"I don't think that data being virtual really changes anything," says analyst W. Curtis Preston of GlassHouse Technologies. He says users still face the choice to replicate data using storage from array vendors, or software-only solutions.
Conventional views hold that storage arrays featuring replication, such as those from BlueArc, EMC, NetApp, and Reldata (to name a very few), offer the advantage of hardware-based performance. Many of these suppliers have certified their wares for VMware and other virtual infrastructures, so they can tackle a range of storage functions for data conveyed in virtual machines or physical ones.
In contrast, software-only products, such as those from DataCore, LeftHand Networks, and others, can be cheaper, the thinking goes, and will support multivendor arrays and often more flexible management functions.
"With array-based replication, you need to have the same array on the remote site," says Arun Taneja of the Taneja Group consultancy. "That can be very expensive." Solutions that virtualize storage like DataCore's or LeftHand's, he says, allow users to replicate data (from virtual or physical servers) from one vendor's array to another's, if they want to.
DataCore isn't elaborating on whether the arrays at both the SoftBank sites are from different vendors, and SoftBank isn't available to comment. But the POC solution suggested by DataCore could conceivably take place with a range of other solutions.
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