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My briefing with DataCore, during the last Powering the cloud event, was with Alexander Best (Director Technical Business Development).

First to all we have talk about the new SANsymphony-V 9 (released on June 26, 2012) and how this kind of storage virtualization solution (or we can all it an example of Software Defined Storage) is probably the only one that is completly vendor independent. I will write in the next post about the specific functions and integration for VMware.

In an annouce at the Powering The Cloud even, DataCore has defined its solution the “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud” including ‘Heat maps’ and tools to pinpoint storage bottlenecks and optimize storage pool management, high availability stretch-site mirroring, automatic Continuous Data Protection features for fast application recovery  and enterprise-wide flash SSD storage auto-tiering and adaptive caching capabilities that significantly boost the speed, throughput and availability of virtualized, I/O intensive business applications like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange.

More interesting was the discussion about the new features and changes of this product.

First topic was the the Windows Server 2012, that actually it’s unsupported, but the new will SP1 (aka 9.0.1 ) include the OS  support in the front-end part (as a client of DataCore services). Have it in the back-end and as a certified OS to run DataCore will take some more time (follow-up update release expected early next year). Also the ODX support is planned. No info or consideration about the SMB3 feature of Windows Server 2012, but we have to consider that DataCore SANsymphony actually is only a block-oriented storage, so there is no direct advantages is this kind of protocol. Some integrations with System Center family (Virtual Machine Manager, Operation Manager and DPM) are also planned.

We have also discuss about the scalability of this kind of solution that actually is limited in a shared and/or mirrored configuration at only two nodes (for the same vDisk). Seems that solution will scale up to 8 nodes, with mixed function of mirroring and sharing (note that actually the vDisk shared required a specific license and it’s not clear if this will change). Interesting for metro-cluster and/or big environment, but there is to consider that the for of license (based on space and node) could limit this for of scalability.

Finally we have talk about the preview of the Virtual Desktop Server (VDS) reference architecture that could be used to build partner-integrated ‘datacenter in a box’ unified SAN/NAS storage systems and VDI solutions. Interesting for the SMB segment but also for large companies that need a huge scalability. This kind of model could be applied not only to VDI environments but, for example, also in a Remote Desktop Services or XenApp Servers Farm.

See also previous post on DataCore:

See also: full report list of Powering The Cloud 2012 event.

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.