News: Virsto introduces new virtual storage options for VMware and Hyper-V

The virtual storage market is hotting up with Virsto Stoftware’s announcement of two new products for release Tuesday, January 17th. Following on from its June 2011 acquisition of EvoStor and building on its existing Virsto for VDI platform, Silicon Valley-based Virsto Software has made good on its investment by announcing the release of Virsto for vSphere.

2011 Year in Review – Data Protection

2011 saw an increase in virtualized and cloud data protection solution partnerships and advancements. One of the biggest advancements is the growing support for Microsoft Hyper-V from long-time VMware specific backup solutions. Included in the new partnerships are team ups between performance management and data protection solutions, as well as an increase in the methods for replication and other forms of data protection. 2011 was a very big year in the Data Protection arena of cloud and virtualization. This is the 2011 Year in Review for data protection.

Desktop Virtualization in 2012 – Part 2

In part one I looked at the overall macro trends in the desktop virtualization market, now in part two I want to look at what to expect from key vendors and vendors: Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, and AppSense as well as product groups such as thing client and storage vendors. All with an eye to Desktop Virtualization in 2012.

Virtualization & Cloud Backup News & New Players

At the NE VMUG, while walking the floor I saw a new virtualization backup player, perhaps the first generic Replication Receiver Cloud: TwinStrata. And information gained while not at the NE VMUG. There is also a new virtualization backup player just for Hyper-V: Altaro. As well as a new release of Quest vRangerPro. The Virtualization Backup market is a very dynamic market with new ideas, technologies, and concepts being put into the market at every turn. In many ways, the market leaders are not the bigger companies but the smaller and fast growing companies. In the past, it was about features associated with pure backup, but now it is about features and fast disaster recovery and recovery testing.

Replication Receiver Clouds: Protecting your Data

Security in the cloud and the virtual environment is ‘all about the data’ and not specifically about any other subsystem. It is about the data. As such the data has something it knows (the contents of the data), something it is (its signature), and something it has (its digital rights) and since it has these three elements, the data has all it has identity. However, protecting the data requires us to put things between the data and the real world such as firewalls, and complex role based access controls, as well as methods to replicate the data to other locations in a non-intrusive mechanism. The goal to such replication could be to ensure multiple sites have the same data (such as a hot-site) or to have the data available in another locations in case of disaster.

Virtualized Replication: vSphere APIs Expand

As a delegate for Tech Field Day 6 in Boston, I was introduced to SRM Replication as well as ZeRTO a third party replication tool. They seem to be as different as night and day but are they? Both work within the vSphere environment to replicate virtual disks regardless of storage type, and apparently hook into the same location within VMware’s API stack. This shows a maturity of VMware’s API stack that until now has been unknown and secret. In this one area, Microsoft Hyper-V is beating VMware vSphere: The availability of well known APIs that are easy for Third Parties to use. I now see a change in VMware’s behavior, can they continue this growth?