NetApp certified with VMware Infrastructure 3 - March 23, 2008
NetApp has announced that its StoreVault S500 has been certified to work with VMware Infrastructure 3 from VMware Inc.
The combination of StoreVault with VMware Infrastructure provides SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) with infrastructure virtualization strategies that better manage storage and server resources, NetApp said. This announcement further expands the joint collaboration between VMware and NetApp to provide combined consolidation solutions, NetApp said on Monday.
Available immediately, the StoreVault S500 helps customers benefit from combining storage with infrastructure virtualization, NetApp of Sunnyvale, California said. VMware Infrastructure allows SMB customers to optimize and manage their IT infrastructure by allowing a single hardware platform to run multiple virtual machine instances simultaneously, maximizing hardware efficiency, the company said. When the StoreVault S500 is deployed in VMware environments, it can simplify storage management concerns such as resources, data backup and recovery, and capacity provisioning, NetApp added.
Data growth challenges create a number of headaches for SMBs through data loss, backup, and recovery, NetApp said. Many IT environments of SMBs consist of many servers with DAS (direct attached storage), and as a result there is an increasing interest among SMBs to realize the same benefits that enterprise data centers have, but on a smaller scale, the company said. Severing the physical dependencies between servers and storage will achieve better returns on both server and storage resources, NetApp added.
StoreVault, a NetApp division, is focused on delivering data storage solutions tailored to the needs of SMBs. StoreVault combines enterprise-proven technology from NetApp, a provider of unified storage solutions for today�s data-intensive enterprise, with the scalability, simplicity, security, and affordability required by SMBs, StoreVault said.
VMware is a provider of virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. Companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT environments, and to fully use their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands, VMware said.
Virtualization is useful to businesses of all sizes and not just Fortune 500 companies, VMware of Palo Alto, California said. IT managers in SMBs face the same pressures as data center operators when solving storage and server management issues, while having fewer resources to address the problems, the company said. The certifying of StoreVault with VMware will enable smaller firms to meet their budgetary and reliability needs, VMware added.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company, an accounting and financial services firm based in south Florida, had older equipment, DAS, and the inability to scale resources every day, NetApp said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company�s infrastructure consisted of multiple servers running separate applications for more than 35 employees, the company said. Many of their servers were legacy systems using DAS that were performance-bound by their disks, which, consisted mainly of single drives without RAID (redundant array of independent disks), it said. As a result, performance was slow while data redundancy and fault tolerance were major concerns, NetApp added.
Many SMBs, like Ahearn, Jasco + Company, realize that DAS is inefficient, painful to grow, and unable to meet growing storage performance demands, according to Altek Computer Group, a value-added reseller (VAR) based in Miami. There exists an opportunity to help Ahearn, Jasco + Company revolutionize their server and storage environment and boost performance by either virtualizing their resources or by creating a centralized storage pool that can be accessed by virtual machines, Altek said.
With the tax season approaching, Ahearn, Jasco + Company had to address its need for increased storage, which in the past resulted in adding storage to individual systems in chunks, which led to some servers being underutilized, NetApp said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company decided that adding more DAS was not a viable option due to the low price-performance ratio, high expense, and, most importantly, downtime and disruption to employees during the important tax season, the company said.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company needed to upgrade its entire IT infrastructure on a limited budget, the firm said. It became almost impossible to understand the storage sprawl happening in its environment, it said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company required a unified view of all of its resources to improve server and storage allocation, the firm said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company was also concerned about backup, as it relied on tape devices that were slow and did not guarantee disaster recovery, which needed to be fixed with hurricane season coming, Ahearn, Jasco + Company added.
The StoreVault S500 provided Ahearn, Jasco + Company with an enterprise-proven storage technology platform from NetApp that was affordable and easy to use, NetApp said. The StoreVault S500 allows storage to be added or allocated on-the-fly without disruption to operations, the company said. The StoreVault S500 also enables faster backup and recovery for a higher degree of data reliability, it said. With a single purchase, Ahearn, Jasco + Company gained greater flexibility to grow and respond to future data storage needs without additional investment, NetApp added.
The VMware Infrastructure simplifies the storage environment just as StoreVault, NetApp said. The VMware Infrastructure optimizes the use of hardware assets and creates a solution that allows new server, application, and storage capacity to be provided at a moment�s notice, the company said.
SMBs like Ahearn, Jasco + Company combine blade servers running VMware Infrastructure to StoreVault storage systems for greater reliability, flexibility, and affordability, NetApp said. Multiple VMware virtual machines run on a consolidated hardware platform and access dedicated storage on StoreVault, the company said. The StoreVault S500 meets the storage needs for any new or existing workloads, and VMware Infrastructure allows entire virtual machines to be backed up, moved, and replicated with zero downtime, the company said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company also reduced rack space, lowered energy costs, and created a far more flexible environment, while improving data reliability rates and disaster recovery times, NetApp added.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company has modernized its server and storage environment while meeting its budget requirements, the firm said. The combination of StoreVault and VMware Infrastructure has provided the firm with a complementary technology solution that solved its business problems, Ahearn, Jasco + Company said.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company now has a network storage infrastructure that will last three to five years with the prospect of future scalability at a cost that is next to nothing, the accounting firm said. StoreVault and VMware Infrastructure have provided Ahearn, Jasco + Company with a powerful formula to improve its storage and server utilization and manage its capacity for future investment, Ahearn, Jasco + Company said. The StoreVault Advanced Protection Architecture and RAID-DP have also provide enterprise-class security and data protection functionality at a price that fits its budget, Ahearn, Jasco + Company added.
StoreVault sees a trend for SMBs to look for smarter, more reliable alternatives to the traditional way of handling storage, and iSCSI (Internet SCSI) SAN (storage area network) and infrastructure virtualization are getting attention, StoreVault said. The relationship with VMware is designed to bring added value to IT generalists within SMBs that are tasked with taming storage and infrastructure management with a limited budget, StoreVault said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company is a great example of one way VMware Infrastructure can be brought into play for SMBs with the StoreVault storage platform, StoreVault added.
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