For capacity management, SANsymphony-V provides a way to virtualize all block storage capacity (Fibre Channel-attached and iSCSI-attached) into a pool that can be easily connected to servers. Then, once virtual volumes are associated with servers, SANsymphony-V allocates actual physical storage to the server's virtual disk on an as-needed basis, watching the size of the capacity pool and notifying administrators well before any shortfalls arise. "That's thin provisioning, and it is provided much more efficiently on the storage virtualization layer than it is on an individual array controller."
The software also helps to optimize the performance of the virtualized storage infrastructure, by caching all reads and writes to the physical storage, but also by managing and load balancing traffic across available traffic paths. "Most of this is done behind the scenes, and we saw a 3-times improvement in storage performance after it was virtualized. That means you get brand-name storage performance out of simple JBODs [just a bunch of disks]. That could translate into significant cost-savings to companies by eliminating the need to buy more expensive rigs and by breaking vendor lock-ins."
For the third task, data protection management, Toigo says SANsymphony-V provides rock-solid protection for data at three layers. "By ticking a checkbox next to a virtual drive, you can initiate an I/O logging function that captures every single write made to the volume. You can use this log to recover back to any point in time--as granular as a write function-- which provides outstanding protection at the data layer."
Overall, Toigo says this product is crucial for anyone who is thinking about virtual servers because it fixes most of the I/O and storage mapping problems that arise in server virtualization efforts but are rarely addressed by the initial server virtualization strategy. "It will also be key as more companies embrace desktop virtualization. ... The market potential for VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure] is significantly greater than server virtualization--400 million PCs waiting to be virtualized--but to do so, the storage infrastructure must be affordable, scalable and resilient. With SANsymphony, I think you get all three."
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