DataCore Announces New Generation of Storage Virtualization Software that Solves the 'Big Problem' Stalling Today's Server and Desktop Virtualization Projects

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- DataCore Software, the industry's premier provider of storage virtualization software, today announced the availability of SANsymphony™-V, the next-generation storage virtualization software solution that enables IT organizations to eliminate storage-related barriers preventing them from realizing the financial and operational goals of their virtualization initiatives.

The "Big Problem" Stalling Desktop and Server Virtualization Projects: Storage

"Unanticipated storage hardware investments and inefficient storage use are often the most critical factors that bring server consolidation and desktop virtualization projects to a screeching halt," said Richard Villars, vice president of storage and IT executive strategies at IDC.  "Storage virtualization software solutions like DataCore's SANsymphony-V allow IT teams to maximize the use of existing storage assets while also dramatically reducing administrative burdens. They frequently play the key role in ensuring the success of organizations' server and desktop virtualization efforts."

Two years in development, SANsymphony-V software enables datacenters to use existing equipment and conventional storage devices to achieve the robust and responsive shared storage environment necessary to support highly dynamic virtual IT environments. This contrasts sharply with the expensive "rip and replace" approaches being proposed to support desktop and server virtualization projects.

The new software helps to cost-effectively avoid the many performance problems caused by I/O bottlenecks and the lost business suffered from downtime that make customers very hesitant to virtualize crucial business applications, such as mail and databases systems. SANsymphony-V uses adaptive caching and performance boosting techniques perfected over the past 10 years to absorb wildly variable workloads while simultaneously removing storage as a single point of failure and disruption.  SANsymphony-V offers a flexible, open software platform from which to provision, share, reconfigure, migrate, replicate, expand, and upgrade storage without slowdowns or downtime.

Bottom-line: DataCore™ uses software to reshape server and disk resources already in use to meet the largely unpredictable and unforeseen workloads that virtual machines and virtual desktops throw at newly consolidated data centers – delivering compelling operational and economic value.

The Business Advantage: Lower Costs, Reduced Risks, Enduring Value and Recurring Payoff

For some enterprises, DataCore has meant the difference between the success and failure in their virtualization projects.  "When we first received bids for our server virtualization project, we were shocked that the accompanying costs to adequately centralize and protect our disk farm would have eaten up most our budget," said Judy Pieper-Young, manager, information systems, North American Stainless. "DataCore literally saved our project.  Its software dramatically reduced the storage costs and hassle factors by enabling us to use our existing resources.  At the same time, it eliminated the performance and availability risks that switching to consolidated storage would have created for our newly virtualized workloads."

North American Stainless is one of thousands of customers around the world relying on DataCore to clear budgeting and technical roadblocks that once jeopardized their virtualization plans.  More importantly, DataCore has enabled them to realize the business benefits that caused them to migrate to a virtualized infrastructure in the first place.

"Virtualization is all about the advantages of software to cut costs and insulate applications and users from disruptive changes and business risks. That's what DataCore does and why we are the logical third dimension of a virtualization strategy," said George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore Software.  "Server and desktop virtualization make up the first two dimensions, and we complete the picture by virtualizing the storage assets.  The business benefits of a stable software infrastructure spanning multiple models and manufacturers across generations of hardware are as compelling for servers and desktops as they are for storage."

Enterprise-class Solution Designed to Meet Mid-Market Practicalities

DataCore designed SANsymphony-V to meet the needs of midmarket end-users and solution-providers, especially those familiar with Windows Server administration eager to adapt their IT operations to accommodate the many variables that server and desktop virtualization introduce.

While some vendors in the virtualization field recommend that customers lock themselves into specific storage hardware configurations and exotic purpose-built appliances, SANsymphony-V frees customers from hardware vendor lock-in by decoupling the virtual infrastructure from the underlying disks.  It also optimizes the I/O response obtained from standard storage devices that would have otherwise needed to be replaced.  Then when they need to expand capacity, they can simply choose the best deal at the time from a number of competitive suppliers rather than be limited to one specific vendor's hardware.

"With the launch of SANsymphony-V, DataCore has redesigned its software for virtual server and desktop environments. However, DataCore's key benefits of extending the useful life of hardware, cutting hardware costs and removing vendor lock-in are still intact, and apply to both the physical and virtual world," said Carla Arend, program manager, European infrastructure software research at IDC.  "By driving down storage cost and thus removing a major obstacle for adoption, DataCore makes server and desktop virtualization affordable for the broader IT community."

Sophistication without Complexity

In addition to reducing capital expenses, SANsymphony-V also takes a big bite out of operational costs by removing an enormous amount of complexity from the care and feeding of virtual IT infrastructures.  It does this by instituting best practices through the use of automation and guided workflows to ensure:

• Cost Savings through software flexibility to meet change, portability and device independence.
• Fastest application response by auto-tuning "mega caches" and selecting the best I/O paths.
• High-availability stretched across rooms or off-site, eliminating single points of failure and disruption through physical separation with full Auto-failover and Recovery capabilities that insure the highest levels of business continuity.
• Optimum disk space utilization through infrastructure-wide thin provisioning and pooling.
• No downtime to repurpose and migrate systems and workloads with DataCore's non-disruptive pass through capability that enables file systems and storage to be migrated.  
• Reduced administrative complexity and risk through intuitive infrastructure-wide storage management, automation and wizard-like guided GUI.
• Multi-site and bi-directional recovery management of data and VMs across sites.
• Time saving recovery with Continuous Data Protection (CDP) to rapidly rollback in time and recover workloads and VMs.

SANsymphony-V further accelerates the transition between physical and virtual machines by putting to full use the disk drives and data mounted on the original systems.  The rich set of advanced features, all device-independent, includes disk pooling, high-speed caching, synchronous mirroring, asynchronous remote replication, non-disruptive disk migrations, and low-impact online snapshots.  SANsymphony-V also includes a number of advances to better safeguard your workloads and avoid disruptions including integrated continuous data protection (CDP), multi-site recovery and high-speed and traffic compressing replication.

Getting the Most Out of Your Storage Resources

With SANsymphony-V, you can achieve:

• Much lower risk to deploy your virtualization projects since a complete storage and process overhaul is not required; changes can be implemented incrementally, tried or undone selectively.
• Cost-effective Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery to safeguard your business.
• Infrastructure-wide administration and automation to increase your staff productivity.
• Greater savings from consolidation, repurposing and better utilization of your existing resources.
• Reduced complexity and greater control to manage growth and optimize your budgets.  
• Enduring value from a software solution that lives beyond devices that 'come and go.'

Pricing and Availability

SANsymphony-V software may be purchased through DataCore-authorized solution providers across the globe.  With the new release comes a simple licensing and pricing structure based on instances of the software (generally 2 copies for high-availability) and managed disk capacity.  Five different models and price points are available to meet needs from large to small.

Software licenses for a fully redundant, high-availability configuration start under $10,000 U.S.D. including annual 24x7 technical support.

More Information

Extensive reference material and supporting videos of SANsymphony-V may be found at the SANsymphony-V launch page: http://www.datacore.com/SANsymphony-V.

In conjunction with the availability of SANsymphony-V, DataCore is also re-launching its company blog, "The Virtual Viewpoint: Storage Virtualization Blog."  The blog can be found on the company's website at: http://www.datacore.com/storage-virtualization-viewpoint-blog.aspx.     

About DataCore Software

DataCore Software is the industry's premier provider of storage virtualization software.  Its software-as infrastructure platform solves the big problem stalling virtualization initiatives by eliminating the storage-related barriers that make virtualization too difficult and too expensive.

Thousands of IT organizations from midsize environments to large, global enterprises rely on DataCore's software to protect their data, reduce risks and extend the useful life of their investments by turning their existing storage infrastructure into a robust and responsive shared storage environment.  DataCore addresses the increasing storage demands of proliferating virtual machines and desktops, while delivering the high performance and non-stop availability required to support an agile, enduring and cost-effective IT infrastructure.  For additional information, visit the DataCore website at www.datacore.com or call (877) 780-5111.

DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANsymphony are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE DataCore Software