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DFS Replication Validation Script…

December 13th, 2012 by Jeremy Pavlov | No Comments | Filed in Microsoft, Microsoft Infrastructure, Scripting, VMware, VMware ESXi

The other day, while at the enterprise-level customer with whom I’m currently working, I ran into a situation where I needed to validate that certain parts of a DFS hierarchy were properly being replicated across the customer’s AD domain controllers.  As the administrators applied normal, routine DFS changes, the changes sometimes didn’t replicate properly across the enterprise — causing some segments of the DFS structure to not be visible or available. 

Apparently, the DFS problem was a result of using VMware guests as AD DCs.  I understand (from the customer) that a Microsoft hotfix is in the last stages of testing (at the time of this writing) and will be available for release “soon.”   It seemed that even though the DCs in question did not synchronize time with the ESX host upon which they reside, there is a default behavior in VMware Tools that assigns the host time value to the guest — at least up until the “do not sync” routine is processed during startup; after which the guest is then allowed to find its own time.  During this brief time window, the DFS Namespace service sometimes completes assembling its DFS target list and can find itself behind in time, relative to links it has been given by PDCE; which makes no sense to it, and it removes them from its listing.  And as a result, people can’t find their mapped drives or browse some of the DFS Tree.  (Note: I cannot take credit for this timing behavior investigation and results; and while I’d love to credit the folks who are due, I’m not permitted to.)  The customer remedied the situation with a temporary fix, but the real fix is the up-coming aforementioned patch.

Anyway, while the symptoms were being analyzed, I was working on other things and needed to work around the issue as much as possible while the solution was being chased.  So, I whipped up a simple little DOS script to go out and validate the top-levels of the DFS hierarchy across all domain controllers that carry them, in order to find out what would or wouldn’t be properly resolved.

For what it’s worth, I thought I’d pass the script along to you.  Here it is:

 

@SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
@set AdDomain=MyAdDomain.local
@set DirQuantity=17
@set DestPath=h:\DcList.txt
@REM This requires elevated credentials, otherwise will fail...
@ipconfig /flushdns
@REM First we build the input file...
@nslookup %AdDomain% |findstr [0-9].*.[0-9].*|findstr /V /C:"Address: " > %DestPath%
@ECHO As of 20121212, there should be %DirQuantity% DFS dirs on each server (actual, plus the "." and ".." items).
@REM Now loop through the input file and check the DFS at the destination...
@For /F "tokens=*" %%Q in (%DestPath%) Do @(
@set MYDC=%%Q
@set MYDC=!MYDC:Addresses:  =!
for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%A in ('dir /A:D \\!MYDC!\Corp ^|findstr /C:"Dir(s)"') do @set MYDIR=%%A
for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%G in ("!MYDIR!") do @set MYDIR=%%G
@REM Options A: Use this line if you wish to see all DFS sources:
@ECHO For: !MYDC!  	!MYDIR:~0,9!
@REM Option B: Use this line if you wish to see only those in violation 
@REM (note: there's a space and tab separator for spacing alignment):
@REM @ECHO For: !MYDC!  	!MYDIR:~0,9! |findstr /V /C:"%DirQuantity% Dir(s)"
)

What it does:

The script builds a domain controller list in a static, external file, then iterates through the list, attempting to quantify the available DFS path branches against a numeric count that you supply in another variable.  I provided two different “ends” to the script (one of them commented out), in order to give you a couple different ways to present the results.  Make sure to “set” the variables in the first few lines, to your locally-relevant information; especially the number of *expected* DFS hierarchies.

Of course, I wanted to write it to do more, but I pretty much ran up against the limits of what I *should* do in a DOS script.  I’ll make another version in PowerShell some day that iterates down the hierarchy and validates the entire structure, instead of just the top level… 

…Unless you beat me to it…  ;)

There you go; enjoy!

:)

 

 

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Windows 8, Week 1…

November 1st, 2012 by Jeremy Pavlov | 2 Comments | Filed in VMware, Windows 8, Wireless

Well, it’s been almost a week since I upgraded my laptop to Windows 8, and it’s actually been a very smooth ride so far.  However, I’ve had to deal with just a few twists in getting used to some of the new locations and limitations of the things I’ve always been used to in Windows XP and Windows 7.  So, I thought I’d toss together a few tips from my first week of use, and I hope you’ll toss a few back at me!

Shutdown and Reboot buttons

Shutting down a Windows 8 computer is not as immediately obvious as it used to be.  There are a couple “new” ways of shutting down your Windows 8 machine, for instance:

  • Mouse to bottom-right –> Settings –> Power –> Shut down
  • (Win Key) + I –> Power –> Shut down
  • (Win Key) + C –> Settings –> Power –> Shut down
  • (Win Key) –> Right click on username (at top right) –> Lock/Sign out –> Right-click on lock screen –> click on power icon at bottom right

But I needed an easier way.  Fortunately, if you invest a few minutes now, you’ll have easier Shutdowns and Reboots for years to come.  Here’s how to do it:

  • In Windows Explorer, go to this folder:
  • C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
  • Right-click and choose New –> Shortcut
  • For the “location”, type: shutdown /s /t 00
  • Click Next, and for the “name”, type: Shutdown Now
  • Click Finish, and press the (Win Key).
  • Right-click the new “Shutdown Now”  app tile, and choose Pin to taskbar
  • Resume sanity
  • (Note: You can create others, like “Restart Now” with shutdown /r /t 00 and “Delayed Restart” with shutdown /r /t 10 etc.)

…by the way, that tip for adding shortcuts on the taskbar works great for other things too; effectively bringing back your shortcuts menu that you were so used to

Wireless Driver Back-Rev

Of course, I couldn’t resist mentioning our awesome post about back-revving your Windows 8 “n” wireless driver to a Windows 7 driver version — since I had to do that this week too, in order to be able to stay productive.  So far this week, we’ve been noticing that this seems to predominantly affect Broadcom-based drivers, and Intel-based drivers seem to work fine in some cases.  It’s only the first week, so we’ll be watching that…

VMware and Hyper-V

I was excited to find out Hyper-V was included in Windows 8.  Unfortunately, I cannot use on it yet on my Windows 8 laptop.  As part of my work/experimentation in my current role, I have to keep virtual machines like NetWare, CentOS, Opensuse, and other non-mainstream OS’s around for scripting, and testing automation and integrations, and such.  And while I’m thrilled that Hyper-V supports a few recent versions of CentOS and the latest version of Opensuse (12.1 at this writing), it still does not support NetWare and a guest OS.  As a result, I’ve had to choose VMware workstation of my hypervisor of choice on my laptop for now (since VMware and Hyper-V cannot co-exist on the same base hardware), and I’ll run Hyper-V in the dedicated lab instead.

Remote Desktop Connection Manager

The Remote Desktops snap-in for the MSC is gone!  It’s not available in Windows 8.  If you know what that means, then you’re probably as upset as I was.  Fortunately, I discovered that the old Remote Desktop Connection Manager still works on Windows 8!  Phew!  Honestly, it’s a better tool anyway. 

So Far, So Good…

…So that’s where I’m at so far.  The good news is that just about everything I’ve brought over to Windows 8 so far from my Windows 7 world has worked perfectly.  And I “get it” now; what I mean by that is that I understand and appreciate the dual layer effect of the “tablet-like” OS on top of the “traditional-style” OS.  Now that I’m able to dance easily between them, I quite like it and am eager for a Windows 8 based tablet, actually.  Hint, hint…

Now, share some of your tips, please!

 

 

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How to check the VMware Tools version across your Windows Server 2008 R2 farm…

June 21st, 2012 by Jeremy Pavlov | No Comments | Filed in Microsoft, PowerShell, VMware, VMware ESXi

I was on a conference call today where someone asked if the server administration team could quickly get a “read” on the VMware Tools version across the server farm.  An ESXi upgrade was being deployed and the team wanted a quick way to see what VMs needed to catch up with the deployment.

Fortunately, I had a bunch of PowerShell snippets lying about that would fit the bill nicely.  Of course, there are a few different ways to accomplish this, depending upon which resources that you are permitted to access; but using PowerShell in a loop with a list of your server names is a quick and easy way to get it done.

So first, a little set up…  Imagine that we are inside a PowerShell script, in a foreach loop (or a function called by that loop) that is calling each computer (our Windows 2008 R2 servers) in a list.  At the time you hit this snippet of code, the current server name in the loop is in the variable $ComputerName, and the output file for the report is $outfile. 

 

    write "" | Out-File $outfile -append
    $vmtoolstatus = Get-WmiObject -class Win32_Product -computername $ComputerName | Where-Object {$_.Name -match "VMWare Tools"} |select Name,version
    if ("X$vmtoolstatus" -eq "X")
    {
      write "VMware Tools **NOT** found." | Out-File $outfile -append
    }
    else
    {
      write "WMware tools presence/version info:" | Out-File $outfile -append
      $vmtoolstatus | Out-File $outfile -append
    }

 

All we’re really doing here is to query the product list for the tools, and if present report the version. And the result look something like this for each item in the loop:

WMware tools presence/version info:
Name                                                        version                                                  
----                                                        -------                                                    
VMware Tools                                                8.3.2.1593

Simple, but effective and functional. 

I hope it helps!

 

 

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A FlexPod Brief…

May 3rd, 2012 by Khristopher Hruska | No Comments | Filed in Server Virtualization, Virtual Infrastructure, Virtualization, VMware

With the rise of virtualization over the last several years, there’s one large segment of Information Technology that has been struggling to keep up with the demand – your organization’s data center. 

Not So Long Ago…

IT infrastructure used to be built and deployed using distributed technology and components on an application-by-application basis.  That philosophy worked well because most IT teams were organized in silos that segmented applications, servers, local area networks, and storage groups.

As more applications were required across multiple departments, that infrastructure development strategy became far less efficient.  Server sprawl become a serious concern as more and more servers were required to deliver software solutions.  It took longer to build and deploy environments.  It also turned the data center into one of the least “green” places in an organization due to the immense power requirements needed to power the core infrastructure.

Virtualization changed much of that in the last few years by re-imagining a consolidated data center that significantly reduced the number of servers required to deliver Tier 1 applications for the enterprise.  The result is a more flexible, easier to manage environment that has reduced power demands.  Building this type of infrastructure can be very simple when you use a building-block solution like FlexPod.

A New Approach…

Introduced a little over two years ago, FlexPod offers a set of validated infrastructure designs that allow you to build a robust data center with a very dense infrastructure footprint confined in a small amount of space.  The FlexPod system is built around a baseline configuration that includes servers and switches from Cisco, high-performance storage from NetApp, and virtualization components from Citrix, VMware, or Microsoft, depending on your Hypervisor preference.

All FlexPod solutions begin with a standard – but flexible – blueprint which can be modified to suit your organization’s unique needs.  This base configuration can be scaled quickly to meet any number of infrastructure needs, but FlexPod truly shines in the virtualization space.

Because all three components of FlexPod are tightly integrated, supporting FlexPod is considerably simpler than with a traditional server model.  All patches, upgrades, and enhancements are pre-tested to ensure they work seamlessly during implementation.  This reduces risk during critical updates and time required when performing basic maintenance tasks.

What Cisco Brings…

Cisco has done a phenomenal job of leveraging their popular Unified Computing System (UCS) platform to serve as the backbone of the FlexPod environment.  Cisco’s new B- and C- Class series servers significantly increase performance and capacity for large data-heavy virtualized environments by serving up a whopping 384GB (and even more in some models) of memory per blade server.  Cisco’s UCS M81KR Virtual Interface Card improves network throughput performance by 38% over similar software-based switches, and reduces cost by performing as both a network interface care and a host bus adapter.  The result is the elimination of key bottlenecks that directly impacted performance on virtual servers.

Cisco also includes the Unified Computing System Manager (UCS-M) as part of the FlexPod environment.  This provides for management of all software and hardware in the stack.  UCS-M also offers flexible role and policy-based management of the entire environment using services profiles.  Resources can be placed in pools, and service profiles can be used to help speed up time to market for key deployments.

The NetApp Piece…

NetApp provides a huge boost to the FlexPod environment by offering a wide array of software aimed at maximizing storage.  NetApp’s de-duplication process drives the cost of storage down dramatically by intelligently writing only truly unique data to its drives.  Using its FlexClone technology, users can quickly provision new environment for use in development, testing, or disaster recovery.  Innovations like NetApp’s FlexCache technology allow high-demand data to be segregated from data in its main repositories to ensure for quick access and maximum performance.

Greater Than The Sum…

Add this all up and it’s clear that FlexPod is a real game changer.  Whether your organization is looking to reduce its footprint in the data center, drive better performance it its virtualized environments, or simplify the management of the data center, FlexPod’s certainly a technology worth keeping an eye on.

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How the Cloud Is Transforming IT

March 13th, 2011 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Virtual Infrastructure, VMware

In a business world where first movers gain the advantage and IT is central to every decision, IT responsiveness and agility provide a competitive edge. Yet many IT organizations aren’t quick enough on the uptake because their infrastructures are exorbitant to manage and too complex to easily adapt.

Cloud computing provides a vastly more efficient, flexible, and cost-effective way for IT to meet escalating business needs: IT as a service. VMware offers you an evolutionary and practical path to this new model, with solutions that harness the power of the cloud while ensuring security and preserving the value of your existing technology investments.

VMware’s Approach: Enabling the Journey to Your Cloud

Virtualization is the essential catalyst for cloud computing. As the virtualization leader, VMware builds on this solid foundation with platforms and solutions to pow

er your cloud infrastructure, build and run robust cloud applications, and supply end-user computing as a cloud-based service.

Our approach is comprehensive, but unlike other cloud offerings, it’s not one-cloud-fits-all. To deliver competitive advantage, cloud computing must be flexibly tailore

 

d and aligned to your individual needs. For your enterprise, that could mean a cloud that’s internal and private, one that leverages external services, or a hybrid cloud that combines both.

Whichever cloud option suits you best, only VMware offers a complete solution stack for building and managing it, plus a broad partner ecosystem to ensure that everything in it works seamlessly and securely. The result is not just any cloud, but your cloud—where accelerated IT delivers accelerated results for your business.

VMware’s tailored approach delivers flexibility and security while protecting your existing investments, by enabling:

  • Efficiency Through Utilization and Automation
    Resource pooling and a self-managed, dynamically optimized environment dramatically increase IT performance—leveraging existing resources to avoid unnecessary infrastructure investment and technology lock-in. The result is lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
  • Agility with Control
    Cloud computing aims to empower end-users while ensuring security and preserving IT oversight and authority. The VMware solution interweaves all three, greatly simplifying IT services provisioning and deployment while maintaining IT control, protective safeguards, and regulatory compliance. The IT organization can thus respond more quickly and securely to evolving business needs.
  • Freedom of Choice
    IT retains the ability to support traditional systems and gains the flexibility to deploy them internally or externally, without being restricted to any single technology or vendor. Developers can build applications that are portable among hybrid, private, and public clouds within a common management and security framework.

 Our Solutions. Your Cloud. Key Advantages.

VMware solutions are engineered and integrated to equip your cloud with a unique combination of benefits:

Security

VMware solutions deliver always-on, virtualization-aware security that adapts to the dynamism of cloud-based deployments while simplifying the protection of endpoints, applic

ations, and the network edge.

Automation and Management

Once IT resources are virtually pooled, business rules, policies, and defined service levels are mapped to them, creating a highly efficient, self-managing i

 

nfrastructure where IT is available as a service.

Interoperability and Openness

With a shared management and security model based on open standards, VMware solutions free you from vendor lock-in, ensuring application portability between internal datacenters and external service provider clouds hosted by VMware vCloud partners. Additionally, the </LINK 34657>VMware cloud application platform lets developers build robust modern applications that are portable, dynamic, and optimized for elastically scalable deployment on popular public clouds such as VMforce and Google App Engine.

Self-Service for the Cloud

Our approach delivers a new level of IT efficiency by standardizing and automating IT services provisioning and management. Rather than having to wait for manual provisioning, line-of-business units can deploy standardized, preconfigured IT services from a Web-based catalog available via a self-service portal. Business units receive tailored services right when they need them, IT administrators are relieved of the bulk of their maintenance burden, and IT preserves control over policies, compliance, and internal chargeback.

Pooling and Dynamic Resource Allocation

Your IT resources are pooled and abstracted into logical building-blocks of storage, network, and server units—effectively creating virtual datacenters. These resource containers are then dynamically allocated to your various applications, governed by defined business rules and user demand.

 

Join the Evolution to Your Cloud

Cloud computing holds the very real promise of agile, efficient IT service delivery with dramatically lower complexity, significantly reduced costs, and much greater business responsiveness. The key to realizing these advantages is tailoring the cloud model to work for your business and your approach to IT.

As the acknowledged leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, VMware is uniquely positioned to help you transition to your cloud—the private, public, or hybrid c

 

loud environment that’s best fits your business needs and goals. Thousands of enterprises have already achieved exceptional results with VMware solutions. And because our approach is open, flexible, a

 

nd geared to addressing individual needs, they’ve done so without a heavy customization burden.

 

VMware offers a 3-layered solution stack to supports your evolution to the cloud:

  • Cloud Infrastructure and Management. The foundation for your cloud, based on virtualization and the ability to unify private and public cloud resources with consistent security, compliance, management, and quality of service.
  • Cloud Application Platform. Enabling developers to rapidly build and run modern cloud applications while deploying on premises or off for maximum flexibility.
  • End-User Computing. Creating a modern, user-centric approach to personal computing, delivering secure access to applications and data from any device, anytime and anywhere.

Source: VMware

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Symantec Enables Customers to Virtualize Business Critical Applications with Confidence

August 27th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Symantec, Virtual Infrastructure, Virtualization, VMware

ApplicationHA and VirtualStore to protect systems from downtime and optimize storage in VMware environments

 

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced that it will offer Symantec ApplicationHA and Symantec VirtualStore, two solutions that will provide customers the ability to confidently virtualize their business critical applications and minimize storage costs on the VMware platform. ApplicationHA and VirtualStore are the result of extensive collaboration between Symantec and VMware, as the companies work closely to help customers accelerate the adoption of virtualization to mainstream applications.

Symantec ApplicationHA, based on industry-leading Veritas Cluster Server technology, will provide high availability for business critical applications through application level visibility and control in VMware environments. Symantec VirtualStore, based on Veritas Storage Foundation technology, is a software-based storage management solution for VMware virtual machines that will provide rapid provisioning of servers and virtual desktops, efficient cloning and accelerated boot up of virtual machines. Both ApplicationHA and VirtualStore are seamlessly integrated with VMware management tools such as VMware vCenter Server, enabling customers to deploy these tools without impact to their operational model.

Customers have been aggressively virtualizing non-critical applications, and now that they are starting to move business critical applications like SAP and MS SQL Server databases to virtual platforms, they require high availability of the applications inside VMware virtual machines. Symantec ApplicationHA, for the first time, will ensure application high availability by providing visibility, control and integration with VMware vCenter Server and VMware High Availability (HA).

Symantec ApplicationHA:

  • Monitors applications’ health status and detects failures in the virtual machine
  • Restarts failed applications
  • Coordinates with VMware HA to restart the virtual machine, if needed

 

Administrators can fully manage all operations of Symantec ApplicationHA through VMware vCenter Server, avoiding the need for additional tools and associated training. Deep discovery and auto-configuration allows administrators to easily install, configure and administer Symantec ApplicationHA with a few clicks.

Built on the industry-leading Veritas Cluster Server technology, ApplicationHA supports a wide range of applications including MS SQL Server, Exchange, IIS, Oracle and SAP. It provides consistent functionality and usability across both Windows and Linux operating systems and is fully compatible with VMware vMotion and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

Symantec VirtualStore: Address Storage Challenges in Virtual Infrastructures

As organizations scale their virtual environments, they find themselves challenged by the ever increasing storage requirements and performance bottlenecks that are associated with retaining hundreds or even thousands of virtual machine images on traditional hardware filers. VirtualStore will enable administrators to fully benefit from their virtualization investments with a software-based NAS solution that scales servers and storage independently, efficiently provisions virtual machines, and delivers advanced storage optimization capabilities for VMware environments.

Like ApplicationHA, VirtualStore fully integrates with VMware vCenter Server. Based on Symantec’s industry leading Veritas Storage Foundation technology, VirtualStore can:

  • Help customers reduce storage costs associated with virtual machine sprawl and improve the performance of virtual infrastructures
  • Enable administrators to dramatically reduce the cost per virtual machine by repurposing existing storage investments or using inexpensive or commodity storage
  • Help IT organizations reduce their storage footprint by storing only the differences between the parent virtual machine image and each clone
  • Significantly drive down total cost of ownership by taking advantage of the benefits of thin provisioning

 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments can also be managed more efficiently. VirtualStore’s ‘FileSnap’ feature lets administrators easily and rapidly clone and provision thousands of virtual machines in minutes through its VMware vCenter Server integration. Through innovative page caching, VirtualStore also eliminates the performance bottlenecks created when multiple users boot up their virtual machines (‘Bootstorm’).

Source: Symantec.com

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Symantec Backup Exec 2010: Reliable Backup and Recovery Designed for Your Growing Business

August 25th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Microsoft, Symantec, Uncategorized, VMware

Overview

Symantec Backup Exec™ 2010 delivers market leading backup and recovery protection from server to desktop. Easily protect more data while you reduce storage costs and improve backup performance through integrated deduplication and archiving technology. Reduce business downtime with unmatched technology that recovers critical Microsoft applications and VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments in seconds. Meet your recovery point objectives with continuous data protection to ensure reliable recovery of an entire application and efficiently restore a granular email or individual file/folder.

Symantec Backup Exec also delivers centralized management to easily extend your backup infrastructure across a distributed environment and remote offices so your server and desktop data protection is easily managed from a central office as your business grows. Efficiently manage both Windows and non-Windows systems through a single console including UNIX, Linux, MAC, and NetWare, including remote media server support for Linux servers. Overall, Backup Exec 2010 is designed to readily optimize any Windows data protection strategy – helping you protect more data while utilizing less storage – overall saving you time and money.

Key Benefits

Delivers market-leading Windows data protection with

more than 1.5 million customers globally

• Reduce storage costs while optimizing network utilization through integrated deduplication and archiving   technology.

• First-to-market granular recovery for Exchange, SQL and Active Directory environments running in a VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V environment.

• Microsoft certified backup and recovery for the latest Windows environment, including Windows 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 SP1, and Windows 7.

• Comprehensive disk and tape storage for the latest physical and virtual server systems though one console  including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual systems.

• Reduce storage requirements and recovery times with patent-pending granular data recovery of leading Microsoft applications, including Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory.

• Protect non-Windows servers and maximize performance of supported NDMP filers and SAN environments through scalable remote agents and options.

• Easily update and manage a growing Backup Exec infrastructure throughout a Windows datacenter, distributed throughout the network or at remote offices from one console.

• Eliminate the backup window and ensure recovery point objectives are easily met for Exchange, File Servers and desktop data with Continuous Data Protection.

Comprehensive Backup and Recovery

Symantec Backup Exec 2010 offers a comprehensive backup and recovery solution in one product suite, which reduces the complexity of protecting your company’s most valuable asset—its data. Whether that data resides on a Windows file server; on a desktop; virtual server; or on a critical application server like Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint, Symantec Backup Exec 2010 provides full protection and recovery for both data and systems. Designed to meet the growing needs of today’s businesses, Symantec Backup Exec 2010 delivers comprehensive disk or tape data protection and recovery for Windows environments. Backup Exec provides integrated deduplication and archiving, plus, continuous data protection—eliminating backup windows altogether, speeding up data recovery, and enabling end users to recover their own files without IT intervention. Symantec Backup Exec 2010 also delivers patent-pending Granular Recovery Technology allowing businesses to recover data in seconds, including business-critical information such as individual email messages, folders, and documents, from a single backup. An optional centralized administration console provides scalable management of distributed backup servers. New infrastructure management is also available for simplified inventory, deployment and upgrades of Backup Exec licenses and software patches though a single console.

Overall, sophisticated database and groupware agents and storage options easily expand data protection to protect to critical applications and provide added flexibility for virtually any storage environments.

New Product Highlights

 

• NEW integrated deduplication option (using Symantec NetBackup PureDisk technology) reduces backup times and storage costs.

• NEW unified archiving (powered by Symantec Enterprise Vault) efficiently consolidates growing Exchange and File server data volumes and automates efficient data lifecycle management practices.

• NEW virtual server application support including with first-to-market Exchange, SQL and Active Directory backup and recovery for virtual environments and enhanced VMware vSphere 4.1 and Microsoft Hyper-V R2.

• Windows 7, Exchange 2010 SP1, SharePoint 2010, SQL 2008 R2, MAC OSX 10.6 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support provides comprehensive protection for the latest Windows and MAC environments.

• Enhanced Agent for Enterprise Vault automates backup and recovery of both Enterprise Vault 8 and 9 with theability to easily recover an Enterprise Vault site or individual indexes.

• NEW Lotus Domino 8.5.x support with simplified backup and recovery of the Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) store and associated NLO files.

• Enhanced Virtual Tape Library (VTL) support and licensing, easily protect a VTL storage environment as a unique device and view valid VTL functions with new licensing per VTL environment.

• Enhanced installation and backup wizards reduce the time and complexity of setting up your backup environment.

• NEW Backup recommendation tool identifies potential gaps in your Windows backup strategy and provides recommendations on the agent(s) required to ensure complete data protection.

Proven and Reliable

Symantec Backup Exec is based on over two decades of proven, Microsoft certified engineering. The innovative architecture fully incorporates Microsoft design standards, helping to ensure 100 percent compatibility with the latest Microsoft Windows Server. Backup Exec also provides added security with flexible 128-bit or 265-bit AES encryption across the network or off to storage devices so critical data is secure whether in transit or at rest. Symantec Backup Exec 2010 delivers an easy to mange interface and calendar view to quickly track and monitor backup and recovery jobs. In addition, Backup Exec simplifies installation and backups with its Pre-Install Environment Checker, which highlights any potential issues before the software is installed. With its Job Test Run, Symantec Backup Exec 2010 will identify potential problems that cause job failures, and then notify the administrator so that corrective action can be taken. Realize further benefits with automatic discovery of new resources, which enables administrators to create a job for detecting new, unprotected resources that are at risk and in need of backup. All of these tools reduce the time and resources needed to install and run Backup Exec, while improving overall backup performance.

Support Services

No matter the size of your company, a service interruption can mean significant loss to your business. Symantec recommends Essential Support Services as the service level of protection for most businesses.

• Reassurance of knowing your Backup Exec products are up to date with the latest updates and version releases

• Cost savings that come with selecting a value-priced service plan

• 24×7 expert problem resolutions through Symantec’s global support and delivery team

Available Products, Agents and Options

Symantec Backup Exec 2010 provides scalable easy-to manage backup and recovery protection for Windows based environments. Symantec Backup Exec agents and options easily expand any Backup Exec environment to support critical applications, databases, and storage configurations:

Core Licenses

• Symantec Backup Exec 2010

• Symantec Backup Exec 2010 for Windows Small Business Server (view Small Business Server data sheet)

Symantec Backup Exec Suites

• NEW Symantec Backup Exec 2010 Deduplication Suite

• NEW Symantec Backup Exec 2010 Deduplication and Archiving Suite

• NEW Symantec Backup Exec 2010 VMware Suite

• NEW Symantec Backup Exec 2010 Hyper-V Suite

Symantec Backup Exec Agents

• Enhanced Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructures

• Enhanced Agent for Microsoft Hyper-V

• Enhanced Agent for Enterprise Vault™

• Enhanced Agent for Lotus Domino Server

• Enhanced Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server

• Agent for Active Directory

• Agent for DB2 on Windows Servers

• Agent for Microsoft SQL Server

• Agent for Microsoft SharePoint

• Agent for Oracle on Windows and Linux Servers

• Agent for SAP Applications

• Agent for Windows Systems

• Remote Agent for Linux or UNIX Servers

• Remote Media Agent for Linux Servers

• Remote Agent for Macintosh Servers

• Remote Agent for NetWare Servers

Symantec Backup Exec Options

• NEW Deduplication Option

• NEW Exchange Mailbox Archiving Option

• NEW File System Archiving Option

• NEW Virtual Tape Library Unlimited Drive Option

• Advanced Disk-Based Backup Option

• Central Admin Server Option

• Desktop and Laptop Option

• Library Expansion Option

• NDMP Option

• SAN Shared Storage Option

• Open File for Netware Option

Coretek Services is a Michigan based Systems Integration and IT consulting company that works with virtualization infrastructure, and is also a Symantec Gold Partner specializing in Symantec Enterprise Vault (SEV), Symantec Backup Exec (SBE), and Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP).  Please contact us today for any virtualization requirements, or Symantec Product requirements.

Source: Symantec.com

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Simplifying IT with Dell EqualLogic

August 23rd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Dell EqualLogic, SAN, Virtual Infrastructure, Virtualization, VMware

The Dell EqualLogic PS Series is a family of virtualized iSCSI storage arrays that combine intelligence and automation with fault tolerance to provide simplified administration, rapid deployment, enterprise performance and reliability, and seamless scalability. The PS Series high performance storage arrays deliver a range of capacity points from 400 GB to 48 TB in either a 3U or 4U chassis. PS Series arrays can be combined to create a virtualized SAN that scales up to 768 TB under a single management interface.

Ease of use • Intelligent, automated management helps minimize tedious administrative tasks

• From box to operating SAN in minutes

• Monitor petabytes of storage across dozens of SANs from a single console

  

  

Scalability

• Modular design allows growth when needed

• Online expansion between hardware generations

• Linear scalability — scale capacity and performance together

• Manage a growing pool of storage from one single user interface

• Thin provisioning to increase space efficiency for optimal capacity utilization

• Expand overall group capacity by mixing pools of 6000 and 6500 arrays

  

  

Enterprise efficiency

• Addition of 10GbE supports high-performance, high-bandwidth applications such as data warehouses and streaming media

• Maximize your IT investments with an end-to-end unified fabric data center encompassing servers, EqualLogic storage and Networking

• Enterprise level virtualized storage that matches virtualized server environments

• Support for multi-tiered application designs with automated tiering included in hybrid models  (6000XVS & 6010XVS)

   Enterprise performance • Exceptional performance for both sequential and transactional applications with linear scalability as arrays are added

• Automated, real-time load balancing across drives, RAID sets, connections, cache and controllers for optimized performance and resource utilization

• Pooling capability enables appropriate service levels for individual applications

  

  

Reliability

• Fault tolerant, fully redundant dual controller

• Designed for 99.999% availability

• Enterprise-class RAID protection

• Full hardware redundancy — hot swappable controllers, fans, power supplies, disks

  

  

Affordability

• All-inclusive enterprise features and functionality with no additional software licenses to purchase

• Easy connection via iSCSI

• Automated features help to eliminate highly specialized administrative costs

• Adopt 10GbE and run both 1GbE and 10GbE in the same environment without de-valuing legacy equipment

• EqualLogic SANs have the lowest TCO of common storage array architectures—fully 1/3 to 1/2 the total cost of competitors over a five year period2

 

Coretek Services is a Michigan based Systems Integration and IT consulting company that not only works with virtualization infrastructure such as VMware, Citrix XenServer, and Microsoft Hyper-V, but also is a Michigan based reseller of Dell EqualLogic SANs.  Please contact us today for any virtualization requirements, storage requirements, or specific Dell EqualLogic SAN needs.

Source:  Dell.com

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TAKE FIVE: Why I Like Citrix

August 10th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Citrix, Citrix Solutions, Microsoft, VMware

Here’s a situation where the nice guy finishes as President and CEO.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a profile of Citrix. I’ve really enjoyed the research — because I felt like there was a good story lurking under the covers — and the writing, which has been made easier by the great interviews I had with Citrix CTO Simon Crosby, and Citrix President and CEO Mark Templeton. Here’s what I discovered.

Take 1
Mark Templeton. I can’t help it, I just like the guy. He was running late for our phone interview, so I had some time to chat with Julie Geer, the helpful PR person who had lined up the interview, and she was telling me how much everybody likes Mark — I know, I know, it’s not as though she’s going to say what a dirtball he is, even if he was, which he isn’t. When Templeton gets on the line, he apologizes left and right about keeping me waiting. My reaction: Wow, he’s totally unpretentious for a guy in his position. There was no “slick” in him. On a more professional level, you’ve got to admire somebody who has been president and CEO of a high-tech company for 11 years and has not only hung onto his job, but has navigated Citrix through a lot of turbulent waters. Mark Templeton = good guy.

Take 2
Simon Crosby. When I think of Simon, I harken back to Eric Clapton (E.C.) talking about Stevie Ray Vaughan. E.C. said Stevie Ray was like an “open channel,” meaning that he never had to stop and regroup before taking off on another fabulous sonic blast. Simon is a great interview because he can talk on and on — in detail — about whatever he’s asked to discuss. The only downside to that is trying to figure out what to use and what to edit out, which is a small price to pay for all that good content.

Take 3
The Microsoft deal. When you take the time to look at this long-standing agreement (it goes back at least to the late ’90s), you can see how good it is for both companies, which are complementary as opposed to being competitive. As long as Citrix can remain the company that best exemplifies what Microsoft is looking for in an OEM partner — which Microsoft says is the case — they can continue to earn big bucks by delivering Windows apps to that huge market. Adding to the luster for Citrix: Microsoft makes no bones about saying VMware is a competitor.

Take 4
XenDesktop. The buck stops at XenDesktop, which is the real deal for Citrix as a competitor to VMware, and which is now available as part of a suite with XenApp, which has been making Citrix a lot of money for a long time. Yes, VMware has excelled in the server virtualization market — which seems not to bother Citrix because the company still has big plans for XenServer as the hypervisor of choice for XenDesktop, XenApp and NetScaler — but Citrix is at least VMware’s equal in the VDI/desktop virtualization space, which has huge potential. XenDesktop’s use of HDX adaptive technology (which includes the ICA protocol) looks to have an advantage over PCoIP, which VMware uses with its View VDI product. Bottom line: the future looks legitimately bright.

Take 5
The Citrix image. Citrix has been taking it on the chin from bloggers, reporters and pundits of all kinds for quite a while now, mostly around two topics: the possible demise of XenServer as a result of its perceived poor performance in the server virtualization market, and the possibility of Microsoft abrogating its cooperative agreement with Citrix and then blowing the company out of the virtualization market. To which I reply: Citrix has announced that the next full version of XenServer will be available by mid-year, and Microsoft loves dealing with Citrix, as I noted in my third take. All of which goes to prove: indeed, image is not everything.

Source: Redmondmag.com

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Top 10 Storage Virtualization Trends of 2010

August 4th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Citrix, Computer Support, Data Protection, SAN, Symantec, Thin Client, Virtual Clinical Workstation, Virtual Desktop Management, Virtual Infrastructure, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi

The storage area network (SAN) is now an essential technology for many large and midsize enterprises. Over the years SANs have become more sophisticated as vendors have rolled out systems that deliver better storage utilization and functionality. Based on these positive developments, 2010 should bring new and interesting products in several key areas. Here are our top 10 trends to keep an eye on in the coming year — along with the insights of key IT managers who are looking to optimize their existing storage and virtualization strategies.

1. Integration of solid state with rotating media for higher performance and lower energy costs.
Product picks: EMC FAST, Fusion-io, Compellent Storage Center

In an effort to provide the best possible storage solutions, many storage vendors are looking for ways to marry the high performance of solid-data memory to the lower cost of rotating media. As prices continue to drop for all storage technologies — and as hard drives get faster and cheaper — vendors are specifically working to incorporate the latest solid-state drive technologies into traditional SAN arrays. EMC Corp. and Compellent both offer fully automated storage tiering, which is the ability to store data depending on the needs of the application. More-frequently accessed files are stored on faster-performing disks, while less-frequently needed files are moved to tape.

“We’re using the Compellent product as part of our new Savvis Symphony cloud infrastructure service offering,” says Bryan Doerr, CTO of St. Louis-based services provider Savvis Inc. “We like how it has a policy that sits between the application and the array to control how each block of data is written to the physical media, based on frequency of usage.”

Doerr is pleased that these decisions are made automatically. “We don’t have to map tables or keep track of what files are stored where, and that’s a very powerful benefit to us,” he says. “Compellent can move individual blocks from a low-cost and low-performing SATA drive to a solid-state drive for the most-frequently updated data.”

One of the more interesting products is a hardware accelerator plug-in adapter card from Fusion-io that can pre-cache data using solid data memory for SAN arrays and other large-scale storage applications.

2. De-duplication technology — on storage and backups — can help open unused space.
Product picks: EMC Avamar, Symantec/Veritas Netbackup PureDisk, IBM/Tivoli Storage Manager, NetApp FlexClone

De-duplication technologies can provide a powerful way to quickly reclaim storage and minimize backup jobs. When users first start applying these technologies, they’re frequently surprised at how much duplication actually exists. As depicted in Figure 1, with PureDisk software from Symantec Corp., users can drill into a backup job and see that they could save more than 95 percent of their storage by getting rid of duplicate data. This capability offers huge potential savings, particularly when backing up virtual machine (VM) collections and remote offices.

Part of the challenge when using VMs is dealing with the fact that they share many common files inside each virtual image — the boot files for the operating system, the applications and so forth. A de-duplication product can leverage this by making only a single copy of common files.

PureDisk is typical of de-duplication products in that it operates in two different ways. For starters, you can use a PureDisk client or agent that runs on each VM and reports the unique files back to the central PureDisk backup server. And PureDisk can also back up the entire VMware VMDK image file without any agents on the separate VMs. This offloads backup from the ESX server and enables single-pass backups to protect all the files — whether they’re in use or not — that comprise the VM.

“De-duplication gives us big storage savings,” says Chuck Ballard, network and technical services manager at food manufacturer J&B Group, based in St. Michael, Minn. “We have 30 machines, each with a 20GB virtual hard drive, on our SAN. Rather than occupy 600GB, we have about a third of that, and we can grow and shrink our volumes as our needs dictate. We use the [NetApp] LUN copy utility to replicate our workstation copies off of a master image.”

Ballard stores his images on NetApp’s SAN arrays that have their own utility — called FlexClone — to make virtual copies of the data. “We had EMC and also looked at IBM, but both of them had limited dynamic-provisioning features,” he says, adding that a VMware upgrade that required 4.5TB on J&B Group’s old SAN now uses just 1.5TB on the company’s new storage infrastructure.

3. More granularity in backup and restoration of virtual servers.
Product picks: Vizioncore vRanger Pro, Symantec Netbackup, Asigra Cloud Backup

When combined with de-duplication technologies, more granular backups make for efficient data protection — particularly in virtualized environments where storage requirements quickly balloon and it can take longer than overnight to make backups. Backup vendors are getting better at enabling recoveries that understand the data structure of VM images and can extract just the necessary files without having to restore an entire VM disk image. Symantec Netbackup and Vizioncore vRanger both have this feature, which makes them handy products to have in the case of accidentally deleted configuration or user files. For its part, Asigra Cloud Backup can protect server resources both inside the data center and the cloud.

4. Live migrations and better integration of VM snapshots make it easier to back up, copy and patch VMs.
Product picks: FalconStor FDS, VMware vMotion and vStorage APIs, Citrix XenServer

VMware vStorage API for Data Protection facilitates LAN-free backup of VMs from a central proxy server rather than directly from an ESX Server. Users can do centralized backups without the overhead and hassle of having to run separate backup tasks from inside each VM. These APIs were formerly known as the VMware Consolidated Backup, and the idea behind them is to offload the ESX server from the backup process. This involves taking VM snapshots at any point in time to facilitate the backup and recovery process, so an entire .VMDK image doesn’t have to be backed up from scratch. It also shortens recovery time.

Enhanced VM storage management also includes the ability to perform live VM migrations without having to shut down the underlying OS. Citrix Systems XenServer offers this feature in version 5.5, and VMware has several tools including vMotion and vSphere that can make it easier to add additional RAM and disk storage to a running VM.

Finally, vendors are getting wise to the fact that many IT engineers are carrying smartphones and developing specific software to help them manage their virtualization products. VMware has responded to this trend with vCenter Mobile Access, which allows users to start, stop, copy and manage their VMs from their BlackBerry devices. Citrix also has its Receiver for iPhone client, which makes it possible to remotely control a desktop from an iPhone and run any Windows apps on XenApp 5- or Presentation Server 4.5-hosted servers. While looking at a Windows desktop from the tiny iPhone and BlackBerry screens can be frustrating — and a real scrolling workout — it can also be helpful in emergency situations when you can’t get to a full desktop and need to fix something quickly on the fly.

5. Thin and dynamic provisioning of storage to help moderate storage growth.
Product picks: Symantec/Veritas Storage Foundation Manager, Compellent Dynamic Capacity, Citrix XenServer Essentials, 3Par Inserv

There are probably more than a dozen different products in this segment that are getting better at detecting and managing storage needs. A lot of space can be wasted setting up new VMs on SAN arrays, and these products can reduce that waste substantially. This happens because, when provisioning SANs, users generally don’t know exactly how much storage they’ll need, so they tend to err on the high side by creating volumes that are large enough to meet their needs for the life of the server. The same thing happens when they create individual VMs on each virtual disk partition.

With dynamic-provisioning applications, as application needs grow, SANs automatically extend the volume until it reaches the configured maximum size. This allows users to over-provision disk space, which is fine if their storage needs grow slowly. However, because VMs can create a lot of space in a short period of time, this can also lead to problems. Savvy users will deal with this situation by monitoring their storage requirements with Storage Resource Management tools and staying on top of what has been provisioned and used.

Savvis is using the 3Par InServ Storage Servers for thin provisioning. “We don’t have to worry about mapping individual logical units to specific physical drives — we just put the physical drives in the array and 3Par will carve them up into usable chunks of storage. This gives us much higher storage densities and less wasted space,” says Doerr.

Citrix XenServer Essentials includes both thin- and dynamic-provisioning capabilities, encoding differentials between the virtual disk images so that multiple VMs consume a fraction of the space required because the same files aren’t duplicated. Dynamic workload streaming can be used to rapidly deploy server workloads to the most appropriate server resources — physical or virtual — at any time during the week, month, quarter or year. This is particularly useful for applications that may be regularly migrated between testing and production environments or for systems that require physical deployments for peak user activity during the business cycle.

Compellent has another unique feature, which is the ability to reclaim unused space. Their software searches for unused storage memory blocks that are part of deleted files and marks them as unused so that Windows OSes can overwrite them.

6. Greater VM densities per host will improve storage performance and management.
Product pick: Cisco Unified Communications Server

As corporations make use of virtualization, they find that it can have many applications in a variety of areas. And nothing — other than video — stretches storage faster than duplicating a VM image or setting up a bunch of virtual desktops. With these greater VM densities comes a challenge to keep up with the RAM requirements needed to support them.

In this environment, we’re beginning to see new classes of servers that can handle hundreds of gigabytes of RAM. For example, the Cisco Systems Unified Communications Server (UCS) supports large amounts of memory and VM density (see Figure 2): In one demonstration from VirtualStorm last fall at VMworld, there were more than 400 VMs running Windows XP on each of six blades on one Cisco UCS. Each XP instance had more than 90GB of applications contained in its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure image, which was very impressive.

“It required a perfect balance between the desktops, the infrastructure, the virtualization and the management of the desktops and their applications in order to scale to thousands of desktops in a single environment,” says Erik Westhovens, one of the engineers from VirtualStorm writing on a blog entry about the demonstration.

Savvis is an early UCS customer. “I like where Cisco is taking this platform; combining more functionality within the data center inside the box itself,” Doerr says. “Having the switching and management under the hood, along with native virtualization support, helps us to save money and offer different classes of service to our Symphony cloud customers and ultimately a better cloud-computing experience.”

“If you don’t buy enough RAM for your servers, it doesn’t pay to have the higher-priced VMware licenses,” says an IT manager for a major New York City-based law firm that uses EMC SANs. “We now have five VMware boxes running 40 VMs a piece, and bought new servers specifically to handle this.”

As users run more guest VMs on a single physical server, they’ll find they need to have more RAM installed on the server to maintain performance. This may mean they need to move to a more expensive, multiple-CPU server to handle the larger RAM requirements. Cisco has recognized that many IT shops are over-buying multiple-CPU servers just so they can get enough dual in-line memory module slots to install more RAM. The Cisco UCS hardware will handle 384GB of RAM and not require the purchase of multiple processor licenses for VMware hypervisors, which saves money in the long run.

James Sokol, the CTO for a benefits consultancy in New York City, points out that good hypervisor planning means balancing the number of guest VMs with the expanded RAM required to best provision each guest VM. “You want to run as many guests per host [as possible] to control the number of host licenses you need to purchase and maintain,” Sokol says. “We utilize servers with dual quad-core CPUs and 32GB of RAM to meet our hosted-server requirements.”

A good rule of thumb for Windows guest VMs is to use a gigabyte of RAM for every guest VM that you run.

7. Better high-availability integration and more fault-tolerant operations.
Product picks: VMware vSphere 4 and Citrix XenServer 5.5

The latest hypervisors from VMware and Citrix include features that expedite failover to a backup server and enable fault-tolerant operations. This makes it easier for VMs to be kept in sync when they’re running on different physical hosts, and enhances the ability to move the data stored on one host to another without impacting production applications or user computing. The goal is to provide mainframe-class reliability and operations to virtual resources.

One area where virtualized resources are still playing catch-up to the mainframe computing world is security policies and access controls. Citrix still lacks role-based access controls, and VMware has only recently added this to its vSphere line. This means that in many shops, just about any user can start and stop a VM instance without facing difficult authentication hurdles. There are third-party security tools — such as the HyTrust Appliance for VMware — that allow more granularity over which users have what kind of access to particular VMs. Expect other third-party virtualization management vendors to enter this market in the coming year. (To get an idea of how HyTrust’s software operates, check out the screencast I prepared for them here.)

8. Private cloud creation and virtualized networks — including vendor solutions that offer ways to virtualize your data center entirely in the cloud.
Product picks: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, VMware vSphere vShield Zones, ReliaCloud, Hexagrid VxDataCenter

Vendors are virtualizing more and more pieces of the data center and using virtual network switches — what VMware calles vShield Zones — to ensure that your network traffic never leaves the virtualized world but still retains nearly the same level of security found in your physical network. For example, you can set up firewalls that stay with the VMs as they migrate between hypervisors, create security policies and set up virtual LANs. Think of it as setting up a security perimeter around your virtual data center.

Amazon has been hard at work with Elastic Computing — its cloud-based, virtualization-hosted storage — and last summer added Virtual Private Cloud to its offerings (see Figure 3). This enables users to extend their VPNs to include the Amazon cloud, further mixing the physical and virtual network infrastructures. It’s also possible to extend any security device on your physical network to cover the Amazon cloud-based servers. The same is true with Amazon Web Services, where customers pay on a usage-only basis with no long-term contracts or commitments.

Microsoft has a series of new projects to extend its Windows Azure cloud-based computing to private clouds. They can be found at here and include ventures such as “Project Sydney,” which enables customers to securely link their on premises-based and cloud servers; AppFabric, which is a collection of existing Windows Azure developer components; and updates to Visual Studio 2010.

Some of these are, or soon will be, available in beta. But like other efforts, more federated security between the cloud and in-house servers will require improvements before these new offerings can be dependably used by most enterprises.

Two new entrants to the cloud computing services arena are Hexagrid Inc. and ReliaCloud, both of which offer a wide range of infrastructure services, including high availability, hardware firewalls and load balancing. With these companies, all cloud servers are assigned private IP addresses and have persistence, meaning that users treat them as real servers even though they’re residing in the cloud. Expect more vendors to offer these and other features that allow IT managers to combine physical and cloud resources.

9. Better application awareness of cloud-based services.
Product picks: Exchange 2010, Sparxent MailShadow
It isn’t just about networks in the cloud, but actual applications too, such as Microsoft Exchange services. The days are coming when you’ll be able to run an Exchange server on a remote data center and failover without anyone noticing. Part of this has to do with improvements Microsoft is making to the upcoming 2010 release of its popular e-mail server software. This also has to do with how the virtualization and third-party vendors are incorporating and integrating disaster recovery into their software offerings. An example of the latter is MailShadow from Sparxent Inc. This cloud-based service makes a “shadow” copy of each user’s Exchange mailbox that’s kept in constant synchronization. There are numerous cloud-based Exchange hosting providers that have offered their services over the past few years, and Microsoft is working on its own cloud-based solutions as well.

10. Start learning the high-end, metric system measurements of storage.
If you thought you knew the difference between gigabytes and terabytes, start boning up on the higher end of the metric scale. SAN management vendor DataCore Software Corp. now supports arrays that can contain up to a petabyte — a thousand terabytes — of data. Savvis sells 50GB increments of its SAN utility storage to its co-location customers, which Doerr says has been very well received. “It’s for customers that don’t want to run their own SANs or just want to run the compute-selected functions,” he states. “There’s a lot of variation across our customers. You have to be flexible if you want to win their business.” Given that it wasn’t too long ago when no one could purchase a 50GB hard drive, he says this shows that, “we’re going to be talking exabytes when it comes to describing our storage needs before too long.” Next up: zettabytes and yottabytes.

Source: Redmondmag.com

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