New StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 and Hyper Backup Plug-in are a New Level of Data Protection
Burlington, MA – January 13, 2012 – StarWind Software Inc., an innovative provider of SAN software for iSCSI storage and VM Backup technology, today announced the release of new StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 and Hyper-V Backup Plug-in. The iSCSI SAN software is enhanced by the powerful VM Backup technology that is included as a plug-in.
Backup plug-in is built specifically for Hyper-V-based environments to provide fast backup and restore for Hyper-V virtual machines. The backup solution delivered by StarWind performs all operations on the Hyper-V host level thus it requires no backup agents to be installed on virtual machines (Agentless Architecture).
Hyper-V Backup Plug-in makes fast backups and allows quick, reliable restore of both virtual machines and individual files. It utilizes advanced technologies for maximum disk space saving (Global Deduplication). This backup tool is integrated with StarWind Centralized Management Console that enables managing backup and storage from a single window.
Additionally, a new version of HA plug-in is presented in StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 that allows use of raw basic images to create HA targets. A new replication engine based on own technology instead of MS iSCSI transport creates higher performance and reliability. This new engine permits use of multiple network interfaces for synchronization and heartbeat.
To simplify the replacement of equipment and recovery of fatal failures, StarWind Software has implemented the ability to change the partner node to any other StarWind server without any downtime and on the fly. Synchronization engine is improved, and this version allows both nodes to sync automatically even in the case of a full blackout of both servers.
“With the release of StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 our company is happy to provide our customers with highly available storage and fast backup software developed by the same vendor,” said Artem Berman, Chief Executive Officer of StarWind Software. “Now small and medium-sized companies have an opportunity to achieve higher performance and absolute data protection.”
About StarWind Software Inc.
StarWind Software is a global leader in storage management and SAN software for small and midsize companies. StarWind’s flagship product is SAN software that turns any industry-standard Windows Server into a fault-tolerant, fail-safe iSCSI SAN. StarWind iSCSI SAN is qualified for use with VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer and Linux and Unix environments. StarWind Software focuses on providing small and midsize companies with affordable, highly availability storage technology which previously was only available in high-end storage hardware. Advanced enterprise-class features in StarWind include Automated HA Storage Node Failover and Failback (High Availability), Replication across a WAN, CDP and Snapshots, Thin Provisioning and Virtual Tape management.
Since 2003, StarWind has pioneered the iSCSI SAN software industry and is the solution of choice for over 30,000 customers worldwide in more than 100 countries and from small and midsize companies to governments and Fortune 1000 companies.
In just a few days, Dell Storage Forum 2012 kicks off at the Grange St Paul’s Hotel in London. I will be in attendance and I hope that you will have the chance to join myself and the rest of the Dell staff and of course an array of storage customers, channel partners, enthusiasts, and analysts. At DSF your appetite will be satisfied with Executive lead Keynote sessions, Breakout sessions delivered by Technical Experts, Instructor lead training, and Hands-on/Self-Paced labs covering Compellent Storage Center, Dell EqualLogic, and PowerVault storage.
This venue won’t be an exact carbon copy of past DSF events. Dell Storage will be showcasing an updated product roadmap and we’ll also see new product announcements. One of the announcements you’ll hear about is the availability of Compellent Storage Center 6.0. As a Technical Marketing Product Specialist who spends all time working on the VMware integration points, this is a release I’ve been looking forward to since starting my career at Dell Compellent in May of last year. This is a significant launch for Dell Compellent from an architectural perspective. SC 6.0 now leverages the FreeBSD 64-bit platform. The 64-bit architecture is the springboard for new features launched this week (such as multithreading opportunities and 12GB memory per Series 40 controller) and will serve as a key enabler for future scalability, integration, and feature enhancements.
If you’re a current Dell Compellent customer with vSphere 4.1 or newer in your datacenter, you know that through SC 5.5.x we supported one VAAI primitive: Zero Blocks or Write Same. Storage Center 6.0 supports additional VMware vSphere VAAI primitives:
Copy Offload
Hardware Assisted Locking
Of course we still support Block Zeroing
On a side note, VMware also released a 4th VAAI primitive in vSphere 5 focusing on Thin Provisioning for block storage arrays. However, shortly after the release, VMware pulled support on this primitive (applies to all storage vendors) to work out some kinks. I wrote about that here.
VAAI excites me because of the performance and scalability gains it brings to the vSphere virtual datacenter in addition to vSphere bolt ons such as VMware View and vCloud Director.
Compellent SC 6.0 VAAI support:
41% faster block cloning operations on Eager Zeroed Thick and Lazy Zeroed Thick virtual disks
98% faster Eager Zeroed Thick disk creation
Up to 100% reduction in Block Zeroing data traffic from host to storage
Offloaded operations result in significantly reduced copy traffic between host and storage
Offloaded operations result in reduction of ESX(i) host resource and storage fabric utilization
This should be a really great week. Personally, it will be my first Dell Compellent focused conference. I do hope to see you there and look forward to some good discussions. If you’re not able to attend in person, you can use these links to follow the action remotely:
Details: StarWind iSCSI SAN V5.8 introduces a new powerful backup technology designed specifically for Hyper-V-based environments to provide fast backup and restore for virtual machines.
The key to protection of your virtualization investments is one solution with a rich feature set developed to help you achieve your IT goals easily. It is ONE ultimate answer to all your storage and data managing needs.
StarWind iSCSI SAN 5.8 provides:
Hyper-V Backup Plug-in
- Agentless Architecture
- Backups stored in VHD format
- Global Deduplication
- Single-click Backup
iSCSI Storage
- 100% stability and uptime
- High Availability / Automatic Failover
- Network Centralized Management
- Synchronous Replication
Register now to learn more!
Here is the link for registration:
Veeam is once again blessing the community with their generous holiday spirit, which of course includes gifts! Veeam recently launched version 6 of their flagship Backup and Replication product which now includes support for Microsoft Hyper-V. Those who are heavily active in the Microsoft and/or VMware community and formally recognized as such, are eligible to register for their free gift from Veeam – NFR licensing for Backup and Replication v6.
I will attest that I’ve been using Veeam Backup & Replication to protect valuable data in my home lab for a few years and I’ve had to rely on it for recovery more than once. I also included it as a backup and disaster recovery replication solution in my VCDX design submission which I successfully defended in February 2010.
Below you’ll find two promotions for redeeming the NFR licenses. First is the Hyper-V promotion for MVPs, MCPs, and MCTSs, followed by the VMware promotion for vEXPERTs, VCPs, VCIs, and registered VMUG members (remember, anyone can be a registered VMUG member, it’s free to sign up, so why not do it today?)
Free NFR license for
Veeam Backup & Replication v6 for Hyper-V
Get this holiday gift from Veeam!
If you are a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) or a Most Valuable Professional (MVP), you can get a FREE 2-socket NFR* license for Veeam Backup & Replication v6 for your home or work lab.
*An NFR (Not for Resale) license can only be used for evaluation or demonstration purposes. Read EULA for more details.
Free NFR license for
Veeam Backup & Replication v6 for vSphere
Get this holiday gift from Veeam!
If you are a VMware vExpert, VMware Certified Professional (VCP), VMware Certified Instructor (VCI) or VMware User Group (VMUG) member, you can get a FREE 2-socket NFR* license for Veeam Backup & Replication v6 for your home or work lab.
I don’t publish the majority of the press releases which make their way to my inbox but I took a quick look at HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware and what it does is interesting. Watch the video below (feel free to expand to full screen to see the detail) and see how this product is able to pull in various Type 1 hypervisors in a heterogeneous datacenter under the vCenter management umbrella. By now you know VMware isn’t the only player in the hypervisor business. VMware’s competitors have been making their presence known. They remain persistent partly because of their gradual market penetration. And I’ll be the first to admit that the other hypervisors out there are the right fit for some business use cases and requirements. Also, multi vendor policies are not uncommon in large organizations. Whatever the reason, deploying different makes and models of hypervisors in an environment is your business. Managing them with ease is HotLink’s business. Read on.
Press Release:
HotLink Launches Latest Version of HotLink SuperVISOR™ for VMware
Leading enterprises including McAfee and BMC Software adopt HotLink SuperVISOR to seamlessly manage mixed hypervisors inside VMware vCenter console
SUNNYVALE, Calif. – December 15, 2011 – HotLink® Corporation, the market leader in transformation solutions for heterogeneous virtualization management, today announced the newest release of its flagship product, HotLink SuperVISOR™ for VMware. HotLink SuperVISOR is the first and only solution to enable VMware vCenter users to natively manage cross-platform virtual infrastructure spanning Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (KVM). The latest release, HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware 1.2, adds new capabilities focused on enterprise robustness, scalability, configuration and management of multi-hypervisors and workloads.
With its latest release, HotLink customers benefit from an enhanced virtual integration platform that provides total control and performance visibility across all enterprise hypervisors, using the VMware vCenter management console they already have. The new features of HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware 1.2 include:
Enhanced Networking Configuration – Users can now provision and modify virtual switches and network adapters from VMware vCenter and associate these to any enterprise hypervisor —enabling users to manage heterogeneous virtual networking from a single interface.
Expanded Performance Monitoring – The latest release expands the heterogeneous performance statistics and alerts that are gathered and displayed inside the native VMware vCenter performance tab —allowing administrators to quickly identify issues across the mixed hypervisor environment.
Robust Configuration of Virtual Machine Settings – Only HotLink provides the ability to modify the configuration of virtual machine settings such as virtual CPUs and memory assignments natively inside vCenter and apply across all virtual platforms —ensuring the optimum VM configuration regardless of the hypervisor.
“Enterprise IT needs are rapidly evolving as an increasing number of VMware shops are deploying heterogeneous hypervisor environments. Administrators need a single management console that provides a comprehensive view and complete control of all enterprise workloads,” said Lynn LeBlanc, CEO and founder of HotLink. “The latest enhancements to HotLink SuperVISOR extend the VMware vCenter management infrastructure to provide sophisticated and robust management capabilities to Hyper-V, XenServer and KVM – unifying the management of all virtual workloads inside VMware vCenter.”
As virtual infrastructure deployments expand and mature, heterogeneity is being fueled by a combination of economics and maturing of hypervisor alternatives. The most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure report included, for the first time, both Citrix and Microsoft alongside VMware in the leaders quadrant. Moreover, Hyper-V grew 62 percent last year compared to ESX’s 21 percent growth and Citrix’s 25 percent, according to IDC. While the proliferation of multiple virtual platforms is accelerating, streamlined infrastructure is needed to unify management. That’s exactly what the latest release of HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware addresses.
“McAfee historically was an all VMware shop, but our business needs have changed so that we now have a mix of vSphere, Hyper-V and XenServer. Utilizing HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware across our virtual environment enables us to increase our usage of other hypervisor platforms while unifying management. By deploying multiple hypervisors and standardizing on VMware vCenter as our primary management interface, we expect to reduce our virtualization cost by over 50 percent and admin costs by 65 percent over the next 3 years,” said Mark Tonnesen, CIO of McAfee. “The foundation of our multi-hypervisor environment is built on the HotLink SuperVISOR platform.”
With the new HotLink SuperVISOR technology, enterprises can tier their virtual infrastructure with cost-effective hypervisors and still unify the management, significantly reducing their licensing and operating costs. With HotLink SuperVISOR, customers can realize the benefits of mixed hypervisors while avoiding overly complicated management systems.
“Like many other IT shops, we are investigating the use of multiple hypervisors to cost effectively support development and test activities for our Tier 2 and Tier 3 business applications. We have been very impressed by HotLink’s SuperVISOR technology and the hypervisor interoperability that it enables. We believe that HotLink will enable us to optimize the use of specific hypervisors for individual workloads without compromising our ability to manage our overall virtual environment,” said Mark Settle, CIO of BMC Software.
Pricing and Availability
HotLink SuperVISOR for VMware 1.2 is available now with pricing starting at $25,000. For more information, contact sales@hotlink.com or visit www.hotlink.com.
Founded in early 2010 by data center software veterans and the founders of FastScale Technology, Inc. (acquired by VMware), HotLink Corporation is on a mission to transform real-world IT with the first true heterogeneous data center system management platform for virtual, cloud and physical computing infrastructure. Early customers include enterprise IT organizations spanning technology, financial services, telecommunications and Internet search. HotLink’s advisory board includes visionary leaders from Informatica, Facebook, E*TRADE, Clorox, Citrix, BMC and Flextronics. HotLink is a privately held, venture capital backed company based in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit www.hotlink.com.
Cody Bunch over at ProfessionalVMware has pulled together a whole bunch of fantastic lab resources which he plans to give away to one lucky contest winner at the BrownBag Blow Out – vSphere Lab Give Away. This is a great opportunity to walk away with books, videos, 1×1 VCAP training, storage, laptop PC, VMware Workstation, VMware exam vouchers, a brand new v3 vCalendar from you-know-who, and maybe more (I hear Cody has a book coming…)
Contest Rules:
1) Create and send a 1 – 3 minute video, explaining who you are and how you think the lab would help you.
2) Shipping to US addresses only.
3) Employees of prize vendors and Cody’s tight friends are ineligible.
4) Entries must be received by midnight 12/13.
5) Winner will be announced between 12/14 and 12/16.
6) The very best of luck to all contestants and may the luckiest and most deserving person win. If you sue Cody or cause trouble for him you will be the biggest loser.
Several months ago I co-wrote a piece titled Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) Tag Team. The article talks about CDP, walks through some working examples, and provides a view of what information the protocol advertises. CDP is a great tool but it’s proprietary to Cisco network gear. In the past, if you were using non-Cisco switches, you couldn’t leverage CDP in either direction (listen or advertise).
Today is the first look at a new vSphere 5 networking feature which is Link Layer Discovery Protocol – essentially CDP for every other switch vendor which supports this IEEE 802.1AB open standard.
Take a look at the images below which show a side by side comparison of LLDP and CDP from the vSphere Client perspective:
As you can see, there’s a lot of parity between the two protocols. Each provides some very helpful information from the upstream physical network perspective. Namely the identification of the switch and the port number. From what I’ve seen so far, LLDP is a completely viable alternative to CDP.
In case you’re wondering where to configure LLDP or CDP on a vNetwork Distributed Switch, it’s an advanced setting of the vDS itself:
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of my employer.
Burlington, MA – January 13, 2012 – StarWind Software Inc., an innovative provider of SAN software for iSCSI storage and VM Backup technology, today announced the release of new StarWind iSCSI SAN v5.8 and Hyper-V Backup Plug-in. The iSCSI SAN software is enhanced by the powerful VM Backup technology that is included as a plug-in.
