DataCore

DataCore Software, provider of storage virtualization software, announced on Tuesday that SANsymphony-V is now certified as VMware Ready, and integrates with VMware’s portfolio of solutions, allowing data center and private cloud operators to gain the most from their virtual infrastructure investments.

At VMworld 2012, DataCore will showcase SANsymphony-V 9.0 “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud,” which offers customers many far-reaching innovations essential to managing enterprise-wide storage and to quickly deploying agile, scalable cloud storage infrastructures.

“Our partnership with DataCore helps customers virtualize and optimize their storage infrastructure so it delivers the performance, scalability, flexibility and redundancy required to support their server and desktop virtualization initiatives,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “This capability enables enterprises to realize the full benefits of their private cloud deployments.”

DataCore Software is a longstanding member of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner Program. Thousands of VMware vSphere and SANsymphony-V users are already realizing dynamic, virtualized and private cloud environments powered by the hardware of their choice.

DataCore’s SANsymphony-V 9.0 offers VMware software users enhanced flexibility and powerful automation benefits, delivering exceptional value to their private cloud and data center environments. As enterprises and data center operators continue to upgrade and modernize their infrastructure, they will require such solutions to maximize ROI. Advanced features of the DataCore Storage Hypervisor include automated tiering, thin provisioning and high availability, enabling administrators to gain full value and more effective usage of their costly solid state drive (SSD) deployments.

VMware VAAI storage-based hardware acceleration lowers CPU and memory consumption, enables faster deployment, supports VMware vMotion for storage tasks and disk creation, as well as higher VM consolidation ratios; however, these capabilities only work with VAAI-compliant storage arrays. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V extends VAAI hardware acceleration benefits across heterogeneous storage arrays, regardless of whether those arrays have native VAAI support or the VMFS volumes span the same brand of array enclosure.

The Storage Hypervisor sits in front of all types of storage vendor arrays and devices, presenting DataCore-powered virtual disks/LUNs to VMware vSphere. The software masks the physical characteristics of the underlying storage devices. Bottom-line, it does not matter which physical storage array is sitting on the back-end.

The DataCore storage hypervisor empowers VMware administrators to replicate LUNs or motion virtual disks across different storage arrays, facilitate implementation of various capabilities like VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) on top of those virtualized and replicated disks, enable VAAI operations across platforms, simplify migrations and VMware Storage vMotion, and free up the VMkernel for other activities by offloading work to the storage hypervisor.

DataCore has made available a VMware vCenter Server plug-in that integrates enterprise-wide storage hypervisor management with VMware vCenter Server to empower VMware administrators with the ability to easily manage virtual machines (VMs) and storage from a single console. Enterprises can now control and schedule key SANsymphony-V storage virtualization services, taking snapshots and tasks directly from their VMware vCenter Server Management Platform.

The DataCore VMware vCenter Server management plug-in software is available immediately for download to all SANsymphony-V customers.

“The march to the cloud continues as enterprises, data centers and service providers increasingly explore the business and technical benefits of fully virtualized environments,” commented Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development, DataCore Software. “Storage is often the overlooked component as organizations move to virtualize servers, desktops and top tier application delivery and take full advantage of their private clouds. Not addressing this component can result in performance bottlenecks and deployment hurdles, and will not make the best use of upgrade investments. DataCore’s Storage Hypervisor is empowering administrators to avoid these pitfalls when migrating to the cloud.”