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  • VMware Discloses Hybrid Cloud Service

    VMware Discloses Hybrid Cloud Service

    vmware

    VMware continues its expansion of hybrid cloud platform currently available in over 75% of the global cloud market.The company has revealed the capabilities of the new hybrid cloud service together with the third party mobile app services, whose design “seeks to allow application and enterprise developers to easily support the changing needs of contemporary businesses.”

    Currently, many businesses look up to the contemporary mobile apps in order to drive loyalty, differentiation, and revenue. This is according to the general manager and executive vice president of the Hybrid Cloud Service VMware, Business unit, Bill Fathers.

    Bill further added that VMware is continuing with its pace of their cloud expansion with the aim of making their vCloud Air the leading hybrid cloud platform in the industry for deploying, building, scaling, and operating the more recent mobile-cloud applications.

    It has only been a year since the introduction of VMware vCloud Air and the hybrid’s cloud platform has swiftly stretched their global footprint and now provides Asia-Pacific, US, and the European business of different sizes with the most reliable path to cloud.

    Currently, they boast of eight data centers in Japan, the US, and UK with an announcement that they will be expanding, through a SoftBank Telecom Corp joint venture, to the Asia-Pacific regions. VMware also publicized their strategic corporation with China Telecom in order to build a top notch hybrid cloud service in Beljing.

    vCloud Air is anticipated to avail a wide range of pre-validated solutions offered by the different independent software (ISVs) vendors. These mobility specialists offer their clienteles with a selection of proven capabilities in order to meet a range of customer needs while keeping up with the rapidly dynamic mobile landscape.

    The information director of the San Francisco Ballet, Murray Bognovitz, added that the disaster recovery service by VMware vCloud Air provides them with a dependable recovery services and a seamless connection which has helped them increase their resiliency even with minimum investments.

  • VMware Embraces Cyborg Cloud by Adding Cloud Foundry to its vCHS


    A while ago VMware made news by tossing out its open source platform as-a-service cloud initiative into a spin-off dubbed Pivotal. This was alongside other tech products like Spring, Greenplum Database, and GemFire.

    In an announcement at VMworld, San Francisco, on Monday, the virtualization company revealed that among the key components it would be tapping into for its upcoming cloud is Pivotal's Cloud Foundry. The company announced that VMware's upcoming vCloud Hybrid Service cloud will come with the platform as-a-service wired atop it.

    For VMware customers, this means they will now be capable of creating their own cyborg clouds whose underlay is the VMware vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) and overlay is a Pivotal CF. Pivotal CF is designed to work with both vCHS and vSphere, and it will deliver access for customers to an enterprise support contract.

    Support for Cloud Foundry is set to become available in the fourth quarter of 2013.

  • Teneo Partners with Veloxum for First VMware Platform Optimisation in UK

    Teneo, an infrastructure optimisation specialist, has announced a partnership with Veloxum, a global infrastructure utilisation solutions vendor. Veloxum’s ACO offering enables VMware platforms users to analyse and optimise all elements of their platform including the server capacity, networking, physical storage and interaction with clients.

    Many UK organisations have invested heavily in virtualisation projects with the promise of cost savings presented as part of a return on investment (ROI) model. To realise these savings, server platforms need to be continuously ‘tuned’ to suit the applications they are running, and without this continual optimisation it can be difficult for organisations to achieve these results.

    Veloxum ACO is presented as a server specialist “in a box”, which pro-actively ‘tunes’ server settings continuously to ensure optimum performance. Through automating this process, organisations benefit from using a Veloxum appliance which can optimise processes within three minutes from cold, compared to using a specialist server engineer who could take up to three days for a single review of server configurations.

    Once analysis of a server is complete, Veloxum ACO uses patent-pending algorithms to calculate the optimum server configuration settings that will improve all aspects of performance. Veloxum then implements and logs these new optimal configurations, and acts as a continuous ‘tune-up’ service to configure elements automatically without requiring any user intervention or specialist skills. Veloxum works across a range of applications and platforms, to help fine tune settings for MS SharePoint, Outlook, Exchange, VMware, Citrix, Oracle and more.

    Veloxum allows organisations to increase guest to host density – to run a greater number of VMware instances without increasing physical server capacity. This can lead to dramatic cost savings in terms of deferred capital expenditure on new hardware and reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in the areas of support, maintenance, powering and cooling requirements. Veloxum customers typically see a ROI period of less than 6 months.

    Piers Carey    , chief executive officer, Teneo, commented: “Teneo has an enviable track record of building partner relationships with global solution providers who can offer game-changing solutions for our customers’ networks and IT infrastructures. Our strong relationship with Riverbed puts us at the forefront of the WAN optimisation market. Veloxum takes the same concepts into the server market and increases the scale of our data centre solution. Veloxum is unique in what it does – examining configuration settings across all elements of a client’s VMware platform and continually fine-tuning these settings to deliver dramatic improvements in efficiency and dramatic cost savings. Veloxum offers a solution that ticks all the boxes – quick deployment, guaranteed performance improvements and fast return on investment.”

    Kevin Cornell, chief executive officer, Veloxum, said: “Teneo is an excellent partner for Veloxum as we know that Teneo has the experience and capability to understand how Veloxum can help VMware users and to successfully implement our ACO solution. Teneo has a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for working with vendors who are offering cutting-edge technology to solve customers’ network and infrastructure issues. We look forward to introducing Veloxum solutions to Teneo customers.”

    Veloxum was established in 2007 and is based in California. For Teneo, Veloxum adds to a growing list of best-of-breed IT infrastructure, network and application optimisation vendor partners that it serves in the UK.

  • TwinStrata and Veeam Software Team Up to Deliver Cloud Storage for VMware Backups

    TwinStrata has announced that it is jointly delivering "a highly efficient, cost-effective" solution for the creation and storage of VMware backups with Veeam Software, winner of Best of Show at VMworld 2010.

    According to the company, TwinStrata’s CloudArray software, when used in conjunction with Veeam Backup & Replication, gives organizations easy access to secure, highly scalable, pay-as-you-go Cloud Storage for their VMware backups.

    TwinStrata’s CloudArray is the first purpose-built software solution to enhance data protection at a substantial cost savings compared to traditional off-site storage, delivering simple, affordable, and secure storage solutions to IT environments.

    With this new joint offering from Veeam and TwinStrata, companies using tape systems or disk-to-disk backup for data protection can select CloudArray as the backup target for Veeam Backup & Replication. To ensure data security and privacy, CloudArray encrypts data prior to transporting it to cloud storage. When combined with Veeam Backup & Replication’s advanced deduplication capabilities, the two products offer a high degree of savings for both bandwidth and end point storage requirements.

    In addition, CloudArray Compute-Anywhere allows businesses to restore on-site, offsite or in the cloud.

    "This combined solution will enable a whole new level of business agility, efficiency and cost management for businesses that need to backup their VMware environments," said Doug Hazelman, senior director, product strategy, Veeam Software. "Together with TwinStrata, we can provide companies with economical off-site storage with all the availability, security and performance characteristics of local data storage – available any time, anywhere."

    "We are an agnostic infrastructure services organization that works with multiple vendors to find the most efficient and cost-effective solution for each client," said Jason Schuerhoff, vice president of sales, Sublime Solution.

    "We often recommend the Veeam and TwinStrata strategy because many of our clients don’t have the ability or flexibility to conduct offsite backups for disaster recovery purposes. However, the combination of these two products lets them back up and replicate their virtual infrastructures into the cloud as if they were local, thereby giving them access to the information at any time and from anywhere. Plus, they avoid the cost associated with co-location infrastructures. Most small and medium sized companies will find this solution pays for itself within 12-18 months," he added. 

    Related news
    TwinStrata Improves Its CloudArray Cloud Storage Software
    TwinStrata Unveils Cloud Storage Enablement Strategy

  • DroboElite Brings BeyondRAID Technology to SMBs

    Data Robotics announced DroboElite, the first iSCSI SAN storage that manages itself.

    DroboElite is a business class data storage solution that brings the company’s BeyondRAID technology to small and medium businesses.

    According to Data Robotics, DroboElite, the fastest Drobo to date, features a new hardware architecture that includes an enhanced processing engine and dual high-speed iSCSI interfaces for 150 percent of the performance of previous Drobo models.

    “True multi-host support with LUN affinity allows small and medium businesses with limited IT resources to simplify management and reduce costs by consolidating storage across multiple servers,” the company says.

    DroboElite delivers automated capacity expansion and one-click single- or dual-drive redundancy for data protection for Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

    The new system extends the number of Smart Volumes – Data Robotics’ unique thin provisioning that pulls storage from a common pool of drives – so that users can now create up to 255 virtual storage volumes.

    “Smart Volumes allow companies to create new volumes in seconds and manage them over time by pulling storage from a common pool rather than a specific physical drive allocation. Smart Volumes are also file system aware which allows deleted data blocks to be immediately returned to the pool for future use,” the firm says.

    The new Drobo features multi-host support that enables the companies with multiple servers to add or consolidate storage by connecting the DroboElite into their existing TCP/IP network and utilizing the industry-standard iSCSI protocol.

    The Elite also comes with VMware-ready features: with dual iSCSI ports and the ability to create up to 255 Smart Volumes, it can support VMware environments and advanced functionality including VMotion, Storage VMotion, snapshots, and high availability.

    DroboElite features multiple stream optimization, dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces for high-speed iSCSI and 8-drive capacity with instant capacity expansion to 16TB and beyond.

    With simplified dual-drive redundancy companies are protected against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard drives without losing access to their data.

    “Our products are exceedingly simple and straightforward to use while providing all of the features that SMBs need to keep their data safe and accessible,” said Dr. Geoff Barrall, CEO and founder of Data Robotics.

    He claims Data Robotics can deliver cost savings up to 90 percent compared to other iSCSI solutions by combining cost-effective hardware with robust iSCSI features.

    DroboElite is currently available starting at a price of $3,499 MSRP, with multiple configurations to $5,899 for a 16TB (8x 2TB) solution.

    The company also introduced Drobo S, a professional-class storage solution.

    “With the introduction of eSATA and a fifth drive bay, as well as enhancements to FireWire 800 throughput, the Drobo S offers 150 percent of the performance of the current four-bay Drobo, making it an ideal storage solution for creative professionals, small offices, and home office users,” according to press release.

  • DataPipe Rolls Out 3PAR Cloud-Agile Services

    3PAR, a provider of utility storage, announced that managed global IT service provider and 3PAR Cloud-Agile partner DataPipe now offers differentiated virtual private array (VPA) and disaster recovery (DR) services as part of their Stratosphere cloud services, which are powered by 3PAR Utility Storage.

    DataPipe is the first member of the 3PAR Cloud-Agile program to offer its customers 3PAR Cloud-Agile ASSURED and 3PAR Cloud-Agile SECURED services through this program.

    As the company claims, 3PAR Cloud-Agile ASSURED powers DataPipe’s delivery of highly available and flexible business continuance solutions which are easy to use, quick to implement, and require minimal effort to maintain. 3PAR Cloud-Agile ASSURED leverages 3PAR Remote Copy and gives DataPipe the ability to offer cost-effective, flexible, and robust remote data replication, DR, and autonomic data backup to end users.

    “With 3PAR and VMware powering Stratosphere, we have been able to extend the value we deliver to our customers and enhance the security, agility, and cost-efficiency of the services we offer,” said Michael Parks, Chief Technology Officer for DataPipe.

    He assures that with the new 3PAR cloud service his company offers isolated, secure virtual private array services for performance and security levels previously only available with dedicated hardware, but with a cost structure approaching that of a shared service offering.

    DataPipe delivers VPA services as a value-added “shared” hosting option with the security of a dedicated environment. 3PAR Cloud-Agile: SECURED employs the combination of 3PAR Utility Storage and 3PAR Virtual Domains to give DataPipe the ability to deliver high performance levels while providing secure segregation within a shared, virtualized hardware platform that is protected from unauthorized access, monitoring, and control.

    “As cloud computing has gained momentum, we’ve seen the spotlight mainly cast on virtual private servers and security concerns at the virtual server level,” said Jeff Boles, Senior Analyst and Director at Taneja Group.

    “However, virtual private server deployments are only as secure as the storage foundation upon which they are built. 3PAR Cloud-Agile SECURE enables providers like DataPipe to offer VPA services that ensure security, segregation, and data integrity from the ground up, to complement the security that VMware delivers at the virtual server level,” he added.

    According to Parag Patel, vice president of VMware, combining VMware vSphere 4 with private and resilient 3PAR Utility Storage, service providers like DataPipe are able to meet the demand for security and high availability from their customers who utilize services delivered via the cloud.

    DataPipe provides custom solutions for complex internet-facing infrastructures, proactively managing security, monitoring, storage, datacenter operations, servers, and applications including database administration and software stack.

  • Optimism Seems High in the Storage Efficiency World

    Optimism remains high in storage efficiency world despite recession and talks of possibly impending depression. The focus seems to be on doing more with less and optimizing on existing capacities.

    Nick Broadbent, UK Managing Director of DataCore Software says: 
“Virtualisation and hence consolidation has transformed all that with IT managers able to meet the business data growth needs by re-utilising external storage solutions already in their network.”

    Joyce Putscher, In-Stat analyst feels that there is a significant shift towards higher capacity models. He says, "While the overall market is maturing, growth is shifting towards higher capacity models… The 1.5TB+ segment is forecasted to see the highest growth, exceeding 100 per cent CAGR."

    Data deduplication, 6 GB’s SAS, FCoe, Virtualization, automation, optimization and cost savings seems to be the mantra that is doing the rounds.
    Deduplication is seen as a means of generating a quick return on investment and several vendors are pushing the technology this week.
    Storage capacity optimization appliances for primary and backup storage also have generated a lot of interest.
    Data reduction solutions from Hifn, backup acceleration options for virtual tape libraries, data reduction technology for cloud form Nirvanix and Ocarina are significant in this scenario. Virtualization and automation gained favor and disaster recovery advisor from Symantec was unveiled. NetApp has announced new storage and data management features for VMWare for virtual desktop environments. SAS attracted attention for its high performance, low cost solution, while ATTO announced FastStream SC 8200 controller and 3PAR unveiled its InSery F-Class Storage Servers. Data Robotics announced its DroboPro.

    In this backdrop there the venture funding announcement from Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Dell ventures and Focus Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Valhalla Partners and HarborVest Partners, further signals that the interest in the Storage sector has not died down. Fusion_IO received a whopping $47.5 million and Sepaton netted $15.5 million.

    All this keeps optimism high and market watchers agree that while the Storage industry seems to be slowing down due to the recession the slow down is minimal and not very alarming. It is true that external disk storage system numbers are being affected by market conditions, but storage efficiency technologies are picking up. Sean Haffey, storage product manager at FSC, says that there is no doubt that the external disk market is slowing. “When things were booming 18 months ago it was a question of how fast you could go to market,” he said. “Now it is a case of how efficiently you can run.

  • London Council Gives Virtualisation Green Light


    Faced with 100 per cent year-on-year data growth, the London council of Hillingdon’s IT team has decided to virtualise its servers.

    With a population of almost a quarter of a million, Hillingdon is one of London’s largest local authorities.

    It has responsibility for running schools, social services, waste collection and roads within the borough.

    Now the council has created a sustainable IT environment by replacing its disparate array of servers and storage hardware with a greener virtual environment using Compellent and VMware.

    It took the virtualisation decision after being faced with the rapid growth of employees’ e-mail boxes, the need to retain documents such as benefits assessments records, and the increased use of digital images in planning applications and property and highway inspections.

    Roger Bearpark, assistant head of ICT for the Borough of Hillingdon, said they were looking for a new storage solution that could automatically manage data and drive down the cost per TB of stored data over the life of the SAN.

    “It had to provide us with affordable system resilience and also contribute to a greener IT infrastructure,” he said.

    Virtualising the servers with VMware and the storage with Compellent enabled Hillingdon to reduce 94 production servers to just three, and to reduce the number of server rooms it had from three to two.

    The subsequent power reduction from 34kW to 1.1kW led directly to Hillingdon saving GBP £20,000 on its annual energy bill.
    The green IT initiative enabled it to reduce its carbon footprint by 20 per cent over 18 months.