Monthly Archives: November 2011

How to Find The Right SVA: Hear Why the German Army Selected an SVA

November 28, 2011 in Branch Office, Case Study, Virtualization, Webinar

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Finding the right storage solution for virtualizing your remote office/branch office environments can be a real challenge. Leveraging Storage Virtual Appliances (SVAs) may be your best solution, but are you prepared to take action? What do you need to know to make an educated decision?

Presenters

Join our webinar to learn how virtualizing your remote and branch sites with an SVA may be the right choice for your organization.  Hear from Blackned and learn why they chose an SVA for the German Army, including what questions they asked and the process they took to find the right solution

In this webinar we’ll discuss the common challenges addressed by an SVA solution, including:
- Budget restraints
- Limited IT resources
- The need to achieve high availability at multiple sites

Then we’ll tackle important questions often addressed, including:
- What to look for in an SVA solution;
- How does an SVA manage multi-site environments effectively; and
- How does an SVA meet both short-term and long-term budget requirements?

When: 14th of December 2011: 12:00 – 13:00 EST / 17:00 – 18:00 GMT

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Why Go Virtual Storage?

November 15, 2011 in Storage

A quick search on the web will give you endless results on the battle between virtual storage and physical storage. Most seem to believe that the choice to choose one over the other is based on budget, if you have a large budget you go with physical and if you have more limited budget you would go with virtual.

Let’s take budget out of the equation for a moment a look at the fundamental differences between the 2 and why Virtual should be equally if not more considered over physical.

Sure physical storage for the most part proves to be a stronger performer delivering higher I/O’s over the virtual appliances, I say most part. Creditplus bank in Germany replaced their Physical SAN solution (which cost 10’s of thousands of Dollars) for a Storage Virtual Appliance (SVA). SvSAN from StorMagic was an interim storage solution while they were upgrading the expensive hardware, during this time they noticed that SvSAN was delivering at least 25% higher performance on I/O’s: http://www.stormagic.com/pdf/Credit_Plus.pdf

So we know that an SVA can perform to an equal standard to physical storage (obviously under the right conditions, but that’s the same for physical), so what about general use. Well, an SVA needs less tender loving care than the traditional physical storage, making it a great “Set and forget Solution” leaving IT staff spending less time fooling around with the storage and more time doing stuff that matters.

As an SVA is not a physical piece of hardware which gets out dated as technology advances, which in this day and age doesn’t take long, it’s able to keep updated as the development, no expensive maintenance costs, no need to upgrade (unless capacity requirements change).

If we bring budget back into the conversation, an SVA is substantially more affordable in comparison to physical storage.  For less than $2,000 you are able to achieve HA with 2 servers.

It’s these factors that make SVA’s like SvSAN such a popular solution for Remote Office and Branch office multi-site environments, a simple set and forget solution which delivers high availability for business continuity without breaking the bank or sucking up your IT resources.

Have a look at SvSAN

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Webinar: Solving Challenges Achieving High Availability in Remote Office/Branch Office Environments

November 14, 2011 in video, Webinar

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPqGZgieiN0]

If you missed our Webinar on November the 9th 2011, on solving challenges in achieving remote office / branch office (ROBO) virtual environments, you can now watch it online.

Limited space: Stores, restaurants, remote sites and branch offices typically have limited space to accommodate additional servers, storage and networking equipment.

Limited budget: IT budgets are often based upon an assumption that the applications will be hosted on a single low-cost PC server. However, this cheaper hardware option is a single point of failure that can interrupt the ability to service customers, record transactions, manage staffing and inventory, and process payments. In addition, maintenance must be done during high-cost, off hours.

Lack of local IT: Few organizations can afford trained IT staff at all of their branch locations. It is equally inefficient to leverage centrally located IT staff to provide emergency onsite support. This approach increases travel costs and extends the problem-resolution time, which directly impacts profitability.

Questions and Answers from Webinar:

Q1: Is RDM Mapping supported with all RAID-Controllers that are on the VMware HCL (or only with specific RAID-Controllers) ?

A:) RDM is supported with most RAID controllers, to check compatibility please contact support with details on raid cards at support@stormagic.com

Q2: Is the SVA-VM able to handle 10 Gbit wire-speed with 1 vCPU ? (vmxnet3 no problem, but is the SVA-VM supported with 2 vCPU’s) ?

A: The SvSAN would take advantage of second CPU, backend would take advantage of second CPU. Currently re-architecting for a later date. Performance is based upon the underlying disks in the host.

Q3: What sort of latency does SVSAN introduce ?

A: Depends on how you allocate storage to SvSAN, for more information contact our support on support@stormagic.com

Q4: Does it support vSphere 5 ?

A: Yes

Q5: How is SvSAN Licensed ?

A: Licensing is based on capacity and per server. A copy of SvSAN comes with 2 licenses to cover 2 Server HA. Licences can be purchased individually. For more info visit: http://www.stormagic.com/shop.php

Q6: How many remote sites can I manage from your plugin ?

A: There is no upper limit on how many remote sites can be managed from plugin.

Q7: Is SvSAN Certified by Vmware ?

A: SvSAN is certified for ESX/i 4.1 and is currently going through Certification for vSphere 5

Q8: How is data replicated between sites ?

A: SvSAN is Active-Active, however we do not do Active-Active replication over long distance sites due to restraints in Bandwidth. Looking to introduce Asynchronous Replication for DRS next year

Q9: What Hardware is compatible with SvSAN ?

A: Look ar VMware hardware compatibility list. Always keep in mind that storage is always based on performance on underlying disks.

To arrange a demo or for more info please visit our website at StorMagic.com or email us at info@stormagic.com


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Remote / Branch Office Challenges Solved

November 4, 2011 in Webinar

Does your organization have multiple locations that generate mission critical data?

Are the requirements different from the “traditional” data center.  Limited space for your IT infrastructure, limited or no onsite support personnel, consistent uptime and management complexity are just a few of the challenges multi-site environments face.

Learn how leading retailers, energy companies and many others have implemented robust VMware environments in their multi-site environments without the limitations of traditional approaches.

A European energy company implemented a virtualization strategy using StorMagic’s SvSAN “virtual SAN” technology into their wind turbine control systems, which brought the flexibility and simplicity they needed while still delivering high availability and performance to mission critical applications

Attend this informative 45 minute webinar to learn how you can begin testing your multisite configuration. We will discuss:

-          Common issues faced in multisite environments

-          Best Practices for virtualization in these environments

-          Case studies in energy, POS and government sites
Join us on November 9th 2011: 12:00 pm EST

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StorMagic Ticks All The Boxes And Replaces Physical SAN At German Bank

November 2, 2011 in Case Study

“StorMagic’s SvSAN™ was the product that met all of our requirements in terms of functionality, performance, reliability and cost effectiveness”

As a financial institution Creditplus Bank faced very unique challenges which required a solution that would be responsible for mission critical applications. SvSAN, originally considered as an interim very quickly became a replacement for a physical SAN solution costing 10′s of thousands of dollars.

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