DataCore Software has released SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 that builds on the lessons learned from thousands of virtual SAN deployments and users. Major emphasis was placed on advancing centralized management and administration and on developing a comprehensive iSCSI capability - the industry's first true Enterprise iSCSI solution. Moreover, SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 serves as the foundation for what DataCore has labeled "Virtualization II."

"SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 is the first deliverable of our Virtualization II strategy and as such it lays the architectural foundation for the future," said Ziya Aral, chairman and CTO. "DataCore is known for being an inventor and visionary of many of today's storage virtualization innovations, however, when SANsymphony 1.0 came out, true virtualization was more theory than substance. Now the opposite is true. We started the virtualization movement with a gleam in our eye, but now after thousands of customers and dozens of imitators this release incorporates a new level of capabilities based on the knowledge and real experience of thousands of virtual SANs."

With SANsymphony 6.0, DataCore has taken the first step in launching the second-generation of virtualization systems. SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 re-architects the platform, advances centralized administration (tools, wizards, interfaces), adds Enterprise iSCSI services, enables greater automation (by enhancing network-wide volume management and thin-provisioning) and lays the foundation for an innovative Universal Storage Interface (USI) networking scheme that expands virtualization and management beyond storage devices.

S Aral said ANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 advances the state-of-the-art in storage management, while opening up networking choices - enabling the benefits of virtualization and the full complement of DataCore's storage services to be delivered and scaled network-wide over Enterprise iSCSI or Fibre Channel connections, or a mix of either.

"SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 is the industry's first, true Enterprise iSCSI solution. The Enterprise iSCSI capabilities are built on a fault tolerant N+1 scalable architecture to ensure business continuity, while delivering advanced storage services such as thin-provisioning storage capacity over existing Ethernet LAN/IP based infrastructures.

"The attempt by some vendors to fit iSCSI offerings at the very bottom of their product hierarchy has meant that enterprise customers are often faced with a de facto 'bait and switch' from iSCSI to expensive Fibre Channel infrastructures" Aral said. "In order to gain modern storage functionality and failover protection features, one often has to give up iSCSI altogether. DataCore rectifies that."

SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 now delivers true parity for iSCSI-based networks to match enterprise-level, Fibre Channel SAN features and covers all the critical functionality needs that were previously unavailable to IP SAN users. These include:
Business-critical, end-to-end iSCSI network mirror failover and enterprise-level data protection using existing Ethernet LAN connections.
Redundant I/O path failover support capabilities using iSCSI connections - Multipath I/O. SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 is the first solution to support path failover across either FC or iSCSI (e.g. a Fibre Channel connection serves as primary path and iSCSI serves as the failover secondary path).
Automated, thin-provisioning "Virtual Capacity" and network-wide storage services designed to be delivered over iSCSI infrastructures.
IP-based, Synchronous and Asynchronous remote site disaster recovery services and replication.
SANmotion over iSCSI for simple data migration.
SANsymphony's hardware independent N+1 architecture is designed to be easily upgraded and to scale storage servers over iSCSI links to add performance and failover services.
Rapid emergency recovery and diskless boot support for iSCSI IP SANs.
iSCSI support for Microsoft Clusters, Virtual Servers (e.g., VMware ESX) and Blade Servers.

SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 is available to upgrade current SANsymphony customers and will be released as a general availability) release in January 2007.

Virtual Infrastructure Foundation addition

The company has also announced the inclusion of SANmotion data migration capabilities to its recently announced Virtual Infrastructure Foundation. This solution offers a way for storage users to begin experiencing the features and the real benefits of going virtual.

Any user with a PC server and an Ethernet LAN connection can afford and enjoy the productivity of a virtual storage area network (SAN), with advanced storage services including automated thin-provisioning, full iSCSI capabilities and powerful data migration software.

Virtual Infrastructure Foundation now includes SANmotion, a set of Windows data migration capabilities that enable users to move and migrate live data disks over a SAN to other Windows systems across their organization. Apart from eliminating work and saving IT administrators time, this advanced feature allows Windows disk data to be accessed, re-purposed or moved rapidly across the IP SAN using Ethernet connections (over iSCSI).

SANmelody Virtual Infrastructure Foundation is $948 and is available immediately.

For more information, see www.datacore.com. ENS