Entries categorized under “Virtualization”

As part of his opening remarks during his keynote on Tuesday morning, Symantec's CEO Enrique Salem shared a comment that was made to him by a Symantec user, "We are in the middle of a time of profound meaningful change." Truer words were never spoken as enterprises of all sizes are facing a broad spectrum of technology changes that are unequaled in this modern era of computing. (read more)

Regardless of whose numbers or what percentages you believe, it is clear that the adoption rate of server virtualization is accelerating with more organizations virtualizing their production application servers than ever before. But as this occurs, new demands are being placed on data protection solutions to more efficiently and quickly complete VMware virtual machine (VM) backups. To meet this emerging end-user requirement, EMC Avamar 6.0 has enhanced its virtual proxy server pooling capabilities to better automate and simplify the scheduling and management of VM backups. (read more)

As the economy rebounds, midsized companies looking to expand their business must usually first grow their datacenter. However datacenter growth introduces new levels of complexity that cast a long shadow over future business expansion as managing this technology can take the focus off of the business. The Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX400 server changes that model. (read more)

Today DCIG, LLC, and Foskett Services, LLC, are pleased to jointly announce the availability of an Expanded Edition of the DCIG 2011 Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 35 small enterprise storage array models priced from $5,000 - 30,000 from 19 different vendors. (read more)

About a year ago DCIG decided to do something completely different in the analyst space: a side-by-side independent comparison of products in a particular market segment in the form of a Buyer's Guide. The end result of that was the DCIG 2010 Midrange Array Buyer's Guide. But believe it or not, a year has already passed since that was produced and it is now time to update and refresh that Buyer's Guide for a number of reasons. (read more)

In a blog entry earlier this month I examined HP's announcement that it was bringing 3PAR storage servers under the control and management of the HP Matrix Operating Environment. Today I wanted to delve deeper into what that integration should mean to organizations as they need to realize that they can do more than just manage local HP 3PAR storage servers but begin to manage data stored in the cloud (read more)

Does anyone find it somewhat ironic that backup software providers are spending more time and effort to make sure that the backup and recovery of both physical and virtual machines (VMs) take no time? This is being driven by enterprises who increasingly expect application backups and recoveries to occur without waiting. So to better meet these rising expectations, Symantec NetBackup™ 7.1 got cozier with Symantec's NetBackup RealTime software to provide the near real time backup and recovery functionality that enterprises increasingly want. (read more)

Every backup software provider emphasizes support for virtual machine backup so it is no surprise that enhanced support for VMware backup and recovery is a major focus in today's Symantec NetBackup 7.1 release. But as anyone acquainted with virtual machine backup knows, the differences between just "supporting" virtual machine backup and supporting it well can be substantial. It is in this area Symantec NetBackup 7.1 differentiates itself. (read more)

In a recent podcast HP Storage Strategist, Brad Parks, states, "Over the last 18 months HP has been beating the converged infrastructure drum." Well, that's great but more important than just beating that drum, HP needs to continue to provide evidence that all of its divisions are marching to that beat. This week HP StorageWorks division fell in step by enhancing the products in its storage portfolio to better deliver on HP's broader vision of delivering a converged infrastructure for all size enterprises. (read more)

Once upon a time, data center management was a task reserved for really large enterprises that had thousands of square feet of data center floor space and teams dedicated to supporting it. But now almost any size organization can have a significant number of physical and virtual machines (VMs) deployed in a relatively small data center with only a few people to manage it. This situation dictates that these organizations put in place data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software so they can achieve the levels of efficiency and reliability that they expect without compromising either availability or support. (read more)

Automated storage tiering (AST) seems to be getting ever more attention as more organizations move from physical to virtualized environments and look to use networked storage systems with AST to support them. But AST carries its own set of baggage and can potentially create as many problems as it solves, not the least of which is that it may not be as automated for all application workloads as some vendors may lead you to believe. (read more)

Those who have their feet on the ground are always closest to where the action is and few are closer to end-users in regards to their desktop and server virtualization initiatives than VMware resellers. These individuals recently gathered in Orlando, FL, for VMware's annual Partner Exchange in part for training but also to swap stories as to where their customers are in their respective journeys toward virtualizing their environments. What they heard and shared is that customers no longer debate whether or not to deploy virtualization. Rather their customers are trying to figure out just how far down the road they can go. (read more)

Depending on whose numbers you believe, enterprise organizations may achieve deduplication ratios that range anywhere from as low as 4x to as high as 500x. Yet these ratios primarily make for good headlines and are only seen in rare circumstances in real world enterprise environments. Further, these numbers are of little use when enterprises are trying to set realistic deduplication expectations. (read more)

When DCIG released its first ever Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide in December 2010, it created some controversy when it became public that CommVault® Simpana® had achieved the highest score and was ranked #1. But just over a month later when another analyst firm Gartner positioned CommVault in its "Leaders" Quadrant for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup/Recovery, the silence was deafening. (read more)

The topic as to what storage management features organizations really need on a storage array continues to be a hotly debated. In the last decade, we have seen a multitude of features propagate on storage arrays including disk striping, thin provisioning, and storage tiering just to name a few. But deciding which of these features are "nice-to-haves" and which ones are really "needed" in a virtual operating environment (VOE) becomes very difficult to make without a close examination of one's environment. (read more)

Procrastination is sometimes the best policy when it comes to making a storage purchase. After all, what enterprise organization has not benefited by waiting and then getting storage at a lower price? But when flexible storage solutions such as the IBM N series and Real-time Compression become part of the equation, the question that enterprise organizations need to answer is less about price. Rather they must answer the question, "Will this storage solution move us forward or backward?" (read more)

One of my favorite all time movies is The Terminator. It is one of those timeless classics whose video was less than optional, it had some cheesy special effects and it contained dialog that was highlighted by "I'll be back." Yet despite these flaws what carried The Terminator and still makes it popular to this day was its compelling story line. (read more)

This past week I have been in Palo Alto, CA, attending the ExecEvent. The focus of the ExecEvent is to facilitate conversations and meetings between storage industry executives, analysts and press who are there primarily to explore new ways that they can work together and partner on initiatives. It was during this event that a group of us had an interesting conversation on how to automatically, cost-effectively and safely manage virtual machine (VM) sprawl. (read more)

Ever since Cisco, EMC, VMware and Intel announced the formation of VCE, The Virtual Computing Environment Company, on November 3, 2009, there has been a fair amount of debate as to how VCE will operate. Many of the questions focus on what benefits VCE will deliver to enterprises now and what enterprises should ultimately expect from VCE in the future. Having recently attended the EMC Analyst Days Event in New York on January 17th and 18th, it is much clearer as to what VCE is delivering today and how it is laying the foundation to help make enterprise private clouds "Great" in the very near future. (read more)

What a difference a decade makes! About ten years ago when I proposed doing a storage virtualization pilot in my company's data center, nearly everyone thought I was crazy. In the words of one person I was "introducing a production hydrogen bomb into our environment." Contrast those thoughts with the conversation that I had late yesterday afternoon with the CEO of a data protection software provider who confided in me, "2011 will be the year that virtualization goes from early stage testing and pilots to full implementation across data centers of all sizes." (read more)

Ask any VMware administrator what the implications are of using a non-certified storage solution in their VMware environment and they shudder to think of the consequences if they call VMware support. But identifying a unified storage solution that is also VMware Certified is more complex than small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) may expect. (read more)

Since DCIG released its 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide this past Tuesday, December 14th, 2010, the criticisms have been flying. Samples of the criticisms include: "DCIG was paid off!" "We did not know how this research was going to be used!" "We were never given the opportunity to license the Buyer's Guide!" and so on. While I won't reply to each and every response, some highly unprofessional and unwarranted, I'll sum up a few that have come to my attention and why I do not believe they have any merit. (read more)

Today DCIG and SMB Research are pleased to jointly announce the availability of a new, comprehensive 2011 Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 20 virtual server backup software products. This Buyer's Guide gives small, medium and large enterprises the resources they need to assist them in making what is becoming one of their most critical buying decisions: procuring a solution that protects the data of their virtualized application servers. (read more)

VMware environments are giving both storage providers and end-users alike a virtual storage wake-up call. It is becoming painfully obviously that the days of manually assigning LUNs, WWNs and zones and then using Excel spreadsheets to manually track the assignments of servers to storage is going to do more than come to an abrupt close in the next few years - it must die. In its place, VMware is putting new demands on storage vendors and users alike to create an environment where storage is virtualized, dynamically allocated and self-healing with data placement driven by policies and business rules. (read more)

Over the last few months I have been doing a series of interviews with end users and then preparing more formalized DCIG case studies based upon these interviews. In these particular instances, all of the end users have been EMC Data Domain users but what I have found particularly intriguing in my conversations with these end users is that while "data deduplicaton" initially grabs their attention, after EMC Data Domain gets implemented, it simply becomes the icing on the backup to disk cake. (read more)