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TMS and DataCore peddle flashy support for virtual servers

Bundle supercharges virty environments

TMS flash arrays are being bundled with SANsymphony-V software from DataCore to provide fast flash-based SAN array support to virtualised servers.

The combination of RamSan flash appliances from TMS with the DataCore storage hypervisor software is aimed at VMware servers and accelerating hem by adding an automatically tiered flash storage pool on top of their existing disk drive storage. The RamSan hardware, using either SLC or MLC flash, is attached directly to a server host or accessed through a fabric link with users setting up policies for their virtual storage pools.

TMS says that "when provisioning a virtual machine disk format (VMDK) on a LUN presented to the SANsymphony-V cluster, the virtual guest can utilise internal paging mechanisms with sub-millisecond response times," to the flash while still using the existing disk drive storage.

DataCore's Carlos Carreras, VP for alliances and business development, said: "The TMS RamSan-SANsymphony-V bundled offerings can easily be configured to turn new or existing servers and local storage into high-performance storage arrays optimised for virtual infrastructures.

"By organising disks with different performance levels into separate tiers and using RamSan appliances as the fastest tier with SAS or SATA drives on the lower tiers, customers benefit from the optimised throughput delivered by SANsymphony-V’s automatic storage tiering technology. [It] dynamically adapts to the …. application workloads to deliver unparalleled performance for physical and virtual environments."

DataCore SANsymphony-V abstracts storage into virtual disks akin to virtual machines, and pools and mirrors disk blocks across available devices, despite differences in make and model. SAN-wide caching speeds I/O responsiveness and throughput. A vCentre plug-in allows non-disruptive provisioning, sharing, cloning, replication and expansion of virtual disks among physical servers and virtual machines.

The TMS DataCore bundle includes caching to automatically optimise disk access across tiers for best utilisation; synchronous mirroring for high-availability failover; asynchronous replication for disaster recovery; and snapshots and Continuous Data Protection. Thin provisioning uses only the RamSan space actually written for more efficient Tier-0 flash capacity utilisation.

TMS president Dan Scheel said: “Rather than go with a rip-and-replace upgrade ... the TMS/DataCore bundle will provide better utilisation of existing storage infrastructure while ... improving the efficiency, performance, provisioning, data protection, availability and management of that infrastructure.”

Hardware support is available from TMS with software support being supplied by DataCore. Buy the systems from TMS. No prices were announced. ®

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