VMworld 2014: 35 Must-See Storage Offerings

Storage Front And Center At VMworld

Storage is the keystone in building virtualized and cloud IT infrastructures, and nowhere else was that more evident at the VMworld 2014 conference. As the IT industry rushes to bring businesses to public, private and hybrid clouds, the need to find and deploy new storage hardware and software solutions has made VMworld a must for solution providers and customers.

Understanding the scale of possible solutions was hard enough for VMworld attendees given all the distractions caused by nonstorage vendors. It was even harder for those who couldn't make the trip.

To get a feel for the kind of solutions that can make it easier to tie storage to virtualized environments and the cloud, just turn the page.

Actifio: Improved Management In VMware Environments

Actifio, Waltham, Mass., introduced enhancements to extend the integration between VMware and Actifio's data virtualization platforms. Availability is slated for next month.

This includes Actifio management extensions for VMware vSphere and vCloud with a plug-in for the vSphere Web Client, improved Actifio Sky integration with VMware VSAN technology, integration of Actifio ReadyVM technology with VMware, support for the VMware virtual volume (VVol) technology beta program with Actifio CDS (Copy Data Storage) and the Actifio Sky virtualization platform for distributed enterprises, and the availability of Actifio Resiliency Director for automated recovery automation of virtual machines in the cloud.

Asigra: Treating Cloud-Based Data Protection Same As On-Premises

Toronto-based Asigra demonstrated cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery as part of the company's end-to-end protection of physical, virtual and cloud environments. Asigra Cloud Backup provides the same backup and recovery protection for data in cloud-based applications and platforms as it does in on-premises data centers.

New capabilities include back up of data in SaaS or PaaS clouds to authorize secure data centers or to a user's own data center. Customers can select the frequency and granularity of the backups depending on compliance and business continuity requirements, as well as set RTO (recovery time objectives) and RPO (recovery point objectives) and encrypt the data.

Atlantis Computing: Software For Better-Than-Flash Storage Performance

Atlantis Computing, Mountain View, Calif., said at VMworld that its Atlantis USX 2.0 software provides better-than-flash performance on existing enterprise storage for about one-half the cost of a SAN. The software can help IT organizations extend the life of existing SAN/NAS and flash storage while support up to 10 times more virtual machines on existing storage capacity, the company claimed.

Atlantis USX works with any SAN/ NAS, flash or direct attached storage.

Barracuda Networks: VMware-Ready Backup Solution

The Barracuda Backup solution from Campbell, Calif.-based Barracuda Networks integrates into physical, virtual or hybrid environments to keep cloud-connected environments fully protected.

Barracuda Backup, combined with VMware vSphere, helps reduce downtime by using Barracuda Cloud LiveBoot for VMware to boot virtual machines stored in the Barracuda Cloud if primary servers or storage fail. It includes integration with Barracuda's Copy file sync and share cloud platform to protect mobile employees' data, as well as Barracuda’s Instant Replacement solution, which can ship a replacement storage device with the most recent data and configuration settings from the Barracuda Cloud the day after a disaster.

Bluelock: More Transparency Into Cost Of Managed Resources

Indianapolis-based Bluelock used VMworld to show major enhancements to its Bluelock Portfolio cloud-aware decision support tool for providing data across cost analysis, data center visibility, managed service and Recovery-as-a-Service. The update provides enhanced transparency into cost analysis, allowing customers to clearly reconcile their invoice with their online resource tracking, pull historical invoice data and export cost data. The enhancements help customers quickly reconcile their resource usage costs within Portfolio and their invoices.

CloudPhysics: Search And Destroy Of Storage Capacity, Performance Issues

The Storage Analytics application from Mountain View, Calif.-based CloudPhysics helps IT teams pinpoint and pre-empt storage-induced capacity and performance problems with data-driven and actionable insights. CloudPhysics uses insights from its global dataset to predict capacity or performance problems and trigger a Smart Alert containing recommendations for pre-emptive actions.

CloudPhysics also previewed its "workload shapes" technology, which provides VMware administrators with both a visual shorthand for recognizing storage performance anomalies and potential ways to accelerate their resolution. Workload Shapes is an easy-to-understand visualization of storage performance, which quickly show anomalies in the storage I/O.

CommVault: Modular Approach In Latest Simpana Software

The new Simpana solution uses various modules to provide a complete data management and protection platform or serve single assets to a company's infrastructure from archive and backup to snapshots and eDiscovery. Pricing starts at $13,000 for snapshots, and $1,050 per socket or $1,500 per virtual machine when 10 licenses are acquired. A tiered pricing model for endpoint and archive is used, and starts at $36 per MB when bought together.

DataCore Virtual SAN: Any Hypervisor, Any Storage

The DataCore Virtual SAN software from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based DataCore Software transforms any local server storage into a "virtual SAN" that works with all major hypervisors and runs on any industry standard server or virtual machine. The latest version of DataCore Virtual SAN, shown at VMworld, is based on a 10-generation release of SANsymphony-V, and scales to more than 50 million IOPS and supports 32 Petabytes of capacity across a cluster of 32 servers.

DataGravity: Adds Intelligence, Data Protection To Storage

Nashua, N.H.-based DataGravity attended its first VMworld after coming out of stealth this month to launch its new storage platform, the DataGravity Discovery Series, a data-aware storage appliance that brings value to businesses' stored data.

It provides search-and-discover capabilities on data, including information on who accesses it and when. The flash-storage-optimized appliance, which comes in 48-TB and 96-TB versions, handles information discovery by conducting searches natively at the point at which data is stored. It also provides built-in block, file and virtual machine data protection with snapshots. Release is scheduled for October.

Dell: Upping The Storage Ante

Dell, which this week started shipping its new SC4020 "Baby Compellent" storage array, used VMworld to unveil a new VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) reference architecture, featuring the array.

Dell also introduced several software updates to its storage portfolio. Those updates include integrated support for VMware vCenter Operations Manager (vC Ops) in the company's Dell Storage PS and SC series arrays; VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols) support for its PS series at VVols launch and later for the SC series; and support early next year for VMware vSphere Storage APIs -- Array Integration (VAAI) and UNMAP in Dell FluidFS NAS solutions.

eG Innovations: Easing User Management Issues

eG Innovations, Iselin, N.J., used VMworld to introduce its eG Enterprise v6 software for improving IT performance management via a deep visibility into enterprise infrastructure performance as a way to improve the speed and ease of isolating and troubleshooting the root cause of user experience problems.

The solution, which helps manage IT environments across all application, storage, network and infrastructure tiers on-premises or in the cloud, includes customizable virtual dashboards. Those dashboards display all service performance metrics, including demand, consumption and quality, correlated across tiers to help service owners more easily manage their IT environment for performance, efficiency and user satisfaction.

EMC: Disaster Recovery For VMware-Based Cloud Environments

At VMworld, EMC introduced its RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines disaster recovery solution for applications in VMware-based cloud environments. It provides local and remote replication with continuous data protection for per-virtual machine recovery to any point in time, with built-in automated disaster recovery orchestration.

RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines integrates with VMware's cloud management software to provide replication and recovery at the virtual machine granularity level to and from any storage certified by VMware. It will be available for nonproduction environments in early October, and will be part of an EM VSPEX reference architecture in the fourth quarter.

Emulex: Connection To The Cloud

Costa Mesa, Calif.-based network connectivity developer Emulex unveiled its Emulex OpenWorks Connector for use with its OCec14000 series of cloud adapters.

The solution helps cloud service providers and telcos configure, manage and deploy cloud infrastructures in heterogeneous server environments rather than standardizing with a single vendor or dealing with multiple tools. It features a RESTful API to let third-party provisioning tools utilize the OpenWorks Connector Boot Manager to manage the Emulex cloud adapters down to the I/O adapter level. Egenera was the first partner to utilize the API, combining it with its PAN Manager 8.0 for configuring and provisioning machine images to bare-metal rack servers.

Imation: Fibre Channel Hybrid Storage With Smart Compression

Imation, Oakdale, Minn., unveiled at VMware a new hybrid disk and SSD storage appliance, the NST4000, that it said brings Fibre Channel connectivity, and higher capacity and performance to midrange enterprises.

The NST4000 includes an intelligent hybrid-caching layer, and scales nondisruptively to up to 2.1 PBs of capacity, giving it 50 percent more capacity and 45 percent more FASTier DRAM cache than in previous models, while tripling the possible IOPS. Software features include inline compression with the ability to ignore noncompressible data to increase the processing performance of compressible data by about 50 percent.

Load DynamiX: Improving Flash Storage Performance

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Load DynamiX worked with all-flash array developer Pure Storage to demonstrate its new storage performance validation solutions. Load DynamiX's Workload Iterator, a part of its Load DynamiX Enterprise application, helps storage engineers and architects simplify storage performance testing while making it easier for them to test hundreds of variations for networked storage workload scenarios, including how they use the strengths and weaknesses of all-flash or hybrid storage solutions, the company said.

Workload Iterator automates iterations over hundreds of workload parameter permutations, and can help identify blind spots, decrease testing time, and measure the effects of dedupe and compression on performance.

Maxta: New Hyperconverged Reference Infrastructure

The new MaxDeploy Reference Architecture, demonstrated at VMworld by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Maxta, combines its Maxta MxSP software-defined storage with Intel server boards and systems as a way to build hyperconverged infrastructures.

The MaxDeploy Reference Architecture and Maxta MxSP software lets customers choose from a variety of hardware and software configurations depending on workload requirements, including industry-standard server vendor, storage media type and capacity and network switches. It works with any standard x86 server and any hypervisor, but delivers enterprise-class data and optimization services, including snapshots, clones, replication, thin provisioning, inline compression and inline deduplication.

NetApp: All-Flash FlexPod For VDI

NetApp showed a new FlexPod reference architecture that includes its new FAS8000 all-flash storage arrays, and said that a solution featuring those arrays has been validated for use with the VMware View virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform. The new reference architecture is slated to be published in September.

NetApp also used VMworld to talk about its software-defined storage strategy, which includes taking advantage of its Clustered Data ONTAP storage operating system and new technologies such as VMware's upcoming Virtual Volumes (VVol) technology. With VVols, customers can create policies in VMware that take advantage of NetApp storage environments, the company said.

Nexenta Systems: Software-Based Scale-Out Block, Object Storage

Nexenta's new NexentaEdge 1.0, launched at VMware, is a software-only scale-out block-and-object storage solution with high-performance global inline deduplication for petabyte scale clusters. It is targeted at next-generation OpenStack infrastructures and big data repositories, which need high performance and scalability, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said.

NexentaEdge 1.0 helps enterprises store and manage growing amounts of unstructured data. Businesses can store any amount of data in a single, highly available repository with inline data deduplication to help reduce the total cost of ownership.

OCZ Storage Solutions: New PCIe SSD

The Z-Drive 4500 PCIe SSD from San Jose, Calif.-based OCZ Storage Solutions, which was introduced this spring, features 19nm MLC NAND flash in 800-GB, 1.6-TB, and 3.2-TB usable capacities. The SSDs include OCZ’s Windows Accelerator (WXL) Software for advanced flash management, and accelerates Microsoft Windows Server applications by using the flash as a local volume, a cache for HDD volumes, or both. They also include a cache warm-up-and-analysis solution for loading important tasks into the SSD to ensure that the required data is available when needed.

Open-E: ZFS, Linux Storage Software

Open-E, an Atlanta-based developer of IP-based storage management software, used VMworld to introduce Open-E JovianDSS, its newly released ZFS-based and Linux-based data storage software.

Open-E JovianDSS is Open-E's software-defined storage system targeting channel partners looking to offer high-performance, scalable software solutions featuring nearly unlimited LUN sizes, unlimited snapshots, tiered RAM and SSD caching, thin provisioning and over provisioning for easy capacity management and utilization, data deduplication and compression and check-sum data integrity.

Open-E also demonstrated its VMware-ready Open-E DSS V7.

Overland Storage: Hyper-converged Infrastructure For VDI

The new V3 virtual desktop hyper-converged infrastructure appliances, introduced at VMworld by San Diego-based Overland Storage, integrates compute, storage and networking with a hypervisor infrastructure and the company's V3 Desktop Cloud Orchestrator (DCO) management software. The result is a turnkey appliance the company said provides predictable scalability and cost for VDI deployments, with streamlined virtual desktop pool administration and dynamic provisioning.

The Overland V3 V100 and V200 virtual desktop appliances are delivered preprovisioned and ready for fast installation into existing VMware environments. They can handle either 100 or 200 desktops per appliance, and multiple units allow scaling to 10,000 desktops.

Promise Technology: All-In-One Cloud Storage Sync And Share Solution

Taipei-based Promise Technology's new FileCruiser all-in-one cloud storage solution for enterprise file synch and sharing lets businesses build secure, scalable private cloud storage services similar to those offered by companies such as Dropbox which includes business-class features, low total cost of ownership, a flexible architecture and seamless integration with existing IT systems.

FileCruiser is deployed on-premises to reduce the security concerns of using public services to manage confidential business data. Mobile users can access the solution via the company's iOS and Android apps.

SanDisk: Reference Architectures For VMware Horizon View, VSAN

SanDisk, Milpitas, Calif., introduced three new reference architectures for VMware Horizon View virtual desktop infrastructure and Virtual SAN (VSAN).

The reference architectures feature the company's new ULLtraDIMM SSDs and its Fusion ioMemory technology. Together with VMware’s Horizon View, ULLtraDIMM and Fusion ioMemory allows the deployment of high-performance VDI solutions while increasing the virtual desktop density, the company said. With its PCIe connection, five micro-second write latency, and performance of up to 1 million IOPS, the ULLtraDIMM can significantly reduce VDI boot storm impacts, SanDisk said. The Fusion ioMemory VDI solution can off-load up to 90 percent of the SAN functionality to provide a 50-millisecond response time.

Scality: Software-Defined Storage

Scality released its RING 5.0 software-defined storage technology at VMworld, and introduced unified file, object and virtual machine storage for enterprise clouds. San Francisco-based Scality said RING 5.0 adds "Amazon EBS-like" virtual machine storage capabilities to help enterprises and service providers run multiple cloud storage file, object and virtual machine workloads in a single petabyte-scale storage environment.

RING 5.0 runs up to 95 percent faster than prior editions, and matches Amazon EBS performance at 200 IOPS per virtual machine with bursting to 3,000 IOPS, and scales out to hundreds of thousands of virtual machines.

Silver Peak: Mapping The 'Internet Weather'

The new Silver Peak Unity intelligent wide area network fabric from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Silver Peak unifies enterprise networks with public clouds while monitoring the "Internet weather" to create a map for intelligent routing of data.

Silver Peak claims that Unity, unlike traditional WAN optimization solutions, tracks cloud service locations, including cloud storage, and intelligently routes traffic over the quickest paths. It keeps SaaS and IaaS traffic on the WAN until the last possible moment, letting users monitor and control connectivity to the cloud while gaining consistent performance for any cloud or enterprise application, the company said.

SoftNAS: Software-Defined Storage In VMware Environments

Houston-based SoftNAS used VMworld to introduce upgrades to its SoftNAS Cloud for VMware that lets customers use their existing investment in VMware platforms and tools to deploy software-defined storage capabilities.

SoftNAS Cloud for VMware supports VMware-compatible storage media and network hardware, and is compatible with private, public and hybrid cloud platforms. It lets customers manage primary and secondary storage for private clouds and service providers, and for hybrid clouds via vCloud Hybrid Services (vCHS) for realtime backup, disaster recovery and business continuity. Included is a VMware Cloud Gateway to Amazon S3, and a VMware VSAN-based NAS filer.

StorageCraft Technology: VMware Plug-In For VM Auto Protection

StorageCraft, Draper, Utah, used VMworld to demonstrate its new StorageCraft Plug-in for VMware. Scheduled to be released this fall, the StorageCraft Plug-in for VMware lets users monitor and manage StorageCraft ShadowProtect backups directly from VMware vCenter.

Users also will be able to view all virtual machines running on a hypervisor host and automatically detect which are not protected by the ShadowProtect agent. A ShadowProtect agent can also be installed to any unprotected virtual machine and then tied to a preconfigured backup job so protection can start immediately.

Tegile Systems: Third-generation Flash Storage Systems

Newark, Calif.-based Tegile demonstrated its new third-generation flash storage systems -- the T3800 all-flash array and the T3400 hybrid array.

The Tegile T3800 features high-density enterprise flash SSDs for mission-critical applications requiring high performance at low latency. Compression technology allows a five-times reduction in storage capacity to bring the cost to under $1 per GB, the company said. The array includes a seven-year warranty.

Tegile's new T3400 can be configured with up to half its capacity using SSDs, compared to only 5 percent for the previous models. The T3400 base configuration includes 22 TBs of flash storage and a 2.2-TB metadata acceleration engine.

Tintri: Next-Generation Data Management

Tintri, the Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of the Tintri VMstore hybrid storage arrays for virtualized and cloud environments, used VMworld to introduce a new generation of smart storage with the availability of Tintri OS 3.0, Tintri Global Center 1.1, and Tintri Automation Toolkit 1.0.

The company said these applications deliver advanced capabilities for data management with multi-hypervisor support and end-to-end virtual machine-level automation for virtualization and private cloud deployments.

Veeam: Data Protection Software With New Recovery Time/Point Performance

Veeam Software, Baar, Switzerland, brought its upcoming Veeam Availability Suite v8, which is scheduled for release in October, to VMworld. The new data protection software makes applications and data accessible, including those in virtualized and cloud environments, whenever and wherever needed with recovery time and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data.

Veeam Availability Suite v8 also integrates with NetApp for snap-based backups and recovery, and with EMC Data Domain Boost to speed full backups by 50 percent. Also new is Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL, which can restore individual databases back to the original or a new location.

Violin Memory: Concerto 2200 Data Reduction Appliance

At VMworld, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Violin Memory unveiled inline deduplication and inline compression tailored for NFS environments with its new Concerto 2200 data reduction appliance.

The Concerto 2200 provides granular control to turn deduplication and compression on or off based on its impact on specific workloads. It lets IT departments deploy and decide if tier-one applications and workloads benefit from deduplication and compression based on the Concerto dashboard, which shows actual workload deduplication rates. The Concerto 2200 offers up to a 6:1 savings in capacity while supporting NFS ingestion to provide an effective cost as low as $75 per virtual desktop.

Xangati: Visibility, Automation Of Converged Infrastructures

Xangati, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of application-aware infrastructure intelligence, unveiled at VMworld the Xangati Product Suite XSR12.

This software release, slated to be available on Sept. 29, provides realtime infrastructure visibility and automatic optimization of the entire compute, networking and storage fabric in Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop, or other web-based applications or services, using a customer's desktop or mobile device. XSR12 fully integrates with FlexPod converged infrastructures with native support for Cisco UCS servers and NetApp storage devices.

X-IO Technologies: Combating VDI Failure

X-IO, the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based developer of the X-IO Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) systems, used VMworld to introduce its new VDI Emergency Response Program to help organizations facing storage performance issues with their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). The program is available through X-IO distributors and channel partners to provide 72-hour "diagnosis-to-deployment" service using high-performance, VDI-optimized hybrid storage.

X-IO also showed a new X-Pod reference architecture for VMware Horizon View, and introduced new integration with the VMware vCenter Operations Manager for round-the-clock monitoring and with VMware vCenter for automated management of storage.

Zadara Storage: OPaaS And iSER

Enterprise storage service provider Zadara highlighted its new Zadara Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) On-Premise-as-a-Service, or OPaaS, offering that takes advantage of the company's experience with managing data in public clouds to provide a similar service using data stored in a customer's data center.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company also made available a new Zadara Storage iSER (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) VPSA, which was designed in collaboration with Mellanox to deliver iSCSI storage traffic over Ethernet cables loss-lessly, with minimal overhead. With iSER, traffic goes directly to applications’ memory buffers to minimize latency at every step.

Zerto: Replication For Hyper-V And AWS

Herzliya, Israel-based Zerto said at VMware that, starting in the fourth quarter, its Zerto Virtual Replication will offer support for Microsoft Hyper-V and replication to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Zerto Virtual Replication provides flexibility and manageability of data and applications residing on-premises, at any cloud service provider, or on any combination.

The updates are part of Zerto's "Cloud Fabric," which lets businesses move and protect virtualized workloads between clouds via leading hypervisors, such as VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. It works across managed service providers including Peak 10, iLand and Veristor, and across public clouds including Amazon and Google.