migration enables an administrator to move data (Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, etc) to any other storage device under management of SANsymphony in real-time. Data can come from a disk volume (a logical unit number or LUN) on any storage array IBM, EMC, Hitachi, HP, etc. The real benefit with these services is that the Live Data Migration provides users with the ability to move data from any platform to any other storage device, live, and to do so non-disruptively. Let's say a company has an application server and it is being fed by multiple LUNs from an IBM server. When DataCore is brought into the picture, the DataCore system gives an administrator the ability to literally take the IBM LUN, and serve the volume to the DataCore system, and SANsymphony will pass it straight back to the original owning application server. By using DataCore's virtual volume management services, those volumes can be mirrored to another SANsymphony system providing the enterprise with all of the benefits DataCore is known for: data is mirrored, system speed is increased by way of DataCore caching algorithms, administrators have the advantages of being able to work with thin-provisioned volumes, etc. All of the inherent capabilities and benefits of SANsymphony can be available to an enterprise, if it simply passes the volumes containing the live application data through DataCore's SANsymphony, said John Bocskor, vice president of product development, DataCore Software. When that data volume is passed through SANsymphony it is simply remapped to the application server so the server can immediately run the server applications. While the application server is running DataCore's software adds value to those volumes ? Caching performance, High Availability, Snapshot, AIM, etc.

SANmelody 2.03 (PSP-3) is Available

SANmelody 2.0.3 (PSP-3) SPS3 is available for download.
Release Info can be found at: http://sanmelody.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/sanmelody.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1227&p_created=1175171035&p_sid=esUuKWej&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzIsMzImcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9c2FubWVsb2R5IDIuMC4z&p_li=&p_topview=1
Overview and Highlights as Posted on SANmelody Tunes: http://sanmelody.blogspot.com/2008/06/sanmelody-203-psp-3.html[/url]
Upgrade Guide: http://sanmelody.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/sanmelody.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_adp.php?p_sid=0&p_tbl=9&p_id=1312&p_faqid=1312&p_created=1214418577

NOTE: Make sure you read the Release notes and upgrade guide as there are specific tasks that need to be performed to complete the upgrade successfully! If you have any concerns contact DataCore Support before proceeding.

Pre-requisites:1. You MUST have your SANmelody server licenses activated.2. You MUST have 2.0.2 implement before upgrading, you can not upgrade from 2.0.13. Create an "emergency repair disk!"

New Features:
- SANmelody 2.0 PSP3 is compatible with DataCore VSS 3.0.
- A new snap-in tool has been added. Disk Path Manager shows all the physical disks seen by portsmanaged by SANmelody. Refer to the Help topic Disk Path Manager topic for more information.
- New application server types have been added which may be selected when adding application servers to the configuration. New types include Citrix XenServer and Virtual Iron.

- Added the following performance objects/counters that may be used with Microsoft Performance Monitor:
* New disk performance object, DataCore Disk, and associated counters (If using SANmaestro,add this object to the collection set.)
* New performance counters have been added for DataCore Snapshot.
* Performance objects and counters have been added for SANmaestro use: DataCore DomainController, DataCore Domains, and DataCore Mappings. (If using SANmaestro, add theseobjects to the collection set.)
* Refer to the DataCore Performance Objects topic for more information on these objects.

- A new utility has been added to monitor disks for long I/O times. Refer to the Help topic Monitoring forLong I/O Metrics for instructions on how to use this utility.
- Group selections for virtual volumes are available. Group changes can be made in the Virtual VolumeProperty dialog box. Refer to the Help topic Changing Multiple Virtual Volume Properties for details.
- AIM configuration files and registry entries have been added to the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD). Note:The ERD stores the AIM destination files under "AIM\Destination" and they must be restored manually tothe AIM destination folder. Refer to the Help topics Creating an Emergency Repair Disk and RestoringConfiguration from ERD for details.
- 8 GB HBA support has been added for QLogic QLE2560/2562 and Emulex LPe12000/12002.
- Firmware for QLogic 24XX has been upgraded to revision 4.3.0.
- Improved the usability of AIM Source Manager and AIM Destination Manager menu items.- AIM performance enhancements.Communication services between storage servers have been enhanced.
- Map to Local Server operations can be performed on standard mirror virtual volumes.
- Clarified the dialog box message when an Apply of the configuration fails to indicate that it could be dueto both servers not having the same logon settings.
- More Snapshot information is displayed about virtual volumes. A column has been added identifying if thevirtual volume is a snapshot source, destination, or MapStore.
- Snapshot enhancements include not allocating resources until snapshot relationships are enabled andsimplified MapStore implementation.
- Override option is included in specific dialog boxes (Set Mirror, Replace Virtual Volume, and CreateSnapshot Set) to allow the mixing of dynamic and static disks in mirrors and snapshot relationships.Refer to the Help topic Allow Mixed Static and Dynamic Mirrors for details.
- Updated online Help file for fixes, omissions, and errors.