storage virtualization

IBM Releases New Storage Virtualization Software

June 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

As part of the company’s “Project Big Green” offerings, IBM today announced new storage virtualization software that helps clients manage and consolidate volumes of business data, providing clients with a storage solution designed to help improve utilization rates, energy efficiency, availability, and scalability of critical applications.

According to the press release, the capabilities of the new IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software can help significantly improve the

flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructures by creating consolidated, virtual pools of information across the enterprise. Storage virtualization technology can reduce requirements for additional physical storage hardware systems, which can ultimately reduce overall energy usage in the data center.

Virtualization is confirmed as one of the five pillars of IBM’s Project Big Green offerings, and a key component of IBM’s new enterprise data center model, which is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

Since its introduction to the market in 2003, IBM has shipped over 12,000 SVC engines running in more than 4,000 SVC systems.

The new IBM SAN Volume Controller 4.3 functions will be available for download on June 27, at no additional charge, and existing SVC customers will be able to take advantage of these improvements when they upgrade to SVC 4.3.

[Source: CNN Money]

Silicom Provides Server Adapters For Mystery Storage Company In Its Virtualization Appliances

May 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Silicom today announced that its quad-port Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapters have been selected by an unnamed “leading storage company” as a standard component in its virtualization appliances. Silicom’s adapters will reportedly be used to enhance the throughput of the appliance as required in high-traffic and mission critical environments, and to prevent I/O bottlenecks at the appliance level.

Virtualization appliances are an innovative solution for the IT department’s need to be able to change the configuration of complex Storage Area Networks (SAN) or Network Attached Storage (NAS) without disrupting system availability. The virtualization appliance separates the logical and physical representation of storage resources, independently managing the relationships in order to free the main system from the task.

“Virtualization is on the rise as a significant market trend, and the emergence of Virtualization Appliances is good news for Silicom,” said Shaike Orbach, Silicom’s President and CEO. “Our role is to provide the technology needed to assure a high level of throughput, preventing I/O bottlenecks and other roadblocks that can limit an appliance’s performance. In installation after installation, our innovative cards have proven their ability to ‘unclog’ the pipes, resulting in an appliance that continues to work at top speed in all environments.

“This order validates the need for our server adapters in Virtualization appliances and gives us an important entry point into the Virtualization arena. This has the potential to become a significant market for Silicom as we believe that more and more virtualization appliances will be launched by additional companies over time.”

Forrester Analyst: Storage Virtualization Is Overhyped

May 8, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

An interesting article at ITPro cites Forrester Research analyst Andrew Reichman claiming storage virtualization to be still a marginalized business despite being a hot topic for a few years now. Reichman told attendees of Compellent’s C-Drive customer conference in Minneapolis that just 17 percent of companies have virtualized their storage systems in some way, with another nine percent in the process of rolling out the technology, while 28 percent are interested in the idea.

“Virtualisation of storage is tepid,” Reichman said. “I would characterise it as tepid.”

Reichman said that virtualization is still seen as a little bit leading edge for some companies, and that they’re waiting for others to adopt the technology first.

“Any change is tough – storage is probably the most conservative part of data centres. People don’t want to take the chance on disrupting their data,” he said, adding companies are “kicking the tires but not really buying it.”

Read the rest of the article here.

DataCore Raises $30 Million In Equity Investment

April 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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 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]

Incipient Raises $ 15.6 Million Venture Capital Funding In Series E

February 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Incipient, a provider of enterprise-class storage virtualization and automated data migration software solutions, announced today that it has closed a $15.6 million Series E round of funding from existing investors including Globespan Capital Partners, GrandBanks Capital, HLM Venture Partners, Greylock, QuestMark Partners, Sigma Partners, and Wasatch Advisors, as well as a new investor.

Incipient says it will use this new funding to expand global sales and marketing initiatives for its enterprise-class award winning storage virtualization and automated data migration software solutions now being used by leading financial services organizations to automate and virtualize their data center operations.

“We are pleased with the continued steadfast support and confidence of this storage-savvy investor group participating in this latest round of funding,” said Ric Calvillo, CEO and co-founder of Incipient. “Over the last year we have seen a dramatic increase in customer traction and interest in both our storage virtualization and automated data migration solutions within the financial services market segment. We see this interest accelerating globally over the upcoming year as we uniquely address the desire by large financial services accounts to automate and virtualize data center operations to manage complexities associated with storage growth and business service requirements.”

“The need to automate and virtualize data center operations is a top priority for global financial services entities and Incipient is uniquely well-positioned to capitalize on this rapidly evolving market opportunity,” said Bill Helman, general partner, Greylock. “We look forward to working with and continuing to support Incipient as they execute on the major market opportunity they are now prepared to exploit with their enterprise-class solutions.”

[Source: VMBlog]