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.