Those who attend VMworld for the first time (this was my third) always walk away in a bit of state of shock. Because until you attend this event, it is hard to describe the fundamental shift that is occurring in organizations and how virtualization is poised to completely transform how every size organization from the enterprise all the way down to the consumer does business.
One of the privileges I get in being contracted to do blogging is that I get to speak to customers to which others rarely get access. One set of customers that I frequently speak with are managed service providers (MSPs) and discuss with them what technologies that they are having success with in their data centers. So this is why I can say with a high degree of certainty that continuous data protection (CDP) is taking over within their data centers and is shaping up to have a high impact as enterprise organizations look to move their applications and application data into the cloud.
This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today’s blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009.
In yesterday’s blog, I answered the question as to why I think the use of virtual appliances is going to become the new standard for backing up and recovering virtual machines. However today I want to answer the question as to what was the big news that came out of VMworld 2009. In my view, it was clearly that the emphasis has moved from why organizations need to virtualize their environments to what new possibilities that a fully virtualized (aka cloud) environment creates.
Enter FalconStor with its NSS Virtual Appliance, which is the first software vendor to receive this ratification from VMware in the SRM landscape. FalconStor brings a very open approach to this solution. By placing a FalconStor NSS appliance in between the ESX Server’s and the storage farm the solution can now become truly hardware independent as the FalconStor appliance can virtualize some or all of the storage on the back-end.
I started out the day with an hour-long briefing with Xiotech’s CTO Stephen J Sicola and Storage Architect Peter Selin. Xiotech has been talking up a storm about the ground-shaking importance of its new Intelligent Storage Elements (ISE) ever since Xiotech announced it at Storage Networking World about a month ago. However Xiotech and I have not had a chance to connect for me to take a close look at its architecture so Stephen and Peter spent some time talking me through it.
One thing that struck me was that Compellent users really understand what a game-changing technology that virtualization is. I sat through 2 or 3 presentations during the two days of the conference (May 7 – 8) and also met with a fair number of users (~10) between sessions, over meals and at the evening events and all of them were pretty stoked about the capabilities that virtualization in general and Compellent specifically delivers.
As its name suggests, Compellent’s Storage Center is a compelling product for companies to evaluate but they need to exercise caution in how they implement it and in what circumstances. Compellent’s Data Instant Replay feature should match the snapshot capabilities of other storage systems and exceed many in its recovery capabilities. However Compellent’s use of thin provisioning to provide this feature should give companies pause about what types of application data they should migrate to Storage Center and what other promised benefits of its thin provisioning feature it will not be able to deliver.
Someone once said to me that making changes in an enterprise mission-critical production data center storage area network (SAN) is akin to changing the wheels on a 747 as it is taking off. There is no room for error, you better be damn good at what you are doing and you need at least three back out plans in your back pocket should something go wrong. So what does this have to do with Continuity Software’s RecoverGuard? RecoverGuard’s premise is that it monitors the hardware on SANs at the production and disaster recovery sites and gathers information about their configuration. Once gathered, it compares the information and reports on the discrepancies that exist between production and disaster recovery sites.
Vendors that have largely staked their entire livelihood around building software based on the Microsoft Windows operating system now face a less certain future as the corporate adoption of server virtualization and VMware begins. While the Microsoft Windows operating system is not going anywhere, VMware is taking center stage in more corporate plans and data center budgets for 2008 and beyond. So it is should come as no surprise that Double-Take Software (NASDAQ: DBTK) continues to enhance its Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure product line to directly address this ongoing corporate adoption of VMware.
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