Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Stock markets taking a beating, companies cringing at the thought of investing in newer technologies and applications/systems/storage in desperate need of a "refresh" makes it all very hard to decide who will "Go to the market". Well Netapp is doing its part here, and pretty good though. Enthusiasm for virtualisation has dipped slightly of late, and NetApp wants reinforce the benefits of its storage-efficiency technologies, saying they will reduce overall storage usage while improving performance. “The pressure for cost reduction has led to the rapid adoption of storage-efficiency technologies such as thin provisioning, deduplication, RAID-DP, and Snapshot, which come standard on NetApp systems,” says Jay Kidd, chief marketing officer of NetApp. Source

At the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, August 4-7 at San Francisco's Moscone Center, StoneFly, Inc., a leading supplier of integrated IP storage area network (SAN) systems and a wholly owned subsidiary of Dynamic Network Factory, Inc. (DNF), will unveil enhanced server virtualization capabilities across its entire IP SAN line through certification with both the Citrix/Xen and VMware platforms. StoneFly is exhibiting the new capabilities at the event in booth #1315. In addition, the company will debut its new SAN-based encryption capabilities for the StoneFly Integrated Storage Concentrator (ISC) line of high-availability IP SANs. Lastly, StoneFly will demonstrate, for the first time, its robust new StoneFusion 6.1 intelligent network storage platform, which is now being offered as a standard, integrated component of all StoneFly IP SANs to deliver block-level provisioning and centralized storage management, control and monitoring of logical storage volumes. ...

LOS GATOS, Calif., May 28, 2008 – Hifn™ (NASDAQ: HIFN), the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, today announced that it has signed Xdata Corporation as the latest addition to its roster of resellers for the award-winning Swarm™ secure iSCSI appliance product line. Xdata, based in Greenwood Village, CO, is a storage solution specialist with a core competency in business continuance. Using proven methodologies and best practices developed from real life experience, the company designs and implements custom solutions for data storage, backup and recovery, data replication, storage management, SANs, NAS, iSCSI, IP SANs, compliance, and disaster recovery. By signing on to Hifn’s Channel 100 Partner Program for the company’s Swarm products, Xdata Corp. gains access to a broad range of reseller resources, such as training webinars, lead generation, product spiffs, joint customer visits with Hifn storage experts, discounted demo units, public relations and telemarketing support...

Parsippany, N.J. – April 28, 2008 — RELDATA, the leading provider of unified storage solutions that deliver iSCSI SAN, NAS and WAN replication from a single virtualized storage platform, today announced YellowFiber is now a customer for RELDATA’s 9240 unified storage solutions. YellowFiber is a hosting company that provides managed high availability clusters for ebusiness and web infrastructures. “Previously we had a series of disjointed storage islands,” explains Zak Thompson, CEO of YellowFiber. “Storage pools were connected to different machines in the same cluster for load balancing and redundancy, and it became painfully complex to keep these in sync. This complexity was compounded by a lack of scalability in the file system. As the capacity requirements of some clusters grew, we were forced to constantly break out applications onto a new file server.” Faced with individual customers demanding 10 to 50GB of storage growth per week and an overall demand for as much as 900GB of new...

“With the SB5165XL StorageServer NAS/iSCSI appliance, Verari’s Storage Group is demonstrating its commitment to continuous innovation and providing customers with an alternative to existing NAS solutions,” said Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW. “Verari is delivering industry-leading capacity and energy efficiency with the added benefit of investment protection by delivering new types of solutions for its BladeRack 2 X-Series platforms.” This high capacity blade-based NAS and iSCSI storage appliance for the Verari Systems BladeRack® 2 XL platform is a powerful enabler for storage consolidation and as an effective alternative for enterprises to consolidate server virtualization resources providing a dramatic improvement in cost of ownership. The iSCSI capabilities of the SB5165XL StorageServer simplify the migration of data resident in server blades to networked storage while the StorageServer’s NAS-based file services are complementary to its IP network-based servi...

LOS GATOS, Calif., April 8, 2008 Hifn(TM) , the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, today introduced industry's first turnkey Unified IP Software solution bundled with an Express data security acceleration card. The new Unified Storage OEM Bundle enables OEMs and systems integrators to quickly enter the fast-growing iSCSI market by transforming open-system, third-party disk arrays into intelligent iSCSI storage appliances. Hifn will offer its new software bundle in addition to its already well recognized iSCSI IP SAN appliances. Hifn made the announcement at Storage Networking World Spring 2008 at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Booth #1200. Hifn's new Unified Storage OEM Bundle combines the company's Express DS250/255 data acceleration card with the award-winning Swarm(TM) iSCSI software, featuring advanced management and security features, such as unified iSCSI SAN and NAS storage, integrated hardware data encryption to protect sensitive company ...

LOS GATOS, Calif., March 31, 2008 – Hifn™ (NASDAQ: HIFN), the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, will showcase its Swarm™ secure iSCSI SAN appliances at FOSE 2008 Conference and Exhibition, April 1-3 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., Booth #1517N. Hifn’s Swarm appliances are the only iSCSI storage appliances available with integrated AES256 hardware data encryption, providing a simple-to-deploy and easy-to-use, out-of-the-box regulatory compliance solution for government installations facing the complexity of protecting people’s data and mandates governing the retention of information. In addition, Hifn’s Swarm 3000 model was the world’s first iSCSI storage appliance to feature RAID level 6, adding an extra layer of protection against potential data loss during the longer array rebuild times associated with high-capacity SATA drives. Hifn’s IP SAN storage system allows government users to leverage their existing Gigabit Ethernet infrast...

LeftHand Networks, a provider of iSCSI SANs, announced that Anite, an IT services and system integration company, has deployed LeftHand Networks' Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) in two of its data centers using a VMware virtual server environment. Based in the United Kingdom, Anite is an international software and solutions company whose primary business is the provision of industry-specific solutions for wireless telecoms, public sector and travel markets. "Historically Anite has had little islands of IT," said Jeremy Moss, group IT director for Anite. "We run some fairly standard business applications, including customer support systems." Link

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We had spoken to John Matze sometime back when they released their Swarm Appliance for VMware. To get to know more about the Swarm Appliance, I'd suggest you click here . They are quietly selling as well John's profile: VP of Business Development John Matze previously was the founder and CEO of Siafu Software (acquired by Hifn in 2007), where his mission was to develop storage appliances that offer enterprise-level functionality and encryption for small to medium sized companies. Matze, one of CRN Magazine's 2003 Top 25 Innovators, is also one of the original authors of the iSCSI protocol. He has over 15 years of storage software experience including: vice president & CTO, Overland Storage; director of software, Veritas Software; and principal architect, STAC. Matze has also been the creator of many successful products including: Overland Storage REO products, Okapi ipXcelerator, STAC Replica for NetWare and APC PowerChute UPS Monitoring Software. John, can you please ...

This blog post from LeftHand Networks gets me thinking: Fibre Channel is to iSCSI what Beta is to BlueRay. The Fibre Channel guys are running scared. Customers see the tremendous savings offered by iSCSI, not only in acquisition, training, and operational costs, but savings from advanced virtualization technologies like thin provisioning, resource aggregation and high availability; It’s about doing more with less and solutions that allow storage to be managed independently of the hardware in the same manner as the new matriarch of storage--VMware. Fibre Channel vendors have seen the writing on the wall and are now trying to save their ship by hopping on the Ethernet bandwagon. The technology is called FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet.) Catchy name, huh? Which presumably will allow application severs to connect to Fibre Channel SANs over standard Ethernet, helping reduce the need for costly HBAs and switches. The hyped advantage is the elimination of TCP/IP overhead. Will iSCSI ki...

EWeek is reporting: The acquisition, which is expected to close either by the end of 2007 or the first quarter of 2008, is also expected to strengthen the Round Rock, Texas, company's channel program after it begins incorporating EqualLogic's technology into its PowerVault storage portfolio. EqualLogic, which earlier this year announced that it would pursue an initial public offering in the wake of VMware's successful stock announcement, incorporates iSCSI storage protocol into its products. Storage remains one of the most talked about areas of IT management, and Dell is jumping into the market as more and more storage capacity is being shifted to IP SANs (storage area networks). The iSCSI SAN market is expected to grow from about $600 million in 2006 to $6 billion in the next five years, according to IDC. Link2EW

Alternative Technology, a leading specialty distributor of thin-client/server-based computing, edge infrastructure, virtualization, and government-approved security solutions, recently announced that it has signed a value-added distribution agreement with LeftHand Networks, the leader in open iSCSI SANs. Under the agreement, Alternative Technology will promote and distribute LeftHand Networks’ Open iSCSI SAN technology to its network of 3,000 resellers in the United States and Canada. Channel sales, training and pre-sales support will commence immediately, with general availability Nov. 7. “This agreement represents a major expansion of Alternative Technology’s virtual infrastructure solution strategy, broadening and complementing our current portfolio of VMware virtualization and Citrix-based infrastructure solutions with open iSCSI SANs for x86 server platforms,” said Tom Zorn, executive vice president, Alternative Technology. “iSCSI is a viable new technology that will allow our cha...

Who You Calling SCSI? We can forgive some omissions because The MD3000i does strike an even balance between features and price. Automated I/O path failover, automatic array failure detection and rebuild using a standby hot spare are available out of the box. Premium features like snapshot technology and volume-copy functionality can be purchased as software upgrades. In the lab, we were very impressed with the simplicity of Dell's MD Storage Manager application. The Java-based management GUI was very simple to navigate and performed as quickly as a well-written client/server application. As for setup, we managed to rack and configure the device and get a server connected to an array in just one hour. We opted to read the manual, but if you're pressed for time, Dell offers a Remote Implementation Service in which a technician connects to your management station via WebEx and guides you through configuration of your array and host servers. Best of all, RIS is free. Who ne...

SANs built using LeftHand’s SAN/iQ software are able to distribute and protect data across a cluster of industry-standard storage servers, LeftHand Networks said. The company’s patented architecture increases data availability, allows users to start small and grow the SAN seamlessly, and helps to simplify management. LeftHand SAN is ideal for server consolidation and virtualization projects, Microsoft Application environments, and disaster recovery solutions, the company said. The combined solution offers customers highly available and completely scalable virtualized server and storage environments that enable a number of powerful capabilities, Virtual Iron said. Virtual Iron enables the provisioning of new virtual machines to meet increasing application demands in the data center, or to create new environments for software development and testing, Virtual Iron said. SAN/iQ supports these capabilities by allowing users to clone storage volumes almost instantaneously, and with minimal u...

StoneFly's Product Manager, Jame Ervin, has written a neat article on Intelligent IP SANs. They're cheap, they're smart and they're what a typical SMB would want! Three Major Approaches to Virtualizing Operating Systems and Applications A simple way to maximize system utilization and take advantage of the huge processing power of current hardware platforms is to use server virtualization. The three major approaches to virtualizing operating systems and applications include emulation, para-virtualization, and operating system virtualization. These are described in more detail below. Each type has specific benefits and drawbacks. Some approaches attract more media attention than others, but it is important during the planning phases to evaluate the approaches and choose what makes the most sense in your environment based on your priorities, whether they are performance, hardware utilization, consolidation, or application availability. Emulation virtualization platf...

The latest wave of data center virtualization has made the iSCSI protocol an increasingly appealing prospect for the SMB market, and naturally vendors are obliging customers with fresh gear. IBM is jumping aboard the bandwagon today and unveiling its first entry into the iSCSI storage space since parting ways with Adaptec nine months ago. Big Blue has extended its budget DS3000 range with a device similar to the rest of the product family, but sporting iSCSI connectivity. Click here to find out more! According to IBM, the new DS3300 is targeted at SMB customers looking to avoid the cost of Fibre Channel gear as they move away from a DAS (direct attached storage) set-up. Quoth Charlie Andrews, of IBM System Storage marketing: "SMBs continue to face the same issues that large enterprises are dealing with when it comes to the deluge of data — they are seeing an ever-increasing amount of feature-rich documents, limitless e-mails, audio and video files, data-intensive new applications,...

eWeek reporting... "According to Gartner, the iSCSI was a $200 million dollar market in 2005 and it's expected to double every year for the next five years. You also have the adoption of iSCSI in enterprises at the department level," Grandinetti said. He also pointed to a recent IDC forum in New York that discussed the future of virtualization and the need to offer more secure solutions that also address data backup, disaster recovery and business continuity. What is iSCSI ? I think there is also an acute need to break away from traditional and expensive FC (Fiber Channel) SAN type solutions. That having said, is still in an embroyo stage for an enterprise support. But hey, you could say the same about Linux Support and its getting adopted all over the place! Read the rest here ...