| Abstract: With its recently announced SvSAN-a virtual SAN based on the existing direct attached storage found in most virtualized servers-StorMagic is aiming to simultaneously deliver storage value to, and release trapped business functions within, VMware ESX installations. Targeted carefully for medium-size business users, SvSAN promises "high end‘ features and functions without the cost and complexity of traditional SAN approaches. |
StorMagic and its Virtual SAN
The Company: Founded in 2006 to develop iSCSI SAN management software, StorMagic is probably an unknown name to many reading this Blog. Having delivered its initial software, which creates virtualized SANs in traditional Microsoft environments, StorMagic is now primarily focused on bringing the power of virtual SANs (fashioned from a server‘s existing internal and direct attached disks) to the rapidly-expanding VMware ESX virtual server market.
Despite its quirky and even somewhat disingenuous name, StorMagic represents the leading edge of a cadre of storage businesses that are very seriously challenging the accepted norms and possibilities of the industry. It is aiming to fulfill its tagline of ‗Smart Storage Made Simple‘-at the risk of pure semantic manipulation, that tagline could just as well be reversed, for what StorMagic is really doing is making simple storage smart by adding features, functions, and management abilities. In doing so, users can move from the ‗straightforward-ness‘ of DAS to the sophistication of a SAN. With StorMagic, it is of course a
virtual SAN, but the benefits it can deliver are no illusion. It is simply adding pragmatic IT and business value.
The SvSAN Announcement: This month, StorMagic announced immediate availability of its SvSAN (StorMagic virtual SAN), which is software that enables the creation and management of a virtual SAN based physically upon the internal and direct attached storage in ESX virtual server environments. It is aimed at small to medium-size organizations1 and enables them to build-in just a few minutes-a cost effective virtual SAN that can provide a high-availability shared storage solution in VMware ESX environments. This means that such users-without any hardware-related changes or expenses-can take advantage of enhanced server virtualization functions, such as VMotion migration tools, that were previously ‗buried‘ and ‗off limits‘ because of their storage approach. The product‘s key features include:
- SvSAN running under VMware as a virtual machine
- It creates a virtual SAN from internal disk and direct attached arrays and presents iSCSI LUNs.
- Scales up from a 2 TB entry-point with no upper capacity limit; at the extreme, SvSAN can run on its own standard Intel server, which it ‗converts‘ to act as a dedicated SAN.
- Advanced capabilities include: datastores2 can be shared across clustered ESX servers; snapshot functionality; and also significant, helpful automation (the automated provisioning of datastores, configuration of high availability (HA), and discovery of StorMagic appliances).
- Options include: expansion of supported capacity and mirrored HA version (this precludes the loss of a physical server-including DAS/virtual SAN-from causing availability and processing interruptions).
- SvSAN management is fully integrated into VMware‘s vCenter, which means that the various datastores, the virtual SAN, and even the internal RAID controllers can all be run from one recognizable existing vCenter screen.
