Hot Management, Data Protection Products At VMworld

Managing Data, Data Center Resources In Virtualized Environments

VMworld has become the IT industry's primary event for finding new technologies for managing virtual and physical resources including storage in virtualized data centers. Yet VMworld is about more than managing resources. Instead, it brings together vendors of hardware and software, physical and virtual appliances, and other technology to help customers start to lay the groundwork for moving to private and/or public clouds.

Start learning more about 15 such new technologies being shown this week at VMworld.

Actifio: Virtualized Data Protection

VirtualData Pipeline from Waltham, Mass.-based Actifio is a data protection, disaster recovery and business continuity solution that transforms data management application silos into a single virtualized offering. The Actifio software suite -- Actifio DP (data protection), Actifio DR (disaster recovery) and Actifio BC (business continuity) -- uses the company's VirtualData Pipeline (VDP) technology for data management with improved simplicity, agility and lower cost while co-existing with the current infrastructure, the company said. Unlike traditional tools that address various parts of the data life cycle, the Actifio suite transforms the infrastructure into a virtualized solution managing data across the entire life cycle, the company said.

Akorri: Automated Predictive Analysis For Virtualized Infrastructures

Akorri, Littleton, Mass., this week released the latest version of the company's BalancePoint virtual infrastructure performance management software. The new version includes BalancePoint Predictor, which provides automated predictive analysis. BalancePoint Predictor is the industry's first cross-domain performance predictor that prevents dynamic data center outages and bottlenecks of complex virtualized infrastructures before they impact the customer's business, Akorri said. It also features disk utilization analytics, new Microsoft Hyper-V support to match its existing VMware support, and expanded multivendor storage support. BalancePoint has also achieved VMware Ready Management Solution Certification.

Asigra: Cloud Backup Software For Customers Of Any Size

Toronto-based Asigra is showing a new version of its Asigra Cloud Backup software. Asigra Cloud Backup v10 allows MSPs and solution providers to provide cloud-based backups to storage customers ranging from small businesses to the largest enterprises. It offers them such new capabilities as comprehensive protection for laptops, desktops, servers, data centers and cloud computing environments with tiered recovery options to balance Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) with storage costs. V10 also lets customers create tiered backup policies based on the value of the data with the cost of protecting it. A new local backup option can replace customers' tape-based local backup solutions and gives MSPs the ability to offer granular pricing for protecting data on multiple tiers.

ATTO: VMware Ready 8-Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs

ATTO Technology, Amherst, N.Y., is showcasing its recently released 8-Gbps Celerity Fibre Channel host bus adapters. The new Celerity HBAs are certified VMware Ready for VMware vSphere 4.1. The ATTO Celerity HBA line includes single-channel, dual-channel and quad-channel configurations in both 4-Gbps and 8-Gbps versions, as well as SAS/SATA HBAs that work in 6-Gbps and 3-Gbps deployments.

CA: Automating Virtualized Environment Management

CA, Islandia, N.Y., is showing its CA Virtual portfolio of management solutions for virtualized environments of all sizes. The CA Virtual portfolio includes several stand-alone solutions. CA Virtual Assurance provides comprehensive event, fault and performance management of heterogeneous virtual infrastructures. CA Virtual Automation provides automated, self-service virtual machine life-cycle management including provisioning, resource pool management, tracking, cost accounting and scheduled de-provisioning. CA Virtual Configuration offers configuration discovery, reporting and remediation for heterogeneous virtual infrastructures. CA Virtual Privilege Manager controls privileged access to virtualized environments by securing console access to the hypervisor and managing privileged access to all of the virtual images.

Coraid: Scale-Out SAN

Redwood City, Calif.-based Coraid’s new SRX4200 is a high-density, scale-out Ethernet SAN array aimed at high-performance cloud and enterprise data centers. The 4U storage appliance packs a mix of 36 SATA, SAS or solid-state drives with performance of up to 1,800 MBps. Each SRX4200 supports 72 TBs of capacity with today's 2-TB SATA drives and up to 108 TBs with future 3-TB drives, enabling more than a petabyte of storage in each data center rack. It also includes a Representational State Transfer (REST) storage management interface for managingdistributed systems using simple HTTP, XML or application-based commands. Pricing starts at less than $600 per TB.

Egnyte: Bringing Local, Cloud Storage Together

Egnyte, Mountain View, Calif., said its new Enterprise Local Cloud (ELC) cloud file server is now available for VMware environments. Egnyte ELC can be deployed as a virtual appliance on any VMware virtual machine to allow organizations to deploy a hybrid cloud storage solution using existing low-cost or enterprise-class infrastructures or both. Egnyte's hybrid cloud technology combines the accessibility and flexibility of cloud storage with the performance and data protection of a local storage solution. It automatically detects and synchronizes changes to files on both local drives and in the cloud.

F5: Managing Applications In vSphere Environments

Seattle-based F5 this week started offering its BIG-IP Management Plug-In for VMware vSphere, a free software add-on to the VMware vSphere management console for simplifying common BIG-IP LTM (Local Traffic Manager) administrative tasks in a vSphere environment. The F5 plug-in helps companies ensure that their BIG-IP LTM appliances, which provide application security, performance and delivery, are synchronized with changes to their VMware vSphere environments. BIG-IP Management Plug-In for VMware vSphere applies existing BIG-IP traffic management policies to newly provisioned virtual machines and maintains synchronization using flexible filters to select and associate virtual machines with the correct BIG-IP LTM traffic management policies.

FalconStor: Improving Storage Efficiency In VDI Environments

Melville, N.Y.-based FalconStor Software is showing its new Network Storage Server (NSS) SAN Accelerator for VMware View, which uses solid-state disk (SSD) storage to increase the performance of VMware virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments while providing integrated, multitier data protection. It backs up and recovers the entire VMware VDI environment and for each virtual desktop while enabling integrated self-service file recovery for individual virtual desktop users. FalconStor said the NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View increases VDI management efficiency throughout the virtual desktop life cycle, including virtual desktop creation, booting, login, operation, logoff, patch/update and security management. It also uses snapshots, thin clones, replication and file-level protection for a three-tier data protection service.

Gluster: Scalable NAS In VMware Environments

Gluster, Milpitas, Calif., is showing its Gluster VMStor, a new capability for its Gluster scalable NAS technology that extends support to virtual machine storage, with initial support for VMware environments. The new VMStor capability decreases the expense associated with storing virtual machines by eliminating the need to use a traditional SAN-based environment, which can be more expensive to scale. Gluster VMStor scales to multiple petabytes of data and can store an unlimited number of VM images. Virtual machine-level snapshots and backups can be performed with a single mouse click or automated with existing tools and cloud management software.

Infortrend: Bringing Fibre Channel, iSCSI Together

Taiwan-based Infortrend is showing two new models in its ESVA (Enterprise Scalable Virtualized Architecture) storage appliance family, which provides storage virtualization, server virtualization support and data services for midrange SAN environments. The ESVA F70 provides Fibre Channel-iSCSI hybrid host connectivity and comes with eight 8-Gbps Fibre Channel and four Gbit Ethernet iSCSI ports. The ESVA E10 is an iSCSI-host storage appliance that allows users to leverage current IP networks to build an IP SAN. The E10 comes with 16 internal drives and four Gbit Ethernet iSCSI ports.

Neptuny: Managing Physical, Virtual Resources

Milan, Italy-based Neptuny is demonstrating the latest version of Caplan, its capacity and virtualization planning software for enterprise data centers and large network environments. Caplan 3.3 has the ability to simulate future placements of both physical and virtual resources based on historical resource consumption and workload trends, as well as the ability to optimize storage capacity allocation. Caplan 3.3 provides additional benchmark management capabilities and lets users tag, filter, search, group and manage entities in a flexible manner. Neptuny also updated Caplan 3.3 with IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) v6 and version 2.5 of the VMware vCenter API.

Pancetera: Reducing Storage Management Tasks In Virtualized Environments

The new Pancetera Unite from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Pancetera is aimed at reducing the impact of such management tasks as backup, replication, security scanning and WAN mobility in virtualized environments. Pancetera Unite quickly installs as a virtual appliance. IT managers can use the Pancetera SmartView software to view all their virtual machines from a single virtual appliance. Existing tools can be pointed to Pancetera Unite so that all data movement goes through Unite to improve management performance. It lets virtualization administrators interact with their entire VMware storage environment as they would browse a directory of files, giving them out-of-the-box compatibility with existing enterprise tools.

SolarWinds: Managing, Tracking Virtual Machines

SolarWinds' new VM Console is the Austin, Texas-based company's newest free tool for handling virtual machine management and tracking virtual machines from the convenience of a realtime desktop dashboard. VM Console allows IT professionals to bounce virtual machines, track their up and down status, take a snapshot to compare it before and after bouncing, and restarting them, all without the need to log into vCenter or vSphere. VM Console is available immediately for download from the SolarWinds Web site.

Zetta: Secure Offsite Data Protection

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Zetta is showing its new Zetta Data Protection offsite data protection service as an alternative to traditional backups. Zetta Data Protection provides secure, well-protected and instantly available data copies at a fraction the cost of other offsite alternatives or traditional tape backup, the company said. Zeta Data Protection uses the ZettaMirror agent to protect data by securely replicating disparate enterprise data sources to the Zetta Storage Service, creating an always-online, available, verified and protected second copy of the customers’ data. The online and mountable data is continually validated and is in hourly sync with the customer’s primary data set. Pricing starts at 25 cents per GB per month.