SCIENCE

DataCore Software has announced widespread alliance partner support for its SANsymphony-V software. Two years in the making, SANsymphony-V is a next-generation storage virtualization software solution that enables IT organizations to eliminate storage-related barriers to realizing the financial and operational goals of their virtualization initiatives.

Data centers are now on the move to embrace total virtual infrastructures to add flexibility, reduce costs and increase the productivity of their desktop, server and storage investments. According to Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, "For server virtualization endeavors to truly succeed, IT shops will have to match those capabilities with total storage virtualization - or else it's all for naught. Autonomous storage virtualization that sits a layer above the physical storage is the way it inevitably has to be."

SANsymphony-V enables enterprises to use existing equipment and conventional storage devices to achieve the robust and responsive shared storage environment necessary to support highly dynamic virtual IT environments. Moreover, the software greatly reduces risk by insulating users and applications from the impact of changes, disruptions and growth demands at the storage level. SANsymphony-V frees customers from hardware vendor lock-in by decoupling the virtual infrastructure from storage disks, and by optimizing the performance and use of standard storage devices.

"End users are telling us that storage 'surprises' can be a major irritant with -- or even impediment to -- desktop and server virtualization projects," states Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The surprises are twofold -- firstly operational, whereby the virtualized computing layer is precluded from working well by the lack of an equally flexible storage infrastructure; and secondly, financial, as the first issue precludes the economic advantages of server virtualization from being achieved, and the subsequent 'quick-fix' storage acquisitions drive costs up and over budget. DataCore addresses the operational issues and hence delivers pleasing economic value. Its software intelligently repurposes existing resources in order to meet the unpredictable and unforeseen workloads that virtual machines and desktops generate."