Dot Hill AssuredSAN 3000 With VAAI and SRM Support

Dot Hill Systems Corp. announced that the most recent version of its firmware for AssuredSAN 3000 storage systems will include VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) support and Site Recovery Manager (SRM) support, to ensure improved performance and data security within VMware virtual server environments.
 
VAAI includes three separate capabilities: block zeroing, full copy, and hardware assisted locking. The AssuredSAN 3000 supports these functions with the new firmware and can now speed provisioning of new virtual machines, accelerate cloning and reduce the use of the CPU for storage vMotion functions.
 
SRM is VMware’s product for data protection and disaster recovery across geographic sites. It is integrated with array-based replication to provide a mechanism for maintaining replicas of virtual machines on multiple sites. The AssuredSAN 3000 Series, with built-in AssuredRemote technology, provides the replication element of the overall SRM solution, enabling customers to implement a disaster recovery plan for their mission-critical virtual machines.
 
The VAAI support on the AssuredSAN 3000 Series is certified by VMware on vSphere 4.1 and 5. The SRM support on the Dot Hill AssuredSAN 3000 Series is certified by VMware on vSphere 5. These new features are available through a free software upgrade to the AssuredSAN array and are enabled by a free software plug-in to the VMware ESX servers.
 
"Customers using VMware virtualization require high performance and high availability network storage solutions. Dot Hill’s AssuredSAN 3000 series provides a unique combination of high speed and five 9s of availability," said Jim Jonez, senior director of marketing, Dot Hill. "The Dot Hill AssuredSAN 3000 array with VAAI and SRM support improves storage efficiency with added security for VMware users."
 
Specifically, customers choosing the AssuredSAN 3000 array enjoy advantages over users of competitive offerings such as advanced data management, remote replication, snapshots, volume copy, energy-saving drive-spin-down and Dot Hill’s patented EcoStor green features. Dual redundant RAID controllers, dual power supplies and dual fans bring uptime figures to five 9s of availability. The AssuredSAN 3000 Series provides high level of data protection for today’s virtualized environments and leverages VMware’s virtual file system and Storage VMotion technologies to perform proactive, non-disruptive storage migration, eliminate virtual machine I/O bottlenecks and free up valuable storage capacity, maximizing IT investments.
 
"While users appreciate that they can free up server and IO resources to support virtualized production workloads by moving IO-intensive processes from their ESX hosts to their storage arrays, the actual level of benefit they’ll realize from VAAI will to a large degree depend on the underlying storage. Flexible, scalable, high performance storage systems with VAAI integration will logically allow customers to gain more efficiencies, increase consolidation, and therefore reap greater returns on their VMware investments," states Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.
 
Dot Hill’s new firmware release featuring VAAI and SRM support will be available within 30 days. The firmware upgrade is free to existing AssuredSAN 3000 customers and can be accessed through Dot Hill support.