VMware launches enterprise storage solutions

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: VMware, Inc. has advanced to the next phase of its software-defined storage strategy with the launch of a new generation of enterprise storage solutions.

Designed to enable mass adoption of software-defined storage, VMware Virtual SAN 6 will introduce scalability and performance enhancements to the company’s hypervisor-converged storage solution, and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will offer new levels of storage integration to make third-party arrays natively aware of virtual machines.

To achieve the full potential of the software-defined data center, a new software-defined storage approach is required to address storage-related operational complexity and cost challenges. VMware’s software-defined storage strategy leverages the hypervisor to advance storage in the cloud era and deliver the kind of operational efficiency that server virtualization brought to compute.

Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware, said: “Customers have told us they need a simple, cost-effective and cloud-aware approach to storage. VMware Virtual SAN 6 and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will deliver on this, and represent the next phase of our software-defined storage strategy. They address customer requirements through an improved hypervisor-converged storage tier, and a new virtual machine-aware integration with existing storage arrays.”

VMware also announced unified platform of virtualized compute, networking and storage for the hybrid cloud, as well as new innovations introduced in VMware vSphere 6.

VMware Virtual SAN 6 introduces double the scalability and up to four-and-a-half times greater performance while adding several new enterprise-class capabilities. The release will feature:

· New all-flash architecture – VMware Virtual SAN 6 will enable a two-tier all-flash architecture in which flash devices are intelligently used for both caching and data persistence. The new all-flash architecture will provide increase in input/output throughput per node compared to VMware Virtual SAN 5.5 while delivering predictable sub-millisecond latency.

· Maximum throughput of seven million IOPS / cluster – A 64-node VMware Virtual SAN cluster will deliver up seven million input/output operations per second (IOPS) with nearly perfect linear scalability.

· Scalability increased to 64 nodes / cluster – The new release will double scalability to 64 nodes per cluster enabling customers to achieve up to 6,400 virtual machines per cluster and exceed eight petabytes of storage capacity from a cluster.

· New enterprise-grade snapshots – The release will introduce a high-performance and efficient snapshot capability increasing the snapshot depth to 32 per virtual machine while minimizing the performance overhead.

· New Rack-awareness – VMware Virtual SAN 6 will enable intelligent placement of virtual machine objects across server racks for enhanced application availability even in case of complete rack failures.

· Expanded support for blades – With new support for direct-attached JBODs, customers will be able to scale VMware Virtual SAN 6 clusters to large capacity in server blade environments.

VMware Virtual SAN 6 and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes are expected to become available in Q1 2015. VMware Virtual SAN is priced at $2,495 per CPU. VMware Virtual SAN for Desktop is priced at $50 per user.

The new All-Flash architecture will be available as on add-on to VMware Virtual SAN 6 and will be priced at $1,495 per CPU and $30 per desktop. VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will be packaged as a feature in VMware vSphere Standard Edition and above as well as VMware vSphere ROBO editions.