DataCore's new portable, feature-packed VM starter SAN

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA: DataCore Software, provider of storage virtualization SAN software, recently announced that it has brought to market a new, iSCSI-enabled, VM Starter SAN package. This feature-packed version of DataCore’s SANmelody comes bundled and ready-to-use. The VM Starter SAN bundle includes auto-allocating thin provisioning storage support, SANmotion data migration technology, high performance caching software, snapshots for fast disk backups, auto failover/failback data protection via synchronous network mirroring as well as remote site disaster recovery support through asynchronous IP mirror replication.

 The DataCore VM Starter SAN provides the simplest and most affordable way on the market to get started realizing the cost savings and productivity benefits of a fully featured, virtual SAN.

DataCore software is portable – offering the best out-of-the-box experience on the market, whereby any DataCore solution runs on any physical or virtual hardware of choice: hardware servers, blade servers or VMs. Users can mix-and-match any hardware in their deployments. Moreover, with DataCore all major VM vendors are supported – VMware, Oracle, Citrix, Sun, Microsoft, etc. DataCore not only runs on these VM environments, but the virtual storage from the DataCore SAN can be consolidated and served to MacOS, Netware, Linux, and the many flavors of UNIX and Microsoft – providing optimum storage resource utilization.

“We make it simple for users to get a fully functional SAN at an affordable price. The major SANmelody features are now integrated together in a series of feature-packed, easy-to-use, single server bundles,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore Software. “The VM Starter SAN package is value-packed. It’s the ideal way to make storage virtual, portable, mobile and flexible so that it can fully complement and protect virtual servers.”

“By creating a VM Starter SAN package with iSCSI support, DataCore has made it easy for either an IT department or an IT integration partner to set up an iSCSI SAN that can serve physical or virtual machines (VMs). What’s more, the software can run within a physical environment, such as a blade server, or in many of the top VM environments, including VMware, Xen, Microsoft and others,” said Jack Fegreus, president, Open Bench Labs. “The beauty of DataCore’s software is that it is completely portable. At a time when many sites are testing multiple VM environments before standardizing on a particular vendor, providing sites with the ability to mix-and-match among many flavors of virtual or physical servers makes DataCore’s VM Starter SAN package a uniquely powerful tool.”

Unlike other ‘virtual appliances’ that are on the market, all of DataCore’s storage virtualization SAN software – SANmelody, SANsymphony, Traveller and the new VM Starter SAN – can all run on VMs.

Value to SMB customers: Enterprise data protection at a fraction of the cost

DataCore is enabling small-to-mid-size enterprises to enjoy all the benefits of enterprise-class data protection solutions at a fraction of the cost. With this new solution, DataCore fills the large gap in the market for VM data protection and meets the need that exists between low-end, Windows system replication solutions that provide single system data protection (e.g. NSI Double-Take), which cost thousands, and higher-end, enterprise class SAN-based, multi-system data protection systems (e.g. IBM, HDS), which are proprietary, complex and cost tens of thousands of dollars, or more.

“The big problem for many Windows-based shops and especially new VM environments seeking disaster recovery and auto-failover solutions is the price point,” said Fegreus. “This same scenario also extends to branch offices of large corporations. The classic example is the array of branch offices of a large bank. In all of these cases, ease-of-use and cost must be balanced against a very real need to maintain business continuity. What DataCore has done with this solution is bring enterprise-class, fail-safe data protection and disaster recovery functionality down to an affordable level that’s easy to deploy.”