Entries categorized under “Virtualization”

Making backup software easy and simple to use is the mantra for almost all products today. Yet knowing whether or not users will perceive a product as "simple and easy to use" is almost impossible to quantify until it is widely deployed in the field and users get some hands on experience with it. Well, apparently Symantec received a lot of feedback on what would make its NetBackup PureDisk 6.5 simpler and easier to use and took it to heart. (read more)

It is commonly suspected that midsize organizations have the same priorities as their enterprise counterparts especially when it comes to managing their IT infrastructures. However a study released a few months ago removed whatever doubt may have existed as it revealed that the majority of midsize businesses place a premium on improving efficiency and increasing employee productivity. So today's announcement from RELDATA that it is releasing a private storage cloud offering that addresses those exact concerns for these size businesses could not be more appropriately timed. (read more)

Solid State Disk (SSD) is showing up across the technology spectrum from consumer grade laptops and PCs to enterprise storage systems. But until this week it can be argued that there really was not an SSD drive that was ready to withstand the scrutiny that some mission-critical enterprise environments are certain to put it under. This week's announcement from Pliant Technology may well be the proverbial brick that breaks this glass ceiling that has been preventing SSD from entering some enterprise environments. (read more)

Most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have limited IT budgets so when it comes to storing data and reducing costs and complexity they must do so wisely. Further, most have few or no IT personnel so they also need technology solutions that they can deploy and scale easily without requiring inordinate amounts of time to manage. Server virtualization is now increasingly viewed as a good fit for SMBs and with the new emphasis that VMware put on reaching out to SMBs at last week's VMworld, it is more important than ever for SMBs to quantify what benefits they can expect to glean from server virtualization before deploying it. (read more)

In yesterday's blog, I answered the question as to why I think the use of virtual appliances is going to become the new standard for backing up and recovering virtual machines. However today I want to answer the question as to what was the big news that came out of VMworld 2009. In my view, it was clearly that the emphasis has moved from why organizations need to virtualize their environments to what new possibilities that a fully virtualized (aka cloud) environment creates. (read more)

I arrived home from VMworld 2009 last night after spending much of the flight reflecting on what I learned, the conversations that I had and the technologies that I had a chance to view. However at every conference there is usually one technology that piques my interest and this one was no different as I had a chance to do a deeper dive into one company's method of doing virtual machine backup while at the show. What made this technology transcend other virtual machine backup approaches is that it is by far the most scalable, easiest to implement and simplest to manage that I have yet encountered. (read more)

A recent Enterprise Systems article reported on the results of a recent SHARE survey of about 400 IT professionals. It revealed that nearly 70% of these users had virtualized some or all of their servers, 50% of their storage infrastructure and some are even starting down the path of virtualizing their desktop and network infrastructures. But what is notably absent in this article is any discussion around data protection in these newly virtualized infrastructures. (read more)

VMworld 2009 is now well under way and considering that it is sponsored by a company (VMWare) that sells virtualization software, I have to compliment it for keeping its focus on the new business problems that its technology can solve. However my concern is that anytime a provider starts doing that, customers end up buying promises as opposed to software that can solve their day-to-day tactical problems. (read more)

VMware ESX Server and its latest vSphere software release have become instrumental in helping organizations tame server hardware costs within data centers while improving the ROI associated with existing and new projects. But this isn't to say that virtualization doesn't come with any pain points--and managing virtual storage infrastructures is one of the biggest. So to help combat these challenges, FalconStor Software today announced at VMworld 2009 a comprehensive VMware Initiative that will help organizations bridge their physical and virtual infrastructures and provide continuous availability in multi-vendor storage environments. (read more)

The last month or so I have spent a lot of time doing research on cloud storage. Its terminalogy, who the providers are, its maturity (or lack thereof) and who (if anyone) is taking advantage of cloud storage and supporting it have all been questions I have been asking. "Why?" you may ask. Simple. A survey conducted by Applied Research at the behest of F5 Networks and released this past Monday finds that more than 80% of IT managers are discussing or implementing public or private cloud solutions. Now when's the last time you recall seeing a statistic like that? (read more)

In the last few years no technology has experienced more of its shares of ups and downs than continuous data protection (CDP). Initially hailed by some as a likely successor to backup software, CDP has yet to come close to fulfilling on that original promise. However recent changes in IT data center environments coupled with ongoing improvements in CDP are giving this technology a second chance. (read more)

Changes in buying behavior among companies are probably a big motivation behind Quantum's recent announcement to include esXpress backup software with its disk-based DXi-Series backup systems. While most mid-size companies and larger are looking to deploy disk-based backup that incorporates deduplication into their backup infrastructures (which the DXi-Series certainly addresses) it is not always that simple. (read more)

Maybe it has always been this way, but when a vendor hosts a customer event, it always seems that you (Mr. Customer) must pay to go and to learn about their (Mr. Vendor's) product. To me, this has always seemed somewhat backwards. You (Mr. Customer) pay a whole bunch of money for their product in the first place, then another 15 - 20% annually for support, then more for training and then, to add insult to injury, they make you pay for airfare, hotel and a registration fee to attend their annual customer event. (read more)

In the last few weeks I have had conversations with users and consultants in the US and Europe regarding the new role that data deduplication will play in enterprise data centers. Needless to say, everyone is talking about it, many are starting to implement it and data deduplication's role as a permanent fixture in reducing backup data stores is all but assured. But what is more interesting is that these individuals are starting to look beyond just using data deduplication as a means to solve their backup problems. (read more)

Delivering software specific solutions in the form of appliances have turned niche software applications such as deduplication into some of today's hottest mainstream technologies. But independent software vendors (ISVs) can still be fearful that offering their software in the form of an appliance can rob from existing revenue streams and create new support costs. In this final segment of a 3-part series, independent consultant to Bell Micro, Tom Baylark, discusses how offering software on an appliance can broaden software's appeal without increasing and even possibly lower ISV costs. (read more)

Recent feedback from InMage Systems' existing customer base indicates that 100% of them use its Scout software for disaster recovery. That probably comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Scout or its heterogeneous recovery capabilities. But what may come as a surprise to some is that nearly 40% of these existing Scout users are seeing a 200% return on investment (ROI) in Scout because of how it can be used in multiple ways in a company's IT infrastructure. (read more)

The impact of virtualization on the IT Infrastructure has shaken IT at its core. Virtualization is changing the current model of assigning one physical server for each application by effectively consolidating multiple servers onto one piece of server hardware and then optimizing its resources. Despite these benefits, virtualization initiatives can prove challenging. For example, deploying certain components of the IT infrastructure with backup and recovery is one area where there can be unanticipated challenges in the support of virtual infrastructures. (read more)

Right now everyone is looking to build the virtual data center and for good reason - ideally it is easier to manage, costs less, and can be more easily adapted to changing application and IT requirements. But as organizations look to build out their virtual data centers, they also need to make sure that the complexities and costs associated with managing them do not overrun their benefits. (read more)

Let's face it - the concepts behind cloud computing and cloud storage are just plain cool. The whole idea that an organization can move any application to any hardware platform and pro-actively meet the constantly changing needs of an application is more akin to something you might see in an episode of Star Trek than something you might find in today's data centers. Yet cloud computing and cloud storage are becoming a part of today's reality for tech-savvy data centers because these feature are not just cool, they ease the complexity of common data center management tasks, drive down costs and increase profitability. (read more)

One time occurrences that are accompanied by spikes in capacity and performance requirements are the bane of data centers. While many organizations can excuse IT for their inability to respond to unexpected one-time or occasional demands, perceptions and attitudes change when organizations know a heavy load is coming and IT cannot adeptly respond. It is this type of challenge that Carrenza Hosting, a managed hosting company based in London, England, intended to solve when it began to start down the path of adopting cloud-based computing and storage services. (read more)

Plug-n-play - that's part of the idea behind the Microsoft Exchange Storage Calculator spreadsheet which provides organizations the general guidelines that they need when planning and configuring the storage that will support an instance of Microsoft Exchange. However one should not assume that this spreadsheet takes into account every possible variable regarding storage systems - it most certainly does not and says as much within the spreadsheet. (read more)

In the face of its public tussle with EMC over Data Domain, NetApp forged ahead with its annual Analyst Days at its Sunnyvale, CA, headquarters. Well attended by many NetApp executives and 80+ analysts from the US and around the world, it was both informative and well run. However it was the kickoff keynote by NetApp's CEO Dave Warmenhoven that I first wanted to summarize and comment on as he did a pretty good job of encapsulating the major themes of the presentations and one-on-one meetings that were to follow. (read more)

Best practices for configuring storage systems in enterprise Microsoft Exchange environments requires that they look beyond Microsoft's basic guidelines for how to configure their storage systems. While these guidelines may be sufficient when deploying Exchange in smaller shops where direct attached storage (DAS) or traditional array-based storage systems are the norm, enterprise organizations need to know when to look beyond these guidelines and tweak them when deploying Exchange on a next generation storage system like the 3PAR InServ Storage Server. The key to making these tweaks, however, is to satisfy Microsoft's best practices without negating the inherent benefits that storage systems like 3PAR provide. (read more)

Symantec's recent announcement that it will support its Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows (SFW) 5.1 in the Microsoft Hyper-V parent tremendously increases the breadth of functionality available to the child virtual machines (VMs) of Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Immediate new benefits that child VMs will realize include the restoration of full path and storage management capabilities that often were severely handicapped once physical servers were virtualized. But other benefits that also come along with moving SFW 5.1 into the Hyper-V parent include better utilization of thinly provisioned storage volumes assigned to the Hyper-V parent along with an attractive SFW licensing option for Hyper-V servers. (read more)

Consolidating multiple physical machines onto one physical server that hosts multiple virtual machines (VMs) requires that organizations consider much more than just if the new server has sufficient processing, network bandwidth and memory to support the applications. Specifically, path and storage management issues can result when physical servers are virtualized which can preclude organizations from virtualizing some of their mission critical servers. (read more)