Sanbolic Simplifies Virtual Server

WATERTOWN, Mass. -- Sanbolic, Inc., a leading developer of software to simplify and share SAN storage, today announced simplified migration of active virtual machines between physical servers running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. The solution uses Sanbolic software together with the standard components of the Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise edition or Datacenter edition license.

Virtual Server 2005 R2, which is available at no charge, allows customers to virtually partition a host server so customers can run multiple instances of an operating system and guest applications for test and development, or production applications and services. Virtual Server increases hardware utilization and enables organizations to rapidly configure and deploy new servers.

Sanbolics Melio file system enables users to deploy Virtual Server 2005 R2 in a distributed data center architecture, in order to improve application availability and server utilization. When used with Melio FS, each host machine has simultaneous access to files containing each Virtual Server on SAN storage. Any virtual machine can be moved to any host without copying files across the network. Melio enables virtual machines to be clustered across multiple physical hosts accessing a common shared storage volume using Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS). The central MSCS interface can then be used to migrate active virtual machines running business critical applications across physical host servers. Each virtual machine instance can be migrated separately to any host.

“Rapid recovery from unplanned downtime is a critical need for customers. Sanbolic’s clustered file system integrates with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 so that customers can achieve highly available, centrally managed, distributed data center server virtualization deployments,” said Jim Ni, group product manager, Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp. “With these technologies, customers can more easily migrate virtual servers across physical host servers for times of planned or unplanned downtime.”

“Sanbolic has focused on enabling distributed, shared data applications that are easily integrated with Microsoft Windows technologies.” said Momchil Michailov, a founder of Sanbolic. “In addition to supporting migration of active Virtual Server 2005 instances using Melio FS, our clustered volume manager enables a Virtual Server 2005 instance to automatically mount a large iSCSI application data volume after the instance is moved to any physical host. Sanbolic’s software gives customers new tools for distributed server virtualization while utilizing the familiar Windows management environment.”Sanbolic Inc.