Veeam is taking advantage of VMware snaps to capture VM images and store them on the Veeam backup server’s datastore. The VM image can be Storage vMotioned to a production datastore or it can be replicated to a production datastore via Veeam’s own replication technology (this is a manual cut over … about 10 minutes of downtime). Essentially, this is the ability to boot a VM directly from the backup copy without having to do a full restore.

Vizioncore offers something similar. Its vRanger’s FlashRestore feature reduces recovery time for a VM image to seconds. Instead of waiting for the VM file to be copied from the backup repository to the recovery system over the network, the VM image can be booted directly from the vRanger Pro backup repository, making it immediately available.

Funny thing is, these solutions sound an awful lot like something Syncsort has had for years: BEX Instant Availability, which provides immediate recovery of critical applications and data without a need to transfer data.

Veeam vigorously defends that what it does is different … and Veeam’s right. One of the advantages of having VM image is the ease of manipulation and portability. Syncsort uses raw device mapping (RDM) in physical compatibility mode to link VMFS volume to a raw LUN, which creates a virtual machine disk image file (.vmdk) pointing to the raw LUN. You can instantly recover the VM by mounting the data as a physical RDM, but you can’t Storage vMotion it back to production storage since Storage vMotion doesn’t support physical RDMs.

With the tolerance for downtime rapidly decreasing, it’s a sure bet that IT organizations are continually on the hunt for solutions that can help meet aggressive recovery objectives. Veeam, Vizioncore, and Syncsort all support this objective.

Read more of Lauren’s blog entries at Data Protection Perspectives.

RSA Security made one of these by introducing virtualization intelligence in its Archer compliance suite.

What’s the big deal? IT operations needs standard server configurations to meet compliance mandates and auditors need visibility into both physical and virtual servers. Neither group wants to jump through hoops to get what they need. This is a pretty big deal. When ESG asked security professionals what security-specific developments need to take place in order to enable more widespread server virtualization usage, 27% responded that their organizations needed, “compliance management tools that recognize virtual server events.” This was the third most popular of all possible responses.

RSA is on to something here. When I move workloads to the cloud you can be damn sure that my auditors want to know what’s going on. I’d like to see more vendors follow RSA’s lead and I’d really like to see security and cloud computing vendors start to discuss data standards for compliance, event management, and log file formats as well as secure transport protocols. Alas, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The RSA announcement won’t get much pick up, as it lacks the buzz of some cloudy/virtualization vision thing. Nevertheless, it is exactly what customers are looking for.

You can read Jon’s other blog entries at Insecure About Security.

via VMware Upgrades Its Virtualized Desktop Lineup – Virtualization from eWeek.

Everyone is trying to figure what will happen next. Just for fun I want to exercise my contrarian gene and look at a few things that might not happen.

First, we might not get to $2BN for the final sales price – that’s an awfully fat number for the thin 3PAR. Yeah, we’re close, but even in these stratospheric realms, surely we can’t keep moving in hundreds of millions of dollars…and another billion mark is a mental block as much as a financial hurdle.

Second, we might not have a rapid and immediate domino-effect as the world’s few monster IT organizations scramble to gobble up the few remaining small to mid sized storage players. There are not that many waiting to be asked to the dance – Compellent, Isilon, Xiotech, Pillar, BlueArc, Nexsan and the OEM suppliers – LSI, Dot Hill, Xyratex – spring to mind (apologies to any I missed). The high 3PAR price, at whatever final point, might make the market consolidation slower rather than faster, while everyone goes to check their coffers….everyone that is except (a) the folks in Freemont who will no doubt be busy counting their gains and whose Christmas lists and wills I’d now like to appear in! and (b) either Dell or HP, because one of them will presumably have a couple of billion (roughly) burning a hole in its corporate pockets, and also presumably a publicly avowed need that should be fulfilled – this might not be a bad thing for some of the folks already mentioned, although meeting the high-end capabilities of 3PAR will be hard for most to match. Maybe the loser can find a few [zillion] extra nickels and buy EMC?! 

Third, we might not see Pillar almost-automatically rolled into Oracle, as many pundits have proclaimed. Much as Larry Ellison (Pillar’s bank-roller) has plenty ‘in’ at Pillar, he’s not always taken his side investments to their ‘logical’ Oracle home; some that he backed, such as Salesforce and NetSuite, have done quite nicely for themselves – and Larry – elsewhere.

Fourth, we might not still be in the dark about 3PAR’s winning suitor for much longer – the bids have been pretty fast of late, so you have to figure we’re close to done.

Fifth, whomever wins out, this might not change the entire face of IT quite as much as the acres of print about it would suggest. It’ll be a good acquisition for either party I’m (pretty) sure – whether providing strength and its own IP for HP in a space it already occupies, or whether it’s allowing Dell to enter a space it does not yet properly compete in – but the world might not stop on its axis as a result.

And - yes – this is all speculation; so sixth and last, I might not of course be correct on any of it….

You can read Mark’s other blog entries at The Business of Storage.

via Coraid EtherDrive array targets cloud storage.

via EMC ships primary data reduction, FAST for solid-state drives (SSDs), unified management.

via EMC releases upgraded Clariion, Celerra storage units – Page 1 – Enterprise Infrastructure.

1. HP wants to own the IP of high-end storage, not OEM it.
2. 3PAR is sort of the only game in town in the next high-end wave that can conceivably take on Symmetrix, USPV, or Shark.  Note I say conceivably.
3. HP believes (accurately) that 3PAR’s growth or lack thereof is due to their own scale issues, similar to what it saw in 3Com.  The 3Com deal is zooming ahead of plan due to exactly that–HP has a damn big sales and service company that is putting 3Com stuff into many more places than 3Com could do alone.  It feels the same deal with 3PAR.
4. It wants to own everything that begins with the number 3.

What About Dell?  I love the balls Mr. D showed initiating this deal.  The reality, however, is that Dell has more execution risk on this play than HP does.  HP is in this space, albeit via an Hitachi OEM’ed product, but they are in the space.  They have a TON of Hitachi platform customers that are ready made for a strategic swap out to 3PAR attack plan over the next few years.  Dell will have to start from scratch.  It’s not to say they can’t–they did well with EqualLogic by investing in the EQ model and not trying to consume it.  They could do the same with 3PAR but organic growth will take longer, and with EQ it was right in Dell’s customer base.  This will be a stretch for them.  Both Dell and HP have the services arms and the server reach to attack the 3PAR service provider base, but storage is a different animal.

If the deal continues on in this vein (a la Data Domain), Dell will probably have to get up to at least 1.8B, and probably closer to 2B to force HP’s next move.  That’s a very expensive gamble.

HP is betting that in their enterprise customer base they can plop way more 3PAR stuff in way faster than Dell can, and they are probably correct.  To justify a $2B valuation, they need to get to north of $1B in revenue (5x) really fast – no easy feat.  3PAR has 65% margins – something not lost on either of them.  Michael has seen the light, and the EqualLogic margins make him look like a genius.  Margin sustenance at the high-end of this market is sustainable, as most players have shown.  HP would like a piece of that pie.

So much for my peaceful day.

You can read Steve’s other blog entries at The Bigger Truth.

via HP or Dell — which is the better suitor for 3Par? – Computerworld.

ESG sees a giant opportunity for companies to help match users with technology, choose the ideal desktop virtualization delivery model (BTW it won’t always be VDI), choose the technology vendor(s), and then monitor the results (which include the end-user experience). Companies such as Liquidware Labs have already established a relationship with Dell Services to help address this exact scenario. These companies also see the value of being engaged early in the game and continuing to provide value as users transition and desktop virtualization becomes embraced by end-users and IT operations.

Tactical VDI deployments should not be considered successful desktop virtualization implementations. It takes a clear understanding of the current end-user community, their jobs and responsibilities, application usage, endpoint choices, and the right technology to successfully build desktop virtualization into your company’s desktop strategy.

Read more of Mark’s blog entries at Liquefying IT.