Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

emBoot

Double-Take Software Releases netBoot/i and sanFly As Result of emBoot Acquisition

by Leave a Comment

Double-Take Software today announced the release of its netBoot/i and sanFly products. Together, they can provide a centralized means of booting and managing servers and desktops from iSCSI storage area networks (SANs). These products give IT administrators the flexibility to streamline workload management across both physical and virtual environments, and the cost efficiency of ‘greener IT’ through reduced power consumption and energy costs. Double-Take for Windows, the company’s flagship product, is known for its non-disruptive, affordable, hardware agnostic solutions. The addition of these new product offerings combined with existing capabilities such as continuous full server wide area replication build upon Double-Take Software’s objective to be the leader in Dynamic Infrastructure; that is, to move workloads, for whatever purpose, whenever needed, affordably and non-disruptively.

NetBoot/i is a software-based solution for booting systems from industry-standard iSCSI storage using “off-the-shelf” networking hardware found in most organizations’ server or desktop systems. IT administrators today are often faced with the expense and labor-intensive effort of deploying IT workloads. Once deployed, these same workloads are difficult to move between different servers or desktops because they are tied directly to the servers they run on. With netBoot/i, administrators can use a centralized workload management console to assign workloads, including their boot images, to any available physical or virtual machine in the environment regardless of hardware configuration. Additionally, by enabling diskless servers or desktops, netBoot/i reduces power consumption by minimizing cooling, maximizing cabinet and server rack efficiency.

SanFly is a software-based iSCSI target that turns any Windows server into an iSCSI SAN. With sanFly, setting up iSCSI storage for use by server or desktop systems is as easy as five clicks. SanFly also provides a “shared mode” for iSCSI storage it manages, allowing multiple servers or workstations to access the same shared volume on the storage network.

Double-Take Software acquired netBoot/i and sanFly in the recent purchase of Toronto-based emBoot.

Double-Take Software Picks Up emBoot for $10 Million in Cash

by 1 Comment

Double-Take Software announced (PDF) today the acquisition of emBoot, experts in network booting technology. emBoot network boot technologies allow organizations to easily assign and re-assign computing workloads to any available Windows or Linux physical servers or desktops or any virtual machine in their environment.

The acquisition follows Double-Take Software’s development of full system protection and recovery technologies as well as the acquisition of CDP recovery with TimeData as key components of the company’s Dynamic Infrastructure Strategy that aims to optimize, protect, monitor and recover workloads on any resource, anywhere and to any point in time.

The technology acquired with emBoot allows separation of the operating system, applications and data associated with a workload from the hardware it runs on. IT organizations can now move those workloads around in a matter of minutes whether it is because a disaster has occurred, a data center is moving, the company has decided to virtualize its infrastructure or an application needs more capacity.

Moving entire workloads around independent of the underlying physical or virtual hardware they are running on has been painfully complex and time consuming for IT administrators. By storing workloads on networked storage resources and making them available to physical and virtual servers on-demand, Double-Take’s new solutions now make it is easy for IT administrators to move critical applications and data according to their value and desired service level agreements and to optimize the use of test, production and disaster recovery computing resources.

emBoot’s technology is based on the growing iSCSI storage standard (Internet Small Computer System Interface). Double-Take’s new offering will provide two key capabilities for customers in support of movement to a more dynamic IT infrastructures:

  • Using any iSCSI compliant storage solution, those customers will be able to create bootable images of their production workloads and use a centralized workload management console to assign those workloads to any available physical or virtual machines in their environment.
  • Optionally, companies will be able to build a software-based iSCSI Storage Area Network (SAN) using standard server hardware and storage using included iSCSI Target software.

IT professionals will be able to quickly create an IP SAN in minutes using commodity server hardware and disks they may already have. The iSCSI-based network booting features will make it easy to migrate workloads to new hardware, to virtual machines or back based on changing demands.

The company acquired emBoot for a total cash purchase price of $10 million.

Double-Take Software

[Source: Hypervoria]