October 15, 2010 -- To simplify the storage equation in Hyper-V virtual server environments, and to decrease costs, VM6 Software is shipping a suite of modules that, among other things, allows end users to leverage direct-attached storage (DAS) and eliminate the need for a physical SAN.
To understand where these folks are coming from, a little history: The company started out about six years ago as VM6 Inc., a systems integration and services provider specializing in VMware virtualization. According to COO and co-founder Eric Courville, the company started encountering a lot of remote sites that didn't have expertise in virtual servers, much less complex SANs. In addition, those sites found it difficult to justify the costs associated with VMware and SANs.
VM6 delivered its first software product -- VMex 1.0 -- about five years ago, but it was based on VMware and required a shared-storage physical SAN.
Given the requirements of remote sites and SMBs, VM6 went back to the well and introduced in September 2009 Version 2.0 of VMex, with two key changes: The software now leveraged Microsoft's Hyper-V, instead of VMware, and VMex 2.0 eliminated the need for a physical SAN.
Courville claims that VMex now provides all of the storage functionality users would expect from an iSCSI SAN, including high availability, but the software leverages DAS and eliminates the need for expensive SAN components such as switches.
VMex sits below Hyper-V and on top of Windows 2008 R2. Connections between servers provide high availability via heartbeats and failover. VMex also includes block-level replication across connected servers.
In addition to the Virtual Shared Storage (V-SAN) module, the VMex suite includes Advanced Clustering for high availability, support for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and virtualization management and monitoring tools. The latest version is VMex 2.1.
The company is targeting companies with less than 50 servers.
If you're looking for inexpensive, SAN-free virtualization, it might be worth checking out VM6.
Showing posts with label data management virtualization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data management virtualization. Show all posts
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Keep an eye on this startup
July 21, 2010 – Some storage startups anticipate a trend then ride the coattails of the trend. Other startups actually create trends.
One startup that may be in the latter category is Actifio, which announced $8 million in Series A financing today led by Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, after an 18-month incubation period.
Actifio is pioneering a concept it refers to as Data Management Virtualization, or DMV (a search acronym that will surely lead you astray).
The company’s press release states that server virtualization technologies have transformed the IT infrastructure but that the storage infrastructure is still a major bottleneck “with data lifecycle management shackled by point tools that are deployed in silos – creating complexity, inflexibility and significant expense . . . Actifio’s DMV technology reduces the cost of managing the application data lifecycle and virtualizes vendor-independent physical or cloud-based storage devices into a private, public or hybrid storage cloud infrastructure.”
That didn’t help me much, so I had a chat with one of Actifio’s key founders – Ash Ashutosh, formerly a vice president and chief technologist in HP’s StorageWorks division and, perhaps more importantly in this context, founder of AppIQ, which was acquired by HP a few years ago.
“DMV is a solution for data protection, disaster recovery, business continuity and lifecycle management of data,” Ash explained. “It simplifies data management. The paradigm we’re applying to data management is analogous to what virtualization did to servers.”
I still don’t get it, but I’m calling attention to this startup because of its management pedigree. In addition to Ash, Actifio executives include:
David Chang, vice president of products (formerly founder and VP of product management at AppIQ)
Steven Blumenau, VP of products (formerly a VP at Iron Mountain and senior director of advanced development at EMC)
Rick Nagengast, VP of sales (formerly VP of channel and partner development at EMC and GM of the Storage Products Division at DEC and Compaq)
James Pownell, customer operations manager (formerly founder and president of Exagrid, founder and VP of engineering at Highground Software, and a development manager at EMC)
That’s a lot of HP/AppIQ/EMC blood.
Actifio is expected to ship its product “early in the fourth quarter” – I’m guessing around the time of Storage Networking World. The company plans to sell though the channel, and is currently in hiring mode.
One startup that may be in the latter category is Actifio, which announced $8 million in Series A financing today led by Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, after an 18-month incubation period.
Actifio is pioneering a concept it refers to as Data Management Virtualization, or DMV (a search acronym that will surely lead you astray).
The company’s press release states that server virtualization technologies have transformed the IT infrastructure but that the storage infrastructure is still a major bottleneck “with data lifecycle management shackled by point tools that are deployed in silos – creating complexity, inflexibility and significant expense . . . Actifio’s DMV technology reduces the cost of managing the application data lifecycle and virtualizes vendor-independent physical or cloud-based storage devices into a private, public or hybrid storage cloud infrastructure.”
That didn’t help me much, so I had a chat with one of Actifio’s key founders – Ash Ashutosh, formerly a vice president and chief technologist in HP’s StorageWorks division and, perhaps more importantly in this context, founder of AppIQ, which was acquired by HP a few years ago.
“DMV is a solution for data protection, disaster recovery, business continuity and lifecycle management of data,” Ash explained. “It simplifies data management. The paradigm we’re applying to data management is analogous to what virtualization did to servers.”
I still don’t get it, but I’m calling attention to this startup because of its management pedigree. In addition to Ash, Actifio executives include:
David Chang, vice president of products (formerly founder and VP of product management at AppIQ)
Steven Blumenau, VP of products (formerly a VP at Iron Mountain and senior director of advanced development at EMC)
Rick Nagengast, VP of sales (formerly VP of channel and partner development at EMC and GM of the Storage Products Division at DEC and Compaq)
James Pownell, customer operations manager (formerly founder and president of Exagrid, founder and VP of engineering at Highground Software, and a development manager at EMC)
That’s a lot of HP/AppIQ/EMC blood.
Actifio is expected to ship its product “early in the fourth quarter” – I’m guessing around the time of Storage Networking World. The company plans to sell though the channel, and is currently in hiring mode.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)