DataCore Software, one of the industry’s premier providers of storage virtualization software, today announced that it has joined the Microsoft System Center Alliance. By becoming a System Center Alliance partner, DataCore strengthens its support for System Center and other Microsoft solutions, enabling organizations of all sizes to achieve their virtualization goals and take advantage of the cloud.

The Microsoft System Center Alliance is a network of leading IT vendors whose solutions support and integrate with Microsoft System Center.

“Microsoft partners with the world’s leading solution providers to bring companies the IT tools they need for achieving business goals,” said Andrew Conway, director of System Center product management at Microsoft. “DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor complements System Center, with additional tools that help businesses create, manage and monitor a dynamic storage environment and reap the benefits of their infrastructure investments.”

Building on a 13-year history of creating innovative storage virtualization solutions designed to work on Microsoft platforms, DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V storage hypervisor enriches Microsoft’s virtualization solution by harnessing the native capabilities of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server Hyper-V to address critical storage challenges. The DataCore™ SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor enhances the value of diverse storage resources by unifying advanced services, such as provisioning, auto-tiering, replication and performance acceleration, through a common storage virtualization layer.

Recently, DataCore introduced the SANsymphony-V Monitoring Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2008 R2, providing constant visibility into the health, performance and availability of virtualized storage resources from within System Center. The combined solution encompasses both on-premise and cloud-based, off-premise components, including redundant high-availability elements and those in remote disaster recovery sites. Information appears on a “single pane of glass” alongside other facets of the data center, simplifying end-to-end service management of diverse storage environments. DataCore’s SANsymphony-V Monitoring Pack easily integrates with System Center Operations Manager 2007 and the upcoming System Center Operations Manager 2012.

In addition, SANsymphony-V’s snapshot and volume shadow copy service capabilities work with System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 to ensure consistent, seamless backups without disrupting any applications running at the time.

“Since its founding, DataCore storage virtualization solutions have been designed to support and integrate with Microsoft solutions,” said Carlos Carreras, vice president of alliances & business development for DataCore Software. “Becoming a System Center Alliance Partner was a very logical step, and as organizations continue to explore and build private clouds, they will look to Microsoft and DataCore to help them succeed.”