DataCore's Storage Hypervisor: An Overview

Posted by David Hill
November 06, 2012

Host.net is a service provider that offers VM and enterprise storage platforms in multiple virtual private data centers (that is, Host.net hosts customer compute and storage resources at its data centers) that are all connected to a Cisco-based10-Gbps multinational backbone. Among the many services the company offers are virtual enterprise servers, storage, backup/restore, disaster recovery and colocation.

DataCore is at the heart of Host.net's enterprise SAN storage platform. Host.net believes DataCore offers the necessary performance and data integrity (every byte of data is written twice within a synchronous mirror) at a competitive price. Among the things Host.net likes about DataCore are hardware independence (for example, in a SAN hardware refresh it can add and migrate data on the fly with no downtime), operating system independence and robust I/O performance, as DataCore's use of hundreds of gigabytes of high-speed cache essentially turns a traditional SAN into a high-speed hybrid solid-state SAN at a fraction of the cost.

X-IO (formerly Xiotech) builds hardware with its Hyper ISE (Intelligent Storage Elements) storage system. With a great deal of engineering experience and innovation. The goal is to deliver high performance to accelerate enterprise applications at good price/performance level. However, X-IO has decided to shed itself of the storage and data management software (such as snapshot and replication software) that typically characterizes enterprise-class storage.

But customers still need storage and data management software. DataCore comes provides those capabilities in X-IO products. As a result, X-IO can take a hardware-intensive focus and improve price/performance while DataCore picks up the slack.

DataCore is not a client of David Hill and the Mesabi Group.

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