http://www.prosecurityzone.com/Customisation/News/IT_Security/Backup_Data_Recovery_and_Disaster_Recovery/High_performance_and_availability_from_VMware_shared_storage.asp SANmelody and SANsymphony from DataCore provide virtualized storage solutions for maximizing availability in VMware virtual infrastructures
ENTnews: 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. and Network Storage Server from FalconStor Software have been positioned by vendors as virtualization solutions.
SearchStorageChannel.com: Remote data replication: Hardware vs. host vs. backup replication - George Crump
Solution provider takeaway: For customers that are shoring up their disaster recovery strategy with remote data replication, storage solution providers can guide them toward the right replication approach -- hardware- vs. host vs. backup-based replication -- by examining a number of key factors.
...An alternative approach is to use a storage virtualization appliance like those available from DataCore and Falconstor to handle the remote data replication services. A storage virtualization appliance allows the customer to replicate from anything to anything. This is an ideal solution to recommend to customers if you don't happen to provide the storage that they already have in place. They can keep their current solution, and you can provide the virtualization appliance as well as the target storage on the remote site.
Using a storage virtualization appliance also drives down the storage costs in the remote DR site. You can provide a lower-performing system with fewer higher-capacity drives, for example. But be careful not to go to cheap. In the event of an actual disaster, your customer may have to run their production environment on this storage. Find out what the customer's tolerance is for running the production environment in degraded mode, and make hardware choices based on their level of comfort.
Finally, a storage virtualization appliance gives you the option to participate in the build-out of storage in the production site. If the customer wants to extend the use of the storage virtualization appliance beyond just remote data replication, the appliance often can provide the same functionality as the storage system itself. Features like logical unit number (LUN) allocation, snapshots and thin provisioning can all be handled by the appliance, freeing the customer to use hardware of their choosing.
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