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LeftHand Networks

LeftHand Networks Delivers Entry-level SAN for Virtualized Environments

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LeftHand Networks (an HP company) today announced an entry-level storage area network (SAN) solution that improves performance and reduces storage costs within virtualized server environments for midsize businesses.

The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN helps customers efficiently deploy their first virtualization projects by simplifying the process of creating, accessing and managing shared storage resources.
As customers deploy virtual server environments, they frequently encounter unforeseen system performance bottlenecks. To further complicate matters, server virtualization increases the number of required connections to a SAN. This increased system complexity makes it more difficult and costly to troubleshoot when bottlenecks do occur. The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN reduces costs and mitigates these performance issues by automatically balancing data volumes across all disk drives, network connections and processors.
The SAS Starter SAN includes management tools that provide replication, thin provisioning and snapshot capabilities. These capabilities help ensure data availability even as the environment becomes more complex. In addition, customers can purchase only the capacity they need, easily increasing both the capacity and performance of their system without experiencing any disruption. The SAS Starter SAN can scale to more than 80 network ports and 320 disk drives to accommodate business growth.
LeftHand also introduced a higher capacity SATA Starter SAN that offers a 25 percent reduction in the cost per gigabyte (GB) of disk drive capacity than the previous generation. The solution’s storage capacity has increased 33 percent to 12 terabytes (TB) while maintaining its current list price. The SATA Starter SAN is ideal for customers who want to consolidate storage for Microsoft Windows or Linux servers.
The SAS Starter SAN and the higher-capacity SATA Starter SAN are available immediately through LeftHand Networks’ resellers and value-added resellers in the United States as well as value-added distributors throughout Europe.
Pricing starts at $35,000 for the 4.8 TB SAS Starter SAN and $30,000 for the 12 TB SATA Starter SAN.

Virtual Iron Joins LeftHand Networks’ Technology Alliance Program

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Virtual Iron Software today announced it has expanded its business relationship with LeftHand Networks by joining LeftHand’s Technology Alliance Program. Together, the companies offer enterprise-class server and storage virtualization capabilities to the mainstream market and enable more users to take advantage of the significant benefits of virtual infrastructure management.

Virtual Iron provides a comprehensive, enterprise-class server virtualization and management platform without the cost and complexity of comparable alternatives. LeftHand Networks leads the iSCSI SAN market and its SAN solutions built with the SAN/iQ storage software enable an infrastructure that enhances storage utilization, data protection and virtualized server availability. The combined solutions offer customers highly available and completely scalable virtualized server and storage environments that provide immediate improvements in resource utilization, simplified patch management, back up and disaster recovery for more cost-effective capacity management.

HP Buys LeftHand Networks For $360 Million In Cash

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HP today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks, a provider of storage virtualization and iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions who recently came out with some impressive numbers.

LeftHand Networks’ solutions enable midsize companies and remote offices or branches of large corporations to easily and cost-effectively protect critical business data. HP has agreed to purchase LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments.
Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in Boulder, Colo. It has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. The company has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers.
With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions. Customer needs at the low end of the market will be met with the HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System (AiO) and HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) product lines. The high end will be addressed by the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) line. Customers will further benefit since LeftHand Networks’ solutions are already certified to work with a wide range of HP products.
The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to be completed in HP’s first fiscal quarter of 2009. Following completion, the business will be integrated into the HP StorageWorks division within the Technology Solutions Group at HP.
LeftHand Networks

LeftHand Networks Reports Impressive Numbers

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LeftHand Networks today announced it has achieved 110 percent year-over-year revenue growth in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008. LeftHand Networks attributes its notable growth to strong customer demand for iSCSI SANs, larger SAN deployments and significant repeat business from existing customers, as well as its VMware go-to-market partnership and substantial channel expansion.

“Achieving triple digit revenue growth and surpassing key milestones of 3,000 customers and 11,000 systems sold is gratifying and reflects the significant advantages that LeftHand Networks’ SANs deliver to the market,” said Bill Chambers, founder and CEO, LeftHand Networks. “With an annual sales growth rate of 110 percent this year, compared with IDC’s market projection of 50 percent growth for the IP SAN market, LeftHand Networks continues to gain share and drive innovative product advancements.”

The company also claims demand has grown for LeftHand Networks’ Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) for VMware ESX Server, a VMware certified solution that provides highly available applications and storage without requiring an external SAN. The VSA is available for purchase as a standalone solution or as part of Virtualization Solution Kits consisting of LeftHand Networks’ VSA software combined with VMware virtualization software.

LeftHand Networks

VMware Site Recovery Manager 1.0 Released

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VMware has announced its new tool for disaster recovery management and automation of a virtual infrastructure, VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 1.0 (build 97878).

VMware SRM 1.0 is part of VMware’s suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery.

“Effective disaster recovery has been a significant challenge for many organizations,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “With the delivery of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware removes hurdles associated with disaster recovery planning and implementation. Through our innovative disaster recovery testing, management, and automation capabilities, we bring predictability back into the hands of IT and help eliminate risks associated with human error.”

VMware Site Recovery Manager

Site Recovery Manager works seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure, VMware VirtualCenter, and replication software from storage partners to provide integrated disaster recovery management and automation. It provides:

  • Integrated management of disaster recovery plans. Create, update and document recovery plans directly from VMware VirtualCenter.
  • Non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans. Execute automated tests of recovery plans in an isolated testing environment using the recovery plan that would be used in an actual failover. Hardware configuration dependencies are eliminated and testing can occur without impacting production systems.
  • Automated failover and recovery. Automate execution of the recovery process, eliminating many of the slow and unreliable manual processes common in traditional disaster recovery.

VMware’s parent company, EMC, is one of the first vendors to officially announce support for Site Recovery Manager. Other vendors showing support for the product include 3Par, Dell, FalconStor Software, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LeftHand Networks, and NetApp.

Pricing for Site Recovery Manager is based on the number of processors in the servers. SRM can be purchased as a standalone product or purchased as part of VMware’s Management and Automation Bundle which includes two-processor versions of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager. There’s also a trial version available for download.