Washington Archives Management (WAM) is a 50-person archiving service that stores, archives and manages paper records.
A hardware failure leads to a fresh start on the storage front
“Two ESX servers had WAM’s environment virtualized onto them, but the ESX servers had no shared storage,” notes Steve Parlee, Senior Systems Consultant, Moose Logic. “The two servers were running local, internal storage – and one had a direct-attached drive shelf. This was not a very convenient set-up because we could not, for example, VMotion the guests between servers in case of a failure.”
Moving the virtualized guests to the other server (in case of a hardware failure) was difficult because there was no shared storage – no SAN was in place, which is necessary to “motion” the virtual guests. As fate would have it, the firm did experience one ESX server failure and therefore was forced to run on only one ESX server. Without redundancy in the network, if any other component had failed, Washington Archives Management would have been “out of business” until it was fixed.
WAM considered two options. The firm could either go back to where it had been with the two VMware ESX servers and simply try to become more stable, or it could do some forward-thinking and put in place a SAN that would make the consequences of hardware failure a thing of the past. “We could have just replaced the ESX server and stayed on the path we were – risking future hardware failures that would yet again impact business operations,” says Parlee. “The choice Washington Archives Management made was to go with a shared storage approach and to use DataCore as the foundation of that whole strategy.”
Utilizing XenServer and shared, network storage from DataCore– a “no-brainer”
Moose Logic advised WAM to deploy DataCore because it allows the firm to replicate in real time their storage between two nodes. In addition, Moose Logic replaced the ESX servers with Citrix XenServers. With the XenServers, Moose Logic was able to utilize something called multi-pathing. “With muti-pathing, we have been able to take down half of WAM’s network for maintenance – without impacting day-to-day operations,” comments Parlee.
“Because of the shared storage and the fact that the storage is virtual, WAM now has the ability to ‘XenMotion’ the guests back and forth between two different pieces of hardware,” continues Parlee. “The other notable capability is high availability. If any of the Citrix XenServers were to crash, it will automatically restart on the other server. And what makes this possible is the back-end, shared storage.”
What accounts for the storage being “virtual” lies in the fact that DataCore enables a system administrator to take a “volume” (i.e. a piece of disk space for storage) from each of the two SANmelody nodes and mirror them. When these volumes are mirrored together, this creates a single “virtual volume” which is what is then presented to the application server (e.g. XenServer, Windows Server, etc.). By doing this, the application servers only see the one instance of the “virtual volume,” but in reality that virtual volume is tied to the mirrored volumes. It is this key feature – inherent to SANmelody – that enables the system to failover.
A virtualized IT environment – radically simple, high availability storage virtualization solution
The redundant SANmelody SAN servers that are currently in operation on the back-end are mirrored to each other using synchronous replication. “It is all about the redundancy – the fault-tolerance for failover,” explains Parlee. “We can lose up to three components – two servers and a switch – and everything keeps running. You see, either one of the SANmelody servers can present storage. Only one is presenting it at any time, but if one goes down, without impacting the environment whatsoever, the system seamlessly switches over to SANmelody number two and just keeps right on running.”
Summarizes Radford, “The bigger picture here is that technology like this has previously been prohibitively expensive for a small to mid-size business customer. Sure, large companies have been deploying virtual servers and virtual SANs, but they have had to pay a huge price for doing so. DataCore’s SANmelody enables the small business to get this kind of virtualization environment built and to do so without paying for Fibre Channel or paying over $100,000 for the SAN alone, which is what has made having a SAN unattainable for a large number of customers – before DataCore paved the way.”
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Citrix XenServer for Free; What does server virtualization for free mean for storage virtualization?
Opinion, more server virtualization projects will feed storage virtualization deployments. Is this a trend? Is server virtualization becoming a commodity?
The battle at the virtual server market is heating up and these are the questions being asked. So what just happened? Citrix is now making XenServer free since it has had a hard time making inroads against the giant VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V initiatives and pricing (see articles below). A benefit of the industry cost battle is that it helps fuel more virtualization projects…which obviously stresses the need for shared storage SANs but the high cost of the SAN (often the largest cost item - typically costing well over $75k) then becomes the major hurdle to virtualization deployments.
This virtualisation and consolidation of servers results in 2 major pain points - it concentrates I/O performance (slows it down) and since all the applications are running on fewer servers it magnifies the impact of interruptions on business continuity -the 'All the eggs in one basket' impact: InformationWeek - Virtualization Driving SMB/SME Storage . This battle at the virtual server level bodes well for DataCore high-availability SAN software solutions… since DataCore overcomes these critical pain points. Citrix XensServer is now Free (XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools, etc. ). Check out this overview: http://www.virtualization.info/2009/02/citrix-xenserver-is-now-free-xencenter.html
The battle at the virtual server market is heating up and these are the questions being asked. So what just happened? Citrix is now making XenServer free since it has had a hard time making inroads against the giant VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V initiatives and pricing (see articles below). A benefit of the industry cost battle is that it helps fuel more virtualization projects…which obviously stresses the need for shared storage SANs but the high cost of the SAN (often the largest cost item - typically costing well over $75k) then becomes the major hurdle to virtualization deployments.
This virtualisation and consolidation of servers results in 2 major pain points - it concentrates I/O performance (slows it down) and since all the applications are running on fewer servers it magnifies the impact of interruptions on business continuity -the 'All the eggs in one basket' impact: InformationWeek - Virtualization Driving SMB/SME Storage . This battle at the virtual server level bodes well for DataCore high-availability SAN software solutions… since DataCore overcomes these critical pain points. Citrix XensServer is now Free (XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools, etc. ). Check out this overview: http://www.virtualization.info/2009/02/citrix-xenserver-is-now-free-xencenter.html
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
DataCore & VMWare Storage VMotion - Solving Troublesome Migration Problems
An interesting day in the life story...submitted today from one of the DataCore Technical Account Managers in the UK...
March always presents an interesting time in local government; the end of the financial year sees the opportunity for the IT managers to get the projects that they've always wanted to do out of the way. This was no different for a large hospital system client that I visited this morning. They have purchased DataCore and were at the stage of the project that most IT Managers dread... Attempting to calculate the downtime and risk of the implementation of a brand new SAN environment.
Lists of application servers had been drawn up, tiers had been assigned, timescales were mooted and several small conversations were taking place amongst the people involved as to what needed to go first and what could be coped without when. The migration was to move from CX300 hardware to a DataCore SANsymphony environment housed upon large storage servers. Initially a 2 node configuration, with a primary production SAN and a DR SAN housed 8 miles away at the sister hospital, the purpose of the project was to provide an initial DR strategy and Storage expansion for a virtualised environment, culminating in the implementation of a Microsoft Sharepoint environment to improve the efficiency and end user experience within the PCT.
So after about 15 minutes of discussion I asked what version of ESX they were on... 3.0.1 came the reply. This quickly turned into a discussion regarding the upgrade path of VMWare from 3.0.1 to 3.5 and when the ease of this became apparent the solution became a no-brainer. Use Storage VMotion! By provisioning the DataCore Virtual Volumes to the ESX hosts as datastores, we can then Storage VMotion from one datastore to the other! There will be NO downtime at all! Having gone through the idea in a little more detail it became obvious that it was watertight and what was a potentially awkward, convoluted meeting with tight schedules became an easy discussion about just how flexible the solution was.
The icing was the cake was the point at which we decided that we could "chuck a 4GB HBA into the storage server" for the time that the 3rd node is to be implemented... "It'll just mean we can bang it in without any downtime again..." was the final comment on the matter.
March always presents an interesting time in local government; the end of the financial year sees the opportunity for the IT managers to get the projects that they've always wanted to do out of the way. This was no different for a large hospital system client that I visited this morning. They have purchased DataCore and were at the stage of the project that most IT Managers dread... Attempting to calculate the downtime and risk of the implementation of a brand new SAN environment.
Lists of application servers had been drawn up, tiers had been assigned, timescales were mooted and several small conversations were taking place amongst the people involved as to what needed to go first and what could be coped without when. The migration was to move from CX300 hardware to a DataCore SANsymphony environment housed upon large storage servers. Initially a 2 node configuration, with a primary production SAN and a DR SAN housed 8 miles away at the sister hospital, the purpose of the project was to provide an initial DR strategy and Storage expansion for a virtualised environment, culminating in the implementation of a Microsoft Sharepoint environment to improve the efficiency and end user experience within the PCT.
So after about 15 minutes of discussion I asked what version of ESX they were on... 3.0.1 came the reply. This quickly turned into a discussion regarding the upgrade path of VMWare from 3.0.1 to 3.5 and when the ease of this became apparent the solution became a no-brainer. Use Storage VMotion! By provisioning the DataCore Virtual Volumes to the ESX hosts as datastores, we can then Storage VMotion from one datastore to the other! There will be NO downtime at all! Having gone through the idea in a little more detail it became obvious that it was watertight and what was a potentially awkward, convoluted meeting with tight schedules became an easy discussion about just how flexible the solution was.
The icing was the cake was the point at which we decided that we could "chuck a 4GB HBA into the storage server" for the time that the 3rd node is to be implemented... "It'll just mean we can bang it in without any downtime again..." was the final comment on the matter.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
10 Thin Provisioning Storage Options for SMBs
Another SMB, RealTime Services Group Inc., which provides service and support to small staffing firms, has been using thin provisioning for two years. Jeff Sabotin, director of IT, selected DataCore Software Corp.'s SANmelody software for his 12 servers at an initial cost of $25,000. Prior to the installation, some of RealTime's servers had plenty of storage available and some sorely needed more.
"Expanding and adding partitions took a lot of time, so thin provisioning was a big deal for us," Sabotin said. "We're a small shop, and we don't have a ton of money."
10 Thin Provisioning Storage Options for SMBs
Thin provisioning makes a lot of sense for SMBs. By delivering
rewards such as improved storage utilization, lower costs and
simplified management, thin provisioning appears to be the right tool
for these tough times.
To help you evaluate the viability of thin provisioning, our
editorial team has assembled this market overview, with specific
deployment examples and descriptions of 10 products that are shipping
now:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/6149719/1283994
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Storage Managment; Replication; New Features for Datacore SANmelody and SANsymphony
High performance and availability from VMware shared storage
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.
Friday, March 6, 2009
The Value of Storage Virtualization Software
..."But at the end of the day, server virtualization is popular because it helps IT organizations get more out of their existing hardware investments. Right now, the only thing that does that in the realm of storage virtualization is a software-only approach to creating virtual pools out of existing storage investments."
http://blogs.eweek.com/masked_intentions/content/storage/the_value_of_storage_virtualization_software.html
The folks at DataCore, which makes software that allows IT organization to turn existing storage arrays from multiple vendors into a shared pool of disk storage, have two theories about why storage virtualization is evolving much more slowly than server virtualization.
The first theory is that most storage hardware vendors require customers to buy new storage arrays that support storage virtualization. In these difficult economic times, it's hard to make an argument that basically says an IT organization should spend a lot of additional capital now in order to save money later.
The second theory is that when IT organizations introduce storage virtualization, they are worried about performance penalties. Too often there are database and e-mail applications that don't perform so well when virtualization is introduced. To specifically deal with storage virtualization performance issues, DataCore is now adding 1TB of cache to a new 64-bit implementation of its SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 software .
Thursday, March 5, 2009
DataCore's 'solid state SANs' with mega-caches to make storage virtualisation performance soar
http://www.it-director.com/enterprise/content.php?cid=11109
Enterprises with virtual environments should be intrigued by DataCore Software's developments for its venerable software-with upcoming SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualisation releases due for general availability around month end. These include a massive boost to SAN-wide performance and improvements to high availability...
Enterprises with virtual environments should be intrigued by DataCore Software's developments for its venerable software-with upcoming SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 storage virtualisation releases due for general availability around month end. These include a massive boost to SAN-wide performance and improvements to high availability...
Both SANmelody and SANsymphony will now support for 64-bit "mega-caches" providing up to one terabyte (TB) of cache memory per node; so performance will scale linearly with each node added to the fabric. It means that the entire SAN operation for many virtual machines can be kept in SAN-wide caches avoiding the vast majority of disk I-O.
"This is a solid state SAN," James Price, vice president channel and product marketing told me, adding that this would dwarf anything in the market. "There will be a 600-1200% performance increase."
He explained that while the number one bottleneck for virtualisation was memory (CPU cycles and pure capacity), next came storage performance-limited by I-O to virtualised disk. So the need was to scale and deliver I-O at native speeds or more. This boost should be worth watching!
Previously DataCore has offered up to 20 GB of cache, which Price said had been competitive, but, driven by increasing virtualisation, 16-32 GB cache would be a common requirement with a lot of customers. That's a long way from the TB maximum so provides oodles of expansion for those who find they need more...
In fact, it looks like DataCore is thinking especially of large enterprises and cloud storage environments. It refers to immense storage pools which will be in constant flux-and the product enhancements have been fully integrated into DataCore's high availability solutions for Citrix disk farms. DataCore is claiming maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to parts of the storage infrastructure can occur without application disruption.
There's also optional 'before- and after- the fact' thin provisioning of virtual disks for SANmelody and SANsymphony to avoid tying up physical capacity. Since virtual machines typically use only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them, the software will automatically reclaim thinly provisioned space previously occupied in the background after applications or file systems zero it out. So the SAN gives back capacity temporarily needed to optimise resource usage.
DataCore's "Transporter" migration facility is another new option designed to cut out long backups and restores caused by complicated format conversions. It migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems.
Finally (for now because there is more), a re-architecting of SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 has been needed to fully exploit the power and scalability of 64-bit Windows Server 2008-both virtual and physical platforms-to provide universal storage controllers. Everything in these solutions will now support x64 technology.
So it all sounds good but the proof will be in the eating; only a few weeks to wait.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Storage Virtualization Software
Storage Virtualization Software
Virtually everything hinges on storage. Server and desktop consolidation, in particular, place extraordinary demands on it. Too often, disks slow down, interrupt or endanger these centralized IT operations not because they are poorly built, but because they are physically constrained. Although VMware virtualization helps you to overcome similar limitations in processors, when it comes to advanced functions such as workload migration, load balancing, fail-over and disaster recovery, it is completely dependent on highly available (HA) shared storage. You'll be shocked at the high hardware costs and major overhaul generally proposed to put such a storage infrastructure in place.
DataCore's storage virtualization solutions deliver a more practical HA solution to VMware shared storage requirements. They abstract your storage into idealized, virtual disks akin to virtual machines. The software pools and mirrors disk blocks across available devices, despite differences in make and model. In the process, it speeds up I/O response and throughput using extensive SAN-wide caching. This lets you take optimum advantage of VMware's full suite of capabilities without hesitation. A plug-in for VMware's Virtual Infrastructure Client allows you to non-disruptively provision, share, clone, replicate and expand virtual disks among physical servers and VMs. DataCore(tm) yields the highest availability, fastest performance and fullest utilization from your storage assets, making it an essential element of your VMware configurations.
Solution Highlights
* Makes business continuity and disaster recovery practical for virtual servers, virtual desktops and general IT consolidation
* Eliminates storage-related disruptions due to inevitable maintenance, reconfiguration, upgrades, expansion and failures
* Speeds up application performance by removing disk I/O bottlenecks
* Maximizes use of available disk capacity
* Centralizes and automates storage administration despite variations in equipment
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Server plus Storage Virtualization
Server plus Storage Virtualization [From Jon Toigo's Blog]
I am not a huge fan of the former, but I like the latter. And when I stack up two together, I want my servers virtualized with Virtual Iron (for reasons of cost and stability and functionality) and I want my fabric virtualized with DataCore SAN Sympony - because it freakin' works.
That's why I was delighted to see a press release today that talked about combo low pricing for both kits. And it is why I am reprinting some of the foo here. Worth a look... http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=2247
Monday, March 2, 2009
DataCore - New releases for server virtualization support
...SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 will ship next month with 64-bit software architectures and new features for virtual server users.
SANsymphony virtualizes enterprise storage-area networks (SANs), while SANmelody is aimed at Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI SANs up to 32 TB. Both provide management features such as virtual disk pooling, synchronized mirroring for high availability, load balancing and thin provisioning.
The native 64-bit controller software lets SANmelody and SANsymphony support a large cache on the physical server. Previous releases were limited to a 20 GB cache, but the new versions can theoretically support up to 1 TB.
A terabyte of cache "is at the far edge of reality for most normal sites today," said Jack Fegreus, CEO at Southborough, Mass.-based openBench Labs, a consultant and product testing firm. But a large site with big servers and a lot of virtual machines (VMs) might have 256 GB of cache. In a few years time, given Moore's Law, 1 TB of cache may well be average, Fegreus said.
Fegreus said the increased cache will allow for denser consolidation of servers into virtual machines, and could improve the performance of VM backups by minimizing I/O to disk.
Another new feature for virtual server support is the DataCore Transporter Option for SANmelody and SANsymphony, which performs conversion between physical and virtual servers. This utility allows a server to be converted from a physical Windows box to a Microsoft Corp. Hyper-V image, then to a VMware ESX image, and then back to a logical unit number (LUN) mapped to a physical server.
...DataCore customer Themis Tokkaris, systems engineer at Tucson, Ariz.-based international pest control company Truly Nolen of America Inc., said he was looking for something that would convert his virtual machine images back to physical servers. "It's also an open idea," he said. "If I'm not happy with ESX in the future, I'm not stuck with it."
Also with the releases: Organizations running VMware ESX have the option of using a new free plug-in for VMware Inc.'s Virtual Infrastructure Client, which offers "cleaner visibility and easier-to-understand mappings and paths," according to James Price, DataCore's vice president of product and channel marketing.
Plus: The DataCore releases also add a way to reclaim free capacity on volumes using thin provisioning.
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1349040,00.html
SANsymphony virtualizes enterprise storage-area networks (SANs), while SANmelody is aimed at Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI SANs up to 32 TB. Both provide management features such as virtual disk pooling, synchronized mirroring for high availability, load balancing and thin provisioning.
The native 64-bit controller software lets SANmelody and SANsymphony support a large cache on the physical server. Previous releases were limited to a 20 GB cache, but the new versions can theoretically support up to 1 TB.
A terabyte of cache "is at the far edge of reality for most normal sites today," said Jack Fegreus, CEO at Southborough, Mass.-based openBench Labs, a consultant and product testing firm. But a large site with big servers and a lot of virtual machines (VMs) might have 256 GB of cache. In a few years time, given Moore's Law, 1 TB of cache may well be average, Fegreus said.
Fegreus said the increased cache will allow for denser consolidation of servers into virtual machines, and could improve the performance of VM backups by minimizing I/O to disk.
Another new feature for virtual server support is the DataCore Transporter Option for SANmelody and SANsymphony, which performs conversion between physical and virtual servers. This utility allows a server to be converted from a physical Windows box to a Microsoft Corp. Hyper-V image, then to a VMware ESX image, and then back to a logical unit number (LUN) mapped to a physical server.
...DataCore customer Themis Tokkaris, systems engineer at Tucson, Ariz.-based international pest control company Truly Nolen of America Inc., said he was looking for something that would convert his virtual machine images back to physical servers. "It's also an open idea," he said. "If I'm not happy with ESX in the future, I'm not stuck with it."
Also with the releases: Organizations running VMware ESX have the option of using a new free plug-in for VMware Inc.'s Virtual Infrastructure Client, which offers "cleaner visibility and easier-to-understand mappings and paths," according to James Price, DataCore's vice president of product and channel marketing.
Plus: The DataCore releases also add a way to reclaim free capacity on volumes using thin provisioning.
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1349040,00.html
Virtual Infrastructure Tutorial; Oracle rumor on buying Virtual Iron
Oracle apparently is gearing up for a virtualization play
http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/blogpost/4643500/
Katherine Egbert, an analyst at Jefferies & Company who closely follows Red Hat, says Oracle is apparently getting ready to acquire Virtual Iron, a virtual server and tools maker.
Virtual Infrastructure Tutorial
http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/virtualization/virtual-infrastructure.html
Virtual Infrastructure
Virtualization Market Impact
Virtualization often comes in the form of portable software which operates on basic Intel/AMD servers ...
DataCore software is a high end provider of virtualization storage software. This software is unique because it has radically changed the ways in which storage is managed, and it does this through usage of a software program which is highly innovative, which brings together services and functions, and combines them with both the agility and the savings of the hardware independence.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
DataCore Aims Major Software Enhancements at VMware Shared Storage Requirements
"VMware customers are demanding that the many storage-related interruptions they face while making metro-wide, virtual machine migration, failover and load balancing be eliminated. Solutions like those offered by DataCore are addressing these interruptions and are critical to making these tasks practical," said George Crump, senior analyst at Storage Switzerland.Visitors to VMworld Europe 2009 will be among the first to learn how new versions of DataCore SANmelody(tm) and SANsymphony(tm) storage virtualization solutions materialize into SAN-wide performance boosts, radically simple, high-availability, and optimum disk utilization for VMware Virtual Infrastructure customers. DataCore's new lineup of VMware Ready Certified(tm) solutions will be showcased at Europe's largest virtualization community in Cannes, France.
DataCore SANmelody and SANsymphony Support 64-bit "Mega Caches" Boost SAN-wide Performance
Leading the list of new features in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 are native 64-bit controller software with support for mega cache capacities. "In large scale, consolidated data storage, cache is king," commented James Price, vice president channel and product marketing, DataCore Software. "DataCore's solutions will now support up to a terabyte (TB) of cache. They dwarf anything in the market and scale linearly with each node that you add to the fabric." The entire working set of a large number of virtual machines can now be kept in SAN-wide cache for unprecedented performance. Behind the cache, VMware customers can grow their storage pools from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple petabytes.
Radically Simple, High-Availability for Non-Stop Storage Virtual Infrastructure Needless to say, storage pools of such immensity are in constant flux. With this in mind, the new product enhancements are fully integrated into DataCore's radically simple, high availability solutions for VMware. Only DataCore allows maintenance, upgrades, expansion, and failures to take place throughout portions of the storage infrastructure without disrupting applications. "VMware customers are demanding that the many storage-related interruptions they face while making metro-wide, virtual machine migration, failover and load balancing be eliminated. Solutions like those offered by DataCore are addressing these interruptions and are critical to making these tasks practical," said George Crump, senior analyst at Storage Switzerland.
Full Use: Efficient Space Reclamation for Thinly Provisioned Storage Both SANmelody and SANsymphony offer the choice to thinly provision virtual disks rather than tie up physical capacity when LUNs are first created. This is particularly desirable with virtual machines that generally consume only a small fraction of the total volume assigned to them. In the new releases, previously allocated or thinly provisioned space will be automatically reclaimed in the background after applications or file systems no longer need it. With this functionality, the SAN returns unused capacity that may have been temporarily needed for some operations and can now further optimize resource utilization.
Windows Server 2008-based, Universal Storage Controllers
Configuring DataCore software on x86/X64 Windows servers transforms them into universal storage controllers. ESX servers and virtual machines (VMs) needing storage, connect to the DataCore controllers using iSCSI or Fibre Channel. All of the popular operating systems, including Windows Server 2003, 2008, Unix, Linux, NetWare and MacOs can take advantage of DataCore's SAN-wide storage virtualization features. In small configurations, the DataCore controller is hosted on a VM as a virtual appliance alongside application VMs. The SAN is completely virtual needing no external storage. Larger configurations dedicate physical servers to this storage virtualization role and typically include both internal disk drives and external arrays. The new SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0 releases have been re-architected to exploit the power and scalability of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for either virtual or physical x86 and x64 platforms as universal storage controllers.
New Hypervisor Migration Support and Tighter Integration to VMware Virtual Center. DataCore's "Transporter" time saving migration facility is a new option in SANmelody 3.0 and SANsymphony 7.0. Transporter migrates disk images and workloads between different operating systems, hypervisors and storage subsystems - eliminating lengthy backups and restores due to complicated format conversions. In addition, a plug-in for VMware's Virtual Infrastructure Client is a no-charge option that allows administrators to non-disruptively provision, share, clone, replicate and expand virtual disks among physical servers and VMs.
Monday, February 23, 2009
What does server virtualization for free mean for storage virtualization?
Opinion, more server virtualization projects will feed storage virtualization.
Is server virtualization becoming a commodity?
The battle at the virtual server market is heating up and this is a question being asked. So what happened? Citrix is now making XenServer free since it has had a hard time making inroads against the giant VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V initiatives (see articles below).A benefit of the industry cost battle is that it helps fuel more virtualization projects…which obviously stresses the need for shared storage SANs and the high cost of the SAN (often the largest cost item - typically costing well over $75k). Implementing a SAN therefore becomes the major hurdle to virtualization deployments. This consolidation of servers results in 2 major pain points - it concentrates I/O performance (slows it down) and since all the applications are running on fewer servers it magnifies the impact of interruptions on business continuity -the 'All the eggs in one basket' impact: InformationWeek - Virtualization Driving SMB/SME Storage . This battle at the virtual server level bodes well for DataCore… since we overcome these critical pain points.Citrix XensServer is now Free (XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools, etc. )Check out this overview: http://www.virtualization.info/2009/02/citrix-xenserver-is-now-free-xencenter.html
Is server virtualization becoming a commodity?
The battle at the virtual server market is heating up and this is a question being asked. So what happened? Citrix is now making XenServer free since it has had a hard time making inroads against the giant VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V initiatives (see articles below).A benefit of the industry cost battle is that it helps fuel more virtualization projects…which obviously stresses the need for shared storage SANs and the high cost of the SAN (often the largest cost item - typically costing well over $75k). Implementing a SAN therefore becomes the major hurdle to virtualization deployments. This consolidation of servers results in 2 major pain points - it concentrates I/O performance (slows it down) and since all the applications are running on fewer servers it magnifies the impact of interruptions on business continuity -the 'All the eggs in one basket' impact: InformationWeek - Virtualization Driving SMB/SME Storage . This battle at the virtual server level bodes well for DataCore… since we overcome these critical pain points.Citrix XensServer is now Free (XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools, etc. )Check out this overview: http://www.virtualization.info/2009/02/citrix-xenserver-is-now-free-xencenter.html
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Case Story Feature: Volkswagen Unit Centralizes, Virtualizes Its Storage with DataCore SANmelody
DataCore's SANmelody lets the VW Financial Services unit provide storage from a central pool for all types of applications
http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=172103&WT.svl=news2_1
Despite a long series of ad campaigns in which it encouraged customers to "Think Small," Volkswagen in the U.K. was finding out that it needed to think big. The company's data storage requirements were growing exponentially. Email and database requirements were getting bigger all the time. Meanwhile, the company was moving to a blade server environment to keep its data center from being any bigger than it needed to be. The answer was to virtualize its storage.
Friday, February 20, 2009
High-Availability [Auto Failover & Auto Failback] - The DataCore advantage!
DataCore Storage Virtualization Enhances Server Virtualization
DataCore's application transparent high-availabilty and auto failover and failback capabilities slash downtime while protecting your critical business data.
DataCore's storage virtualization software insulates your virtual server environments from the adds, moves and changes in the physical disk configuration.
DataCore's ability to boost the performance of the disk subsystems helps overcome the sluggishness of concentrated I/O workloads.
DataCore helps overcome I/O bottlenecks...accelerates Storage I/O…
Fast Caching and Load Balancing
DataCore does high-availability better…Simple Fail-safe SAN data protection
Insulate Failures Transparent to Applications
Unique Automatic Failover and Failback
Priced right for Small and Mid-size Business
Full-featured HA SAN software [ New SAN Starter Software Packages ]
No-penalty upgradability and “future proofed” growth path
DataCore's application transparent high-availabilty and auto failover and failback capabilities slash downtime while protecting your critical business data.
DataCore's storage virtualization software insulates your virtual server environments from the adds, moves and changes in the physical disk configuration.
DataCore's ability to boost the performance of the disk subsystems helps overcome the sluggishness of concentrated I/O workloads.
DataCore helps overcome I/O bottlenecks...accelerates Storage I/O…
Fast Caching and Load Balancing
DataCore does high-availability better…Simple Fail-safe SAN data protection
Insulate Failures Transparent to Applications
Unique Automatic Failover and Failback
Priced right for Small and Mid-size Business
Full-featured HA SAN software [ New SAN Starter Software Packages ]
No-penalty upgradability and “future proofed” growth path
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Virtualization Sector to Grow; ZDE Report Validates Storage Sector as Healthiest in IT
Gartner Report: Virtualization Sector to Grow 43 Percent in 2009
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Virtualization/Report-Virtualization-Sector-to-Grow-43-Percent-in-2009/
Despite the recession, global revenue from the sector will surpass $2.7 billion by the end of the year. The biggest market driver? Enterprises' need to reduce the total cost of ownership of its IT systems; green IT is a welcome byproduct.
ZDE Report Validates Storage Sector as Healthiest in IT
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storage/ZDE-Report-Validates-Storage-Sector-as-Healthiest-in-IT/
Eighty-nine percent of storage survey respondents report that they will either maintain or increase their storage purchasing in 2009. There is reason for most of the storage business to remain confident looking ahead to next year -- despite the free-falls in other sectors of the economy.
Ziff Davis Enterprise, publisher of eWEEK, reported survey results indicating that the data storage sector of IT generally remains unblemished by the economic downturn that is zapping most of the U.S. and world economy.
The survey and analysis for the new report, "Outlook for the 2009 Storage Market: An Online Survey of Ziff Davis Enterprise Storage Buyers," provided a validation of sorts for what eWEEK has been reporting in the last few months since the Wall Street and mortgage banking implosion caused the stock market to drop in precipitous fashion at the end of the third quarter.
View the results of the survey here. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storage/Slideshow-ZDE-Report-Validates-Storage-Sector-as-Healthiest-in-IT/
The Problem with snapshots
InformationWeek's Storage Blog: The Problem with Snapshots
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/02/the_problem_wit_1.html
...There are solutions. You can leverage a independent virtualization appliance like DataCore's http://www.datacore.com/ SANsymphony that will bring all your storage under one storage software umbrella...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
DataCore and Parallels
MB Trading, Ulster Greene ARC, Bryant & Stratton College, and many others are enjoying unsurpassed uptime, on-demand workload distribution and tremendous cost savings since consolidating their IT environments with Parallels and DataCore."We run DataCore and Parallels in tandem and are extremely impressed by the combination," said Brenton M. Brown, Chief Information Officer, MB Trading. "They give our enterprise all the benefits that come by embracing total virtualization: fast and reliable performance, highly efficient storage and server utilization and the flexibility to provision both server and storage resources easily, when and where needed."
Common Use Case Scenarios - Challenges & Solutions
1. Large (greater than 100 Terabyte) configuration of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and Virtual Desktops split across two sites.
2. Midsize (Less than 10 Terabyte) shared storage requirement for Parallels virtual environment.
Learn more: DataCore and Parallels Use Scenarios & Solutions
Learn more: DataCore and Parallels Use Scenarios & Solutions
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Updated DataCore User Forum - Share Software, Utilities, Lessons learned, Tips and Tricks
Check it out: DataCore Software Community User Forum
Recent Posts:
New Utility: Filesystem cleaner for Linux
What Thin Provisioning (NMV) Volumes are hogging a pool! NMVhog
How do I: Test DataCore and VMware ESX in Disaster Recovery?
Recent Posts:
New Utility: Filesystem cleaner for Linux
What Thin Provisioning (NMV) Volumes are hogging a pool! NMVhog
How do I: Test DataCore and VMware ESX in Disaster Recovery?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
DataCore SANmelody Product Review
http://www.infostor.com/article_display/SANmelody___storage_virtualization_panacea/9898992125/s-articles/s-infostor/s-volume-13/s-issue-1/s-lab_review/s-1.htmlIn the same way that other forms of virtualization improve on server hardware, the notion behind SANmelody is to make disk configurations fail-safe, go-fast, and waste-free. SANmelody inherits all of its essential features from DataCore's larger-scale SANsymphony software, it can meet SMB requirements without compromising on functionality...
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Customer Migration Story - VMware Storage VMotion & DataCore HA - Failsafe Migrations
Recent update from the DataCore UK Blog While recently on site at a large National Health System [NHS] Customer in the North of England, I gave some serious thought to the process of migrations from physical to virtual storage from an existing physical environment and the ramifications in the case of physical disk failure.
It occured to me that if you utilized VMWare's Storage VMotion and DataCore's High-Avaliability [HA] offering, it was possible to do a seamless, on the fly data migration from physical storage into a DataCore virtual volume, while remaining protected from physical disk failure at the destination.
It is often said that the most common time for a disk drive to fail is within 2 hours of being booted for the first time, and while 99% of us perform rigorous soak testing beforehand, there is still a chance that a disk will fail mid-migration and severely delay a project at the very least. At the very worst, it can potentially corrupt the data being transferred leading to a full recovery scenario.
If physical failure of the destination occured in this DataCore scenario, then the destination volume would merely switch over to it's highly available partner and the migration would continue seamlessly. A large reassurance in the case of this customer, while migrating mission critical, real time data in a 24-Hour environment.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Infostor Lab Review: SANmelody = storage virtualization panacea
The crew at Infostor
recently put SANmelody through its paces in their lab and have just published a comprehensive review of their test methodology and findings. The Article can be viewed here (p.29) and downloaded here.
recently put SANmelody through its paces in their lab and have just published a comprehensive review of their test methodology and findings. The Article can be viewed here (p.29) and downloaded here. In brief, their conclusions/key findings were:
· Full virtualization of direct-attached and SAN-connected storage
· Simplified SAN infrastructure management through automation of storage administration tasks using the Windows MMC
· SANmelody caching boosted I/O throughput by 33% running IOmeter
· Round-robin LUN distribution of server I/O traffic benchmarked at 50,000 IOPS using 8KB reads with no I/O bottlenecks
· No single point of failure with support for snapshots, synchronous mirroring, and synchronous replication
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
DataCore and Riverbed - New White Paper on DR
DataCore has published a new Disaster Recovery white paper that reveals how organizations can reduce bandwidth and achieve more stringent Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) without incurring the expense of higher speed inter-site lines. Storage virtualization with DataCore Software and WAN optimization with Riverbed helps organizations realize up to 20x improvement in throughput and 14x improvement in data transfer for remote sites. The White Paper: http://www.datacore.com/downloads/DataCore_Riverbed_DR_22Sep08.pdf
Monday, January 12, 2009
New High-Availability DataCore Starter SANs for Business Continuity
For more details on DataCore's SAN starter packages, go here.
The new DataCore packages...include normally high-end features, such as thin provisioning, data migration, storage performance caching, snap shots for fast disk backups, remote site disaster recovery replication and DataCore's own data protection.
The new DataCore packages...include normally high-end features, such as thin provisioning, data migration, storage performance caching, snap shots for fast disk backups, remote site disaster recovery replication and DataCore's own data protection.
Friday, January 9, 2009
DataCore Transporter Option for SANmelody and SANsymphony - Migration Software
To download a presentation on the new Transporter option and for more information on Data and Image migration visit: 
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.
Friday, January 2, 2009
SANmelody & SANsymphony Features and Options - Overview
These pages, recently updated provide a quick overview of the major options and features.
New SANmelody Features and Options Page: http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANmel_features.asp
New SANsymphony Feature and Options Page: http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANsymp_features.asp
New SANmelody Features and Options Page: http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANmel_features.asp
New SANsymphony Feature and Options Page: http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANsymp_features.asp
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
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.
• 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.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
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
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, November 17, 2008
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%.
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%.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
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
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
Monday, November 10, 2008
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
Saturday, November 1, 2008
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
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_san_guide.pdf
Friday, October 31, 2008
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
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/VSM-Labs/DataCore-SAN-Melody/-2.html
Monday, October 20, 2008
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
http://www.datacore.com/forum/thread/237/vmware-virtual-center-plug-in-storage-expo-presentation.aspx
Sunday, October 19, 2008
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.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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.
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
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'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.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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
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
Monday, September 22, 2008
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.
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, September 1, 2008
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.
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.
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