Entries categorized under “Virtualization”

Last month I announced that DCIG is putting together its first annual Midrange Array Buyers Guide. Since then a lot has happened and over the last two weeks responses to the questionnaires that I sent out to over 20 storage providers representing over 100 midrange array models have been pouring in. So while it is still too early to announce any winners and results are still being tabulated, I am prepared to share some preliminary findings in the areas of total storage capacity and cache sizes on midrange arrays. (read more)

No one disputes that solid state drives (SSD) are poised to play a larger role in networked storage environments. But with the price per terabyte (TB) of SSDs still running a factor of 10-15x greater than high performance FC and SAS drives, the ROI for SSD has to be pretty clear for an organization to justify its deployment. Providing that justification for SSDs should now get a little easier thanks to a new solution announced today from FalconStor Software and Violin Memory. (read more)

Over the last few years thin provisioning has steadily moved into the main stream of storage management - so much so that not only has it found its way onto many leading storage systems but into operating systems as well. Clearly one of the largest endorsements of using thin provisioning at the operating system level came last year when VMware announced its inclusion of thin provisioning as an option within vSphere. (read more)

In a recent analyst conference call CommVault's VP of Marketing and Business Development, Dave West, pulled no punches about how CommVault wants enterprise organizations to view it in regards to backup modernization. While CommVault is certainly happy to assist those enterprise organizations that want to make incremental changes to their backup infrastructures, that is not who CommVault is specifically targeting. Rather CommVault is seeking out those customers and prospects that are ready to do a wholesale rip and replace of their existing data management products and go with a more modern solution. (read more)

Numerous surveys show that the adoption of server virtualization is poised to take off in small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). But what can get overlooked in this trend is that greater than 70% of these virtual server deployments that occur in SMB environments will use external storage. This is where SMBs can run into problems. Identifying an affordable, scalable external storage system that can meet their short and long term needs is sometimes easier said than done but that is exactly what the newly announced SnapServer SAN S2000 is designed to deliver. (read more)

Server virtualization is clearly becoming the end game for all size data centers. But as they virtualize their physical servers using Microsoft Windows Server 2008, new challenges emerge that range from managing each virtual machine's storage to effectively scaling up the number of the virtual machines (VMs) on each physical machine. This is where Virsto One, the newly introduced storage virtualization software from Virsto Software, comes into play. (read more)

I have recently heard it said that server virtualization is to data centers what marijuana is to other drugs: a "stepping stone" or "gateway" drug. After all, once you start down the path of server virtualization, at what point do you quit and stop virtualizing the rest of the infrastructure? (read more)

Virtualization, consolidation and servers are becoming inextricably linked in the minds of mid-sized organizations as they look to reduce data center footprints and energy consumption while increasing server hardware utilization. Yet what can get overlooked during the consolidation and virtualization of their Windows applications is the development of a corresponding storage strategy. This is where the specifics on what is needed to deliver on an appropriate storage solution for this environment become a necessity. (read more)

Cloud is this year's virtualization, or ILM, or even ASP for those of us who go back a while. Cloud is the latest term of interest in the data management market, but one that is fraught with the same level of confusion and misunderstanding as those previous terms. However, cloud brings with it a certain level of interest and for good reason: virtualization technologies are one of the only methods available that offer to solve a problem plaguing IT budgets and environments. (read more)

The benefits of virtualization - server or storage - start to loose some of their shine as organizations come to grips with the reality of actually managing a virtualized environment. As the move from implementation to management, the hidden issues of managing virtualized environments become clearly exposed. It is for these reasons that storage providers like 3PAR are more tightly integrating their InServ Storage Servers with VMware's vCenter Server management console to provide better management of virtual data centers. (read more)

Small, mid-sized and large enterprises are not the only ones looking to consolidate and simplify their IT management to create more cohesive management solutions. In the last few years, Symantec has been taking many of the same steps to integrate components of its Backup Exec, Enterprise Vault and NetBackup product suites to deliver solutions appropriate for the different size organizations that it serves. The progress that it has made in delivering on these ideals is reflected in today's Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7 product releases. (read more)

Right now a major re-alignment is taking shape in the computer industry driven in large part by enterprises questioning the value of heterogeneous hardware and software solutions. Heterogeneity originally lowered upfront procurements costs but over time it created new levels of complexity when it came time to make these disparate solutions work well together. These difficulties are leading more providers to build end-to-end solution offerings that is raising questions about the role that independent enterprise software providers like Symantec will provide in this new world. (read more)

Good times or bad, all size organizations need data storage. The difference is that when times get tough as they were in 2009, we start to see those storage providers that deliver a good value for the dollar get the nod over those that deliver only so-so value. But what is notable about 3PAR, which recently received some positive comments from Barron's, is that 3PAR is making inroads in the high end of the storage market where start-ups are not supposed to succeed. (read more)

Data centers face an unprecedented challenge as the next decade approaches. New storage cloud offerings not only bring the upfront cost per GB of storage down to commodity pricing levels but they make it possible for companies to outsource this critical part of their IT infrastructure. This puts new pressure on data center managers to identify and implement appropriate storage cloud solutions because they are no longer competing with internal business units or historical third party providers but new leaner, more efficient cloud providers like Amazon and Google. (read more)

Server virtualization was one of the hot technology trends in 2009 and there is every reason to believe it will remain that way in 2010. But as this trend broadens to include the virtualization of mission critical applications like Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, new considerations come into play. Most notably, organizations must identify a data protection solution that can deliver application-consistent recovery points, bring applications quickly back online and do so without negatively impacting the performance of the physical host. (read more)

This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today's blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. (read more)

As most know, Intel has been in a race to offer better processing performance with the goal of enabling better server consolidation. Their XEON 5500 series offers "the best generation to generation performance gain ever seen" by Intel, according to Bryce Olson who works in Intel's data center product group. The server compression that results is 9 or 10 to 1, with the XEON 5600 promising 12:1 ratios. This type of compression along with the XEON's energy efficiency features enable cost recapture within 12 months, according to Olson. (read more)

This week I wanted to pick up the discussion that I started a couple of weeks ago on the major trends of 2009. In that blog, I examined why deduplication was THE success story of 2009. But an equally compelling trend in 2009 was the emergence and growing acceptance of the use of cloud storage as a storage target among organizations of all sizes. (read more)

Three (3) months ago Symantec published the results of its SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey that shared what nearly 1,700 small and midsize companies worldwide had to say about disaster recovery (DR). While the results of this report were mentioned by a number of publications (Continuity Central, eWeek, IT Business Edge and Techworld just to name a few), there were a couple other nuggets of information included in this survey that these articles either glossed over or simply failed to mention. (read more)

On top of the storage news this week we saw the demise of COPAN Systems; or did we? It really isn't quite clear as to what has been going on over at COPAN as we have yet to get any confirmation from within the industry. Bill Mottram, a managing partner at Veridictus Associates, and fellow Coloradan such as myself, was unable to contact the Colorado company for comment. Concrete information is hard to find regarding COPAN but we were able to put a few pieces together from across the social sphere: (read more)

Even though Gartner Research says that server virtualization is not yet widely implemented (only 16 percent of workloads currently run on virtual machines according to Gartner), Gartner does point to a more virtualized environment in the very near future. It expects that fully 50% of workloads will run inside virtual machines by 2012 and represent nearly 58 million deployed machines. But as this transition from physical to virtual occurs within data centers, traditional disaster recovery (DR) software, procedures and techniques are not positioned to migrate so cleanly into this newly virtualized environment. (read more)

Server virtualization, for which VMware is the dominant vendor, has gained ground among OEM appliance manufacturers as a more flexible, higher-value delivery platform. This blog entry begins a series of three in which we will explore the factors contributing to and inhibiting OEM success with server virtualization, HP and Bell Micro roles in that success, and the future of where virtualization can take the OEM community. (read more)

Disaster recovery (DR), testing and development environments have historically been closely linked whether or not anyone liked to admit it. Organizations would construct test and development environments and then use them for DR purposes if needed; or, they would quietly repurpose computer gear purchased using DR funds for testing and development. However the trick is getting both of these distinct but separate business processes to share this same environment without creating new levels of complexity. (read more)

This week I am going to hearken back to a conference call that took place a couple of weeks ago on the morning of November 3, 2009. This is a new quarterly conference call that CommVault is sponsoring. This particular call was hosted by its Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, David West and was intended to provide some insight into CommVault's Q209 successes. But, to my surprise, Tyco Electronics' Scott Zeiders who heads its UNIX Tech Support, also joined the call and commented on Tyco's experiences with implementing CommVault® Simpana®. (read more)

High-profile case studies about companies such as Google and Amazon document how they are leveraging the cost reductions that clustered virtualized servers make possible to improve reliability, scalability, performance and capacity. But as the clustering of virtualized servers becomes more prevalent for these reasons, the overhead associated with storage administration in these environments only increases. Provisioning storage volumes to clustered virtualized servers calls for more upfront planning; it takes longer due to the complexity involved; and, the probability of human error becomes difficult to avoid. (read more)