Quoting Computer Technology Review
XenSource Inc., a provider of infrastructure virtualization solutions, has announced partnerships with several storage vendors to boost the comprehensive iSCSI (Internet SCSI) storage support, included in its recently released XenEnterprise 3.2. XenSource’s iSCSI support brings the benefits of high-end SANs (storage area networks) to a larger audience, complementing dedicated Fibre Channel networking and delivering disaster recovery capabilities for virtualized environments, XenSource said last week.
The new and expanded partnerships with Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp), Compellent Technologies, LeftHand Networks Inc. and QLogic Corp., will further facilitate virtualization adoption and provide an array of interoperable storage options for users, XenSource of Palo Alto, California said.
Recent analyst reports show iSCSI adoption is growing dramatically in 2007, according to the company. Important for different types of data-intensive applications, XenSource virtualization products help offer reduced server hardware and operating costs through server consolidation, which results in savings on power, space, cooling and system maintenance, XenSource said. The addition of iSCSI to XenSource products begins to bridge the gap that exists between server and storage management, the company said. By implementing iSCSI, end users can enable high performance storage and disaster recovery at a fraction of the cost of competing technologies such as Fibre Channel, XenSource added.
XenSource develops the XenServer product family based on virtualization technology, the open source Xen hypervisor. For customers seeking to reduce the number of under-utilized servers in their IT infrastructure, XenSource virtualization products help to reduce server hardware and operating costs through savings on power, space, cooling and system maintenance, XenSource said. Offering high performance virtualization, XenSource supports both Windows and Linux servers. Founded and run by the Xen development team, XenSource products are being adopted worldwide in enterprises to increase server utilization, support server consolidation, and reduce TCO (total cost of ownership), the company said.
When end-users undertake storage consolidation, they look for a storage topology that delivers on the characteristics of the utility model, NetApp of Sunnyvale, California said. iSCSI meets their expectations by reducing the cost to procure, manage and provision an IP (Internet Protocol) SAN environment, the company said. NetApp expects that the general adoption of 10 GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) will fuel the growth of the iSCSI market even further. It has seen a steady growth in IP SAN deployment from organizations that are looking at simplified business continuity solutions, which they can easily integrate into their existing application environment, the company said. NetApp expects XenSource’s support of iSCSI in their virtualization solutions to fuel this adoption even further, NetApp added.
Compellent provides seamless, cross-platform support for iSCSI and server virtualization technologies to reduce the cost and administrative burden of managing enterprise storage, according to the Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based company. The combination of XenSource open-source virtualization products with Compellent’s native disk virtualization makes it easy to consolidate servers and storage, while bringing about instant disaster recovery benefits, Compellent said.
LeftHand Networks iSCSI SANs are ideal for virtual data center environments, according to the Boulder, Colorado-based company. The combination of LeftHand's open iSCSI SAN with XenEnterprise 3.2 will provide joint customers with the ease-of-use and cost-effectiveness of virtualization in both their server and storage environments, LeftHand Networks said.
QLogic iSCSI HBAs (host bus adapters) are optimized to deliver on the performance requirements for server virtualization, according to the Aliso Viejo, California-based company. QLogic’s SANblade HBAs provide a high performance IP SAN solution capable of IPv6 and storage boot that are a natural complement to XenEnterprise 3.2, QLogic said.
The benefits of using iSCSI with XenSource virtualization products, include simpler disaster recovery, easier backup and restore, consolidation of storage, and virtualization of storage, XenSource said.
The disaster recovery feature offers replication capabilities of iSCSI storage systems to enable recovery from system and site failures, XenSource said. The backup and restore process provides network-based storage snapshots to allow IT organizations to offload backup and keep server resources dedicated to users and applications, the company said. The consolidation of storage allows centralized hardware to support multiple servers reducing costs of acquisition and management, it said. The virtualization of storage ensures that the right level of performance and data protection can be delivered to each virtual server according to its business value transparently, XenSource added.
XenSource virtualization products include the Software iSCSI Initiator that allows any machine with a standard NIC (network interface controller) to connect to iSCSI based storage arrays, as well as provides robust hardware iSCSI support using QLogic HBAs that offload iSCSI processing from the system CPU (central processing unit) to a dedicated card to provide the highest levels of iSCSI performance, XenSource said. These capabilities will enable upcoming support of live migration of virtual machines between systems, high availability of virtual machines between physical systems, and more integrated backups, the company said.
With customers looking for more affordable, more scalable options for virtualization, XenSource is seeing an increased need to find simpler, more cost-effective comprehensive solutions for storage, XenSource said. The iSCSI support expands on its ‘ten minutes to Xen’ simplicity charter, and XenSource’s partnerships with leading vendors increase the accessibility to, and interoperability of, these solutions, the company said. The integration with iSCSI storage brings the business continuity benefits of the storage network, such as storage snapshots and off-host/off-site backup, to users of XenSource virtualization solutions, XenSource added.
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