Compellent Expands Partnership With VMware

Compellent Technologies Inc. announced an expansion of its partnership with VMware with the availability of Compellent Storage Center systems bundled with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

The new disaster recovery solution enables organizations to create a ‘disaster ready’ cloud environment by automating the process of moving, protecting and recovering their data from virtually any disaster with minimal cost and effort.

Using Compellent Fluid Data storage with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager as the foundation, the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities has created a private cloud to deliver IT services while automating protection and recovery of operational and client data for 10 care facilities.

"Serving 80,000 people in Ohio requires us to have a reliable and highly available IT infrastructure," said Brian Brothers, network administrator manager, Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities. "In just six months, we’ve virtualized 90 percent of our server and storage hardware with a goal of 98 percent, further reducing space, power and cooling costs. In the process, we seamlessly added VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to our existing Compellent replication to enable bullet-proof disaster recovery. With Compellent and VMware solutions, we can now shift resources on demand between our data centers and deliver IT services that can scale for numerous departments across our organization."

Disaster recovery allows companies to protect their critical data, but typically has been difficult to achieve due to costs, manual processes and complexity. By combining Compellent Fluid Data storage with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, enterprises and service providers can centrally manage, update, change and test their recovery plans whenever needed from a single interface, even during normal operating hours.

Compellent will offer this new option for disaster recovery through its global reseller network. To speed deployment and extend the business value of virtualization, Compellent Copilot support services will provide a single contact point for infrastructure design, implementation and ongoing support.

News Highlights:

• Compellent is expanding its longstanding partnership with VMware to offer VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager as a bundled solution with Compellent Fluid Data storage.
• Compellent provides VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager together with Compellent remote replication, automated tiered storage and thin provisioning in a single, scalable platform, with enterprise management software to configure and initiate replication in as few as six clicks of the mouse.
• As part of the foundation for cloud computing, the automation provided by Compellent and VMware virtualization enables enterprises and service providers to reduce disaster recovery costs, increase hardware efficiency, automate data movement and optimize network infrastructure.
• The combined solution is the next step in a pragmatic approach to creating and protecting cloud environments through simplified disaster recovery.

Compellent Storage Center
with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager can:

• Slash the cost of disaster recovery by reducing hardware and software expenditures through virtualization, lowering bandwidth cost by optimizing data sent between sites, and reducing staffing costs with simplified management.
• Establish a resilient IT cloud that stays running through any disaster. Customers can keep data up-to-date using Compellent Live Volume technology for online data migration between arrays, Compellent Remote Instant Replay software to move space-efficient data snapshots between sites, and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to keep VMs in a constant state of readiness.
• Enable an agile and easy-to-manage disaster recovery plan by centralizing administration of resources and allowing testing during normal operations.

Pricing and Availability
Available exclusively through the Compellent global network of resellers, a typical Storage Center 5.4 configuration with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager starts at approximately $83,000 (excluding maintenance and support) and includes:

• Clustered Series 40 controllers
• Fluid Data software licenses including Enterprise Manager multi-site management software, Data Progression automated tiering, Data Capacity thin provisioning, Data Instant Replay snapshots, and Remote Instant Replay replication
• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 25 VM pack
• Approximately 6 TB of tiered 2.5" 6Gb/s SAS storage

Bruce Kornfeld, vice president of alliances and business development, Compellent, said: "As businesses turn to virtualized environments and the cloud for IT services, Compellent and VMware are helping these organizations recover from data loss in minutes with less hardware and software to buy and operate. The combination of Compellent with VMware technology provides a simplified, efficient and scalable disaster recovery solution. The continued innovation we deliver for the enterprise increasingly makes Compellent Fluid Data the virtualized storage platform of choice for data centers and cloud computing."

Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware, said: "Our enhanced relationship enables Compellent to offer simplified disaster recovery by bundling VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager with Compellent products. The new solution offers automation and comprehensive management to help customers deliver IT as a service."