Virtualization for Small businesses Part 2

A follow-up to last month’s article about virtualization for small businesses, here is the latest virtualization platform from VMware, called VMware Go™ which is ideal for small and midsize businesses. The web-based service simplifies the virtualization process by automating the VMware ESXi hypervisor installation and setup, without needing expert IT resources.

Currently in beta-version, VMware plans to release the free VMware Go in 2010. Sign up to receive the beta-version.

We Are 10Gig!

StoneFly has been gaining traction with 10GbE IP SAN appliances.  Our customers are seeing better performance, speed, and availability from it.  In some applications they achieve up to 1,000 megabytes per second (MBPS) and over 100,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS). With our patented virtual pipeline architecture, our systems can keep latency under 6 usec, even heavily loaded, with over 18 Gb/sec bandwidth (bi-directional).

Using 10G? We are  interested to hear your experience with it, and what types of applications you use it for. Drop a line.

Reliability of SSDs

The common misconception of solid state drives (SSDs) is that they are unreliable and unable to withstand wear and tear. According to Storage Swiss: Enterprise Flash SSD is reliable now. Check out the full article to get the scoop.

Are you using SSDs for your enterprise storage needs? Our customers are. Our Voyager IP SAN appliance supports SATA, SAS, and SSD. Check out the Voyager to learn more.

Clustered or Distributed?

When talking about the best high-availability configuration, it’s always best to know what your options are. Should we cluster? Should we have distributed file systems? I found this Enterprise Storage Forum article, which may be helpful to administrators in search of the best HA configuration for their storage architecture.

Want to learn more about clustering? Watch this short video.

Voyager + RackSwitch = Super fast IP SAN

We have great news from our testing lab: The Voyager is our fastest SAN appliance yet. OK, so that isn’t really new news but here’s what our engineers said:

We completed testing the Voyager with many 10Gb Ethernet switches, and found that using BLADE’s RackSwitch G8124 delivers the fastest IP SAN performance with over 950 megabytes/sec.

Wow 950 MB/s is fast! So fast in fact, that our joint Voyager-RackSwitch solution sped of to Vegas, and beat everyone else to the show.  If you are in town, you can check out our solution in booth #1175 at Interop, from May 18-21.

Learn more by checking out the links below:

• Read the release
• Contact our sales team for a demo
• Follow us on Twitter
• Follow BLADE on Twitter

Virginia Medical Database Gets Hacked

Did you hear about this one? Apparently, somebody hacked into Virginia Department of Health Professions’ website last week, and is holding state medical records for ransom.  The claims have not been verified as of yet, but the hacker’s note states that he/she broke into the state-run website and destroyed the original and created an encrypted backup file which would be handed over for $10M.  Here’s the note:

“I have your [expletive]. In my possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh 😦 For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”

A spokesperson from the Department claims that a few of the systems have been restored and complete restoration is due soon. If the statement is true, kudos to the IT department for doing what they should (keeping physical backups).

Here’s the full article. We’ll keep you up to date as more information is revealed.

Storage Strategies: Things to keep in mind

What do you look for when you’re shopping for storage?

We probably all look at price, performance, and reliability, right? But how much time do we spend looking at other factors like total cost of ownership (TCO), security, automation, and compatibility? Probably not as much.

Here are some other things to consider when making your next visit to the enterprise storage aisle:

• Tiered Storage- Save on the cost of drives by moving inactive data to low-cost drives  
• Data Security- Think about disk encryption
• Automation- Look for software, hardware, or managed services that allow for a level of automation and streamlined management
• Data Recovery- Look into recovery and retrieval options
• Interoperability- See if the system plays well with others

These are just a few pointers, if you’re looking for more tips, check out this article by Processor on making purchasing decisions.

We’re ready for vSphere. How about you?

Today, VMware is set to launch vSphere.  The new datacenter OS.  And the latest versions of ESX Server and the Virtual Infrastructure.

We’ve been busy (though not quite as busy as they were :D), getting our StoneFly SANs ready for the next generation ESX Server.  I’m relieved to say, our next generation SANs are here now.

Check out our announcement on our vSphere support.  Any current StoneFly SAN will support the latest version of ESX server.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team.

Are you using another hypervisor?  See what other virtual server platforms we support.  And here are some details, on how we work with VMware.

If you have some time tomorrow, we’re hosting a webinar on server virtualization and iSCSI storage, sign up for it on 4/22 at 10A PST.

Above I mentioned next-generation SANs.  Did you know that we have 2 product families that support SSD, SAS, SATA and 10 gigabit iSCSI?

Learn more about our Integrated Storage Concentrators and the StoneFly Voyager.

VMware vSphere is on the way!

Next week, VMware is set to launch the next piece of their new “datacenter operating system.”

We are excited about, and look here for more info here as we support these new virtualization solutions:

Some highlights of what’s new:

• Fault Tolerance (FT)– This is the next step up from HA which provided high ability but not 100% availability. Previously users who wanted 100% availability were forced to use a non-VMware native solution like Microsoft Clustering Server.
• Host Profiles– Host profiles will make ESX and ESXi host configuration much quicker and easier. Host profiles will allow you to create centralized configuration policies that can be applied to your hosts to simplify configuration management.
• Distributed vSwitches– This new type of vSwitch allows for centralized management and configuration of your vSwitches. Previously vSwitches had to be managed individually for each host which made configuration and administration time-consuming and more difficult. Distributed vSwitches allow you to create vSwitches for all your hosts at once rather then one by one and also allow you to maintain consistent configurations across each host.
• Improved Storage VMotion– No need to use an external plug-in or the Remote command line interface (CLI) anymore as Storage VMotion will be integrated into vCenter Server, also support for NFS storage will be added.
• HA enhancements– New HA features such as improved admission control and host monitoring that suspends failover actions during network maintenance.
• Thin-provisioned Virtual Disks – Previously thin-provisioned disks could only be created manually using the CLI. You will now be able to create them when creating a guest OS using the vSphere Client.

Learn more on Tech Target:  VMware vSphere is coming – Virtualization Pro.

By the way, next week we are hosting a webinar on virtual servers and iSCSI storage.  We will cover how ESX4 will impact your storage environment.  Click here to get more info on the webinar on 4/22.

Manage iSCSI Sprawl

Some enterprises are having to do more with less resources, less time and less money. Cut down iSCSI storage management time and storage sprawl with iSNS. Most iSCSI arrays have supported this protocol for years.

The iSNS protocol (RFC 4171) was developed to provide a central management point for all iSCSI devices. Discovery and management provided by iSCSI-enabled devices is often quite rudimentary and inadequate. For example, a discovery run in Linux results in the initiator logging in to every available target on the server, which is almost never what you want. Instead, we can discover targets via an iSNS server, which will control what is seen.

Read the full article: Manage iSCSI Sprawl With iSNS Servers

• Learn more about the top applications of iSCSI
• Get an overview of the iSCSI technology, sign up for our Wednesday webinar