DataCore Software Sponsors Parallels Summit 2009

DataCore Software Corporation joined Parallels in sponsoring their 4th annual Summit at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. 

We’re here talking about Virtualization centered on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and their beta bare-metal hypervisor.  Parallels has come a long way in the last couple of years to challenge the status quo as put forth in the virtualization industry from vendors like Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.  While Parallels Virtuozzo Containers buck some of the traditional thinking in how server and desktop (VDI) virtualization should work.

If you are not familiar with how PVC (Parallels Virtuozzo Containers) works in essence it is a hybrid form of hosted virtualization verses bare-metal virtualization.  It is a hybrid inasmuch as in traditional hosted virtualization you install a base OS and the hypervisor runs on top of the base OS.  In PVC, the containers share the kernel and optionally application binaries from the host OS. 

While this is significantly different philosophically from how CMV (Citrix, Microsoft and VMware)  think virtualization should be approached.  I’m not going to discuss the merits of either school of thought in this post, but suffice it to say Parallels strategy is worth considering for several reasons.

All this said, what is DataCore Software doing at Parallels Summit?  DataCore Software and Parallels have been business and technology partners for some time but besides supporting an Alliance Partner, storage is one of, if not the key to virtualization.  What is the big deal about storage; the bottom line is everything virtual or not has to be stored on disk.  When it comes to storage, DataCore Software wrote the book on three key technologies: Thin-Provisioning, Caching and High-Availability.  How these technologies affect virtualization is often not understood until after problems or constraints have occurred. 

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VMware Partner Technical Training Event

What: Partner Technical Training: VMware Virtual Infrastructure This 2 day workshop provides the opportunity for a student to integrate the PS Series Storage Array within a VMware Infrastructure 3 environment. This is a hands-on intensive workshop which includes: mounting iSCSI volumes from a PS Series Storage Array to house Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine datastores use snapshots to prepare for backups, as well as performing a live Vmotion of running Virtual Machines. The workshop also provides students with realistic and practical experience as well as an understanding of the requirements for successfully integrating VMware Virtual Infrastructure features using Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage Arrays. Format: Instructor-led training. Lecture 20% Lab 80% Prerequisites: The following prerequisite knowledge is required before attending this course: PS Series Administration Experience and/or Training VmWare Virtual Infrastructure Installation and Configuration Experience and/or Training For a full course description click here. When: Tuesday, January 6, 2009 8:30 AM to Wednesday, January 7, 2009 5:00 PM Download iCalendar file

Where Virtualization and the SMB Meet

Last week DataCore Software Corporation announced the release of several new products offerings targeted at the SMB market.  First let's talk about what's not new, they've kept all the features DataCore's customers love (Caching, HA, Thin-Provisioning, iSCSI, FC, Snapshot, VSS Integration, Remote Replication), second what is really new...the size or "Managed Capacity."  The real net-new here is the ability to get their award winning products in capacities starting at 500 GB.  So net-net, all the storage virtualization goodness in smaller chunks!  One of my favorite things here is their "Carry Forward Value Protection Plan," I start with what I need now and pay to upgrade as I go, no more throwaway systems or data migration projects. 

From my perspective, the biggest news here is that all the people I told that virtualization was out of reach I can go back to and say I was wrong and here is the solution to the problem.  I think I'm similar to most engineers in that I don't stray too far from previous designs that have worked well in the past.  However a 500 GB, HA SAN changes the way I think about things.  It's probably appropriate for me to admit a prejudice here, up to this point I have to say I wouldn't have considered the possibility or need for a SAN that wasn't measured in TB. 

I was having a design session with a colleague of mine (happy-hour at the pub with napkins and a marker) and the topic of virtualization in the SMB came up.  I was quick to lament my frustrations in designing Enterprise class systems scaled down for the SMB market.  The problem isn't designing or implementing them, it's getting them to be in the acceptable price range of SMB customers.  I have been a virtualization aficionado from the earliest days but was spoiled by having worked in the Enterprise market for many years.  There are an abundance of  cool solutions for the enterprise crowd and conversely a dearth of  SMB scaled solutions with Enterprise class architecture.

Much to the credit of the team at DataCore, they really changed my thinking in how to architect these solutions and keep them in the realm of price reality.