New FalconStor’s Offerings for VMware Environments

FalconStor Software, Inc. announced comprehensive offerings for supporting, enhancing and extending data protection in VMware vSphere 4 environments with new solution introductions and expansions.

The initiative encompasses continuous availability, virtual storage management and a breadth of virtual appliance solutions – all three areas critical to maximizing the business value of virtual infrastructure deployments in heterogeneous environments.

At VMworld 2009, FalconStor is introducing new storage management and new disaster recovery (DR) extensions for VMware vCenter Server and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager that provide virtual machine storage provisioning as well as automated failback of remote virtual machines to the primary data center. Additionally, FalconStor is demonstrating its new FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System Virtual Appliance (FDS VA) for easy-to-deploy data deduplication for VMware vSphere 4 environments.

“Managing separate point data protection solutions for a physical data center and for a virtual environment is challenging, complex and can be error prone,” said Dave Russell, Research Vice President, Storage Technologies and Strategies, at Gartner. “Companies should seriously consider storage virtualization and data protection solutions that are tightly integrated and can provide the same level of services for both physical and virtual infrastructures."

Continuous Availability:
Added Features
for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
FalconStor solutions provide continuous availability of physical and virtual as well as local and remote resources, giving IT managers comprehensive business continuity and DR coverage. FalconStor’s two new DR extensions for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager automate failover of physical and virtual hosts to the DR site and provide automated failback support of virtualized servers from the DR site to the primary data center:

• FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) – Extends VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager functionality across the data center by adding support for physical-to-virtual machine failover. This unique implementation dramatically speeds site-level failover and reduces DR costs.
• FalconStor Failback Manager for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager – Lets VMware vSphere 4 users automate the failback process to the primary data center in a single step once the restoration of data center services are complete. VMware and FalconStor customers can experience a single simplified function, accelerating return to normal operations and minimizing human error.

“With these new solutions for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, FalconStor continues its tradition of adding value in the area of data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery,” said Bernie Wu, vice president of business development for FalconStor Software. “The combination of our respective solutions is designed to lower costs and remove the barriers to deploy continuous availability in a VMware vSphere 4-enabled data center of any size.”

These new features complement FalconStor Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, which integrates FalconStor’s replication capability with Site Recovery Manager. In addition, FalconStor’s replication technology provides replication and bandwidth efficiency over the WAN and supports heterogeneous infrastructures that require replication between multi-vendor SAN/DAS environments. FalconStor and VMware customers now have an alternative replication and DR solution when dealing with a mix of SAN/DAS vendors between primary and DR sites. Customers will find that Falconstor has built a complete set of DR solutions around the VMware platform that fits their budget and protection needs.

Continuous Availability:
Added Data Protection, Performance and Efficiency
FalconStor solutions provide VMware customers with complete end-to-end continuous availability and backup protection as a critical component of the virtual data center. FalconStor enables backup optimization by completely eliminating the backup window and offloading backup operations from VMware production environments. In addition, FalconStor’s deduplication technology reduces the backup infrastructure needed to support VMware-enabled backup applications.

Additional FalconStor solutions
for continuous availability include:

• Newly Introduced FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System Virtual Appliance (FDS VA) – Optimizes VMware backup infrastructure by eliminating redundancies in VMDK files and significantly reducing the storage capacity required to support VMware backup applications. This storage capacity optimization solution allows for longer retention time of backup online while reducing infrastructure costs thus improving the recoverability of VMware environments.
• FalconStor HyperTrac VMware Edition – Provides impact-free backup of VMware environments through its tight integration with VMware Consolidated Backup and the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. It removes any performance impact on production environments by offloading the backup process of VMware virtual disk files (VMDKs) to a standby environment allowing virtual machine backup to proceed unimpeded and to scale to the largest VMware environments.

New FalconStor Virtual Storage Management Integration
with VMware vCenter Server
FalconStor Storage Manager for VMware vCenter Server extends FalconStor’s advanced storage management capabilities into VMware vCenter Server as a plug-in tool. Users can now create virtual machines with data stores allocated from storage managed by FalconStor software within the VMware vCenter management client. The FalconStor Storage Manager also enables users’ easy access to key features such as virtual machine replication, thin provisioning and storage migration. VMware and FalconStor customers can now leverage FalconStor’s multi-vendor storage virtualization management tools within VMware vCenter Server to further reduce storage management costs. FalconStor NSS provides primary storage virtualization well-suited for VMware vSphere 4 and is VMware Ready Certified. FalconStor NSS offers built-in snapshot data protection and mirroring and integrates with popular applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Oracle Database running in virtual machines.

New FalconStor FDS VA
Creates Breadth of Virtual Appliance Solutions
FalconStor virtual appliances now support VMDirectPath I/O from VMware to provide high-performance storage access that increases the throughput of FalconStor NSS VA running on the VMware platform by tenfold. With the introduction of the FalconStor FDS VA, FalconStor now offers its entire storage solution portfolio as a virtual appliance that runs on VMware ESX and VMware ESXi, including FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL), FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) and FalconStor NSS. This extensive solution coverage brings a high level of storage virtualization and data protection services to VMware vSphere 4 customers.

FalconStor FDS VA includes a NAS interface allowing native backup tools provided by Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Oracle Database to send disk-based backup files to FalconStor FDS VA for efficient deduplication. Unlike other deduplication technology, no modifications to VMware virtual machine guest operating systems or applications are required. FalconStor’s deduplication virtual appliance hosted on VMware vSphere 4 participates in FalconStor’s global deduplication technology, allowing remote and branch offices to offer thin replication to a centrally based FalconStor FDS repository saving valuable WAN resources.

FalconStor and VMware
As a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program member, FalconStor has developed unique technologies to create value for VMware environments. Customers who are evaluating storage solutions for VMware environments should take into consideration such features as storage replication with built-in WAN acceleration, agnostic storage virtualization and next-generation backup/recovery for customers that use VMware vSphere 4.

Additionally, FalconStor integrates its solutions with the VMware vStorage capabilities and interfaces provided by the VMware platform to ensure a better end-user experience. FalconStor is an active innovator and contributor to the VMware partner ecosystem, with products available from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace, products that integrate with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, VMware vCenter Server, and Storage Virtualization Device and Storage Array certifications.