University deploys Violin flash storage array
Anglia Ruskin University has implemented a Violin 3000 Series flash storage array to support a project to virtualise nearly 1,000 desktops for 32,000 students.
The virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) project was initiated to reduce cost, improve delivery of desktops and software to students and reduce power consumption. The potential bottleneck in the project was storage performance, with desktops needing to be delivered to at least 800 concurrent users with no appreciable degradation to user experience.
After considering several options, Anglia Ruskin selected Violin's 3000 Series flash storage array. A traditional disk-based SAN would have required many shelves of disks, consumed more power, required significant cooling and incurred higher maintenance costs than a flash storage array.
Gregor Waddell, assistant director of Anglia Ruskin University, said, "Storage performance is key to VDI, and our existing traditional spinning disk did not offer good enough performance. The virtual machines needed 800 to 100 IOPS per desktop, most of which were writes."
Media agency dumps Veeam for Acronis
Media production agency Hub+ has dumped Veeam and installed Acronis vmProtect to back up its virtual server environment.
Hub+ has 85 employees at offices in London, Singapore, Melbourne and Atlanta and has critical data on 42 virtual machines (VM) across four HP hosts. After researching the virtualisation software backup market, Hub+ initially chose Veeam but was quickly faced with spiralling costs.
Crispin Green, IT manager at Hub+, said, "We initially picked Veeam but realised quite quickly that when we needed to add extra hosts and VMs, the price went up considerably due to the extra licenses. We decided to have another look at the options, and after carrying out numerous tests, we opted for Acronis vmProtect 7."
Healthcare firm deploys Coraid flash array
Home health care service provider Healthcare at Home has deployed Coraid VSX storage virtualisation appliances with Coraid EtherFlash SSD ATA-over-Ethernet arrays to support its Microsoft Dynamics environment. The company recently upgraded to the Microsoft CRM system, but the increase in the number of users and systems connecting to it meant that a more effective data storage solution had to be sourced. The company went for the full Coraid deployment after purchasing a small evaluation unit for testing.
Qsan gets VMware certification
SMB SAN vendor Qsan Technology has announced that its iSCSI IP SAN P600Q has achieved VMware Ready Certification for vSphere 5 and VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration). This accreditation demonstrates the Qsan hardware is supported through the latest version of VMware vSphere and enables capabilities such as speeding up provisioning of new virtual machines and creating, moving and snapshotting VMs.
DataCore and VirtualSharp team up
Storage virtualisation vendor DataCore Software and automated disaster recovery product supplier VirtualSharp Software have announced a technology partnership. The two companies aim to integrate storage virtualisation with disaster recovery automation to deliver what they call Disaster Recovery Assurance. This will comprise VirtualSharp's ReliableDR working with DataCore's SANsymphony-V to create application- and service-aware snapshots at a disaster recovery site.
