VMware Server Virtual Machines to Be Stored on Single SAN Using Sanbolic Kayo Clustered File System

Sanbolic, Inc announced that VMware Server virtual machines can now be stored on a single shared storage area network (SAN) storage volume using Sanbolic Kayo clustered file system. The virtual machines can then be moved independently between physical host servers because all host servers have shared access to the virtual machines files. Kayo FS will be priced at $299 per host server.

VMware Server is VMware’s host-based virtualization solution, which has been available as a no cost download since late 2006. Although VMware offers VMFS file system with it enterprise-class VI3 product suite, VMFS does not support VMware server, and many customer have found it more cost effective to use the VMware server product. VMware’s SEC filing prior to their August 2007 IPO indicated that there had been 1.7 million downloads of VMware Server. The percentage of VMware customers choosing VMware Server over ESX has increased substantially over the past two years, according to Yankee Group analyst Laura Dido.

"Kayo FS is aimed at the several hundred thousand customers running VMware Server and will help simplify virtual machine migration across physical hosts," said Momchil Michailov, Sanbolic’s founder. "It is a new product that provides file-level shared access to a SAN volume from multiple physical host servers and is designed specifically to provide a cost-effective shared LUN solution for VMware Server virtual machines. Sanbolic is already shipping Melio FS, which is an advanced enterprise-class clustered file system with byte-range locking that can also provide concurrent read/write access to application data on SAN storage from multiple Windows physical or virtual servers."

Sanbolic’s product portfolio also includes Melio clustered file system and LaScala volume manager, designed to support Windows applications which benefit from central administration of a large virtual storage pool simultaneously accessed by multiple physical or virtual servers. Melio FS uses 64 bit architecture, allowing very large volume and file system sizes. These products install easily on physical or virtual servers, and can utilize any fibre channel or iSCSI storage hardware. Windows Active Directory, DFS, Hyper-V, and clustering features are supported. Reporting on storage I/O and transaction performance facilitates optimization of storage intensive workloads. The file system also incorporates quality of service assignment to allow prioritization of defined workloads in storage bandwidth-constrained environments.