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DataCore Software Adds Support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet

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DataCore Software, a provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced support for native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for its SANmelody and SANsymphony storage virtualization solutions.

The company has added the Emulex and Brocade FCoE converged network adapters (CNAs) and Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches to its FCoE-qualified support list. Additional FCoE CNAs will be announced over the next year. FCoE software drivers are currently available for Microsoft Windows and VMware ESX / vSphere.

FCoE is changing the way customers can use Ethernet in their data centers. DataCore customers can transition to an FCoE infrastructure while still supporting existing Fibre Channel investments – meaning greater choice and flexibility while building out their storage networks. Customers can run both FCoE and IP traffic through the same port and on the same wire, eliminating the need and expense for separate SAN and LAN adapters and cables. The ability to run FC protocol over existing Ethernet cabling is significant for network administration. It means that administrators do not need to have a separate network for running Fibre Channel protocol.

FCoE is primarily used to consolidate back-end cables in a data center – enabling network administrators to use the Ethernet infrastructure for FC and IP protocols. What is needed to make it work is a converged network adapter (CNA), which serves as an FCoE card, along with a network switch. For storage, this connects to DataCore-powered SANs using Ethernet networks – thereby connecting application servers to the virtual storage pool as easily as you would connect your desktop to a printer.

DataCore Goes After Eastern European Market, Partners With Prosper Intelligence

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DataCore Software and Prosper Intelligence have announced a distribution agreement for Austria and Eastern Europe. Prosper will resell and support SANmelody and SANsymphony™as the SAN and virtual storage component of its virtualization portfolio. Prosper will integrate both SAN software solutions into its showcase “Virtualization Consolidation Academy” (VCA) lab in Vienna.

The Virtualization Consolidation Academy is an innovative knowledge transfer and competence center, which focuses on helping partners and customers evaluate and train and understand virtualization and consolidation technologies. With the agreement, Prosper can provide an end-to-end virtualization portfolio – Total Enterprise Virtualization – to its partner base with the addition of DataCore’s advanced storage virtualization, fault-tolerant SAN and disaster recovery solutions. In addition, DataCore obtains a key distribution partnership with the ability to support and resell into the emerging and growing Eastern European market.

Prosper currently supports a growing base of resellers in Austria and Eastern Europe, who are implementing virtualization and consolidation projects for business-critical applications, servers and data storage. With today’s agreement, DataCore’s storage virtualization technology complements the existing portfolio of desktop, server and application virtualization with a hardware-independent, flexible and cost effective storage solution. The Virtualization Consolidation Academy is seen as an independent review platform that can be used to evaluate, test, train and showcase virtualization solutions and technologies.

DataCore’s virtualization platforms improve the utilization and performance of disk storage, enable a new level of flexibility and hardware independence and reduce the overall cost of storage area networking. With SANmelody, DataCore provides a cost-effective, feature rich SAN solution that includes automated storage management, high availability, disaster recovery and thin provisioning. SANsymphony is the enterprise solution that enables Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and meets the advanced needs of larger organizations in terms of capacity, performance and scalability.

DataCore’s SANsymphony and SANmelody Certified On Citrix XenServer 5

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DataCore Software, provider of storage virtualization software, today announced that its SANsymphony and SANmelody products have been certified on Citrix‘s newest XenServer 5 release as virtual SAN appliances, as well as on both standard servers and blades. With XenServer 5, Citrix has optimized Citrix XenApp performance on XenServer virtual machines. According to Citrix, this enables XenApp workloads to be virtualized with as little as 7% overhead and as many as 73% more users than XenApp workloads virtualized with competing products. Citrix XenApp (formerly Citrix Presentation Server) is used by more than 100 million users and 99% of the Fortune Global 500.

DataCore Virtual SAN appliance and storage virtualization software are certified for XenServer 5
Through its own rigorous testing, Citrix has certified that both SANsymphony and SANmelody software support XenServer 5 virtual machines as shared storage pools with advanced storage virtualization functions critical to demanding virtual server environments. The manufacturer-independent features include fail-safe data protection, high availability mirroring, remote replication to disaster recovery sites, non-disruptive virtual data migration, thin provisioning and high speed caching for performance acceleration.
DataCore Software

DataCore Announces European Partnership With Fujitsu-Siemens

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DataCore Software, provider of storage virtualization software, and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Europe’s leading producer of IT-Infrastructure services, today announced a new partnership across Europe. With immediate effect, both companies will collaborate in distribution, marketing and technical support to optimize the experience for mutual customers and partners. The agreement is ongoing and has come about through the continued growth and market success of DataCore’s storage virtualization software projects and FSC’s IT-extensive hardware and project support.

The agreement focuses primarily in distribution and support, especially in the support of FSC reseller partners when they implement storage consolidation and SAN projects using DataCore’s SANmelody or SANsymphony solutions. Resellers, integrators and system vendors can utilize the technical support centers of FSC and can readily access information about products and developments, allowing them to reduce sales cycles and realize projects more efficiently. In addition, DataCore has been added to the Fujitsu-Siemens Computers catalog of recommended software solutions.

DataCore Software

DataCore Software Upgrades SANsymphony and Traveller CDP

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DataCore Software today announced that it has updated its flagship SANsymphony open storage networking platform and its Traveller CDP (continuous data protection) add-on capability.

The new update releases are available immediately. Notable enhancements include 8GB FC Support, Performance for CDP and Replication, Usability, Improved Thin Provisioning Monitoring, Live Data Migration Services and Better Virtual Server Integration.

DataCore recently renewed its OEM agreement with NEC Soft to conquer Japan.

DataCore Software

DataCore Raises $30 Million In Equity Investment

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DataCore Software Corporation, a US-based vendor of storage virtualization software, today announced that it has accepted a $30 million equity investment from Insight Venture Partners and Updata Partners.

DataCore

DataCore is a global, privately-held company that was founded in 1998 and has offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. They are the makers of SANMelody (storage management platform for larger scale networks), SANSymphony (converts PC servers into expansion “disk servers”) and SANMaestro (a “spreadsheet simple” approach to monitoring, analyzing and reporting critical storage and Windows events).

“Insight Venture Partners has built its reputation on finding and investing in companies poised for tremendous success in the industries in which we specialize,” said Jeff Horing, Managing Director, Insight Venture Partners. “DataCore is perfectly positioned as the virtual storage foundation for all server and desktop virtualization platforms, regardless of vendor. We believe that storage virtualization will eventually be as big as server virtualization and that DataCore will be the big beneficiary of this trend.”

DataCore had previously raised around $85 million over four rounds of funding, from firms like Flagship Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Scale Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Van Wagoner Capital Management and Vista Equity Partners.

Most of those institutions remain minority investors, but they did receive partial liquidity via this new round of financing.

[Source: peHUB]