I was at the annual VMware Partner Exchange event last week in Orlando. FalconStor is a technology partner for VMware as well as Microsoft (Hyper-V) and Xen hypervisors. The opening keynote was given by VMware CEO Paul Maritz. One of the key points that I remember was his goal of driving global virtual server deployments “north of 50 percent.” Of course, the preference is for those virtual servers to be of the VMware vSphere brand. What does that mean if you have a mixed physical and virtual server environment, or if you have non-vSphere hypervisors?
Most storage vendors offer some type of volume copy functionality, either in-system or remote replication. These copy functions are commonly promoted as business continuity (in-system copy) or disaster recovery ( remote replication). Replication, or transporting data from one location to another, is analogous to household moving companies. They transport your entire household, in many boxes, to your new house. However, once all your household belongings are safely at your new home, you still have the complex and laborious task of unpacking and arranging things to make your new home functional. Isn’t this effectively what remote data replication does? Sure, all your data is safely at your remote data center, but now what? Where's the 'Recovery' aspect of this paradigm?
Thin Provisioning is a fairly well known concept in the storage marketplace; provisioning a logical volume larger than the physical capacity actually accessible by the application or server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_provisioning ). Most storage array vendors offer thin provisioning on some or all their systems. Many charge a premium for this feature as the gains in efficiency, CapEx and TCO are obvious.
However, for data protection purposes (mirrors, snapshots, and remote replica volumes) few give this technology consideration. If your primary storage array does not have thin provisioning (or you did not pay for the feature), any underutilized capacity will be duplicated onto your data protection volumes. This “duplication of waste” results in higher costs from a CapEx and OpEx perspective, resulting in questionable TCO of any data protection solution.
I’m often amazed by the things I learn talking to customers. This technology space eventually comes down to money – making it, saving it or wasting it. One example of this last aspect, wasting it, is something I learned about from talking to a customer recently.
FalconStor has been developing data protection solutions for many years. We’ve also had remote replication capabilities for many years. Some of you may be aware of the unique nature of FalconStor remote replication. However, for anyone who is not I’d like to put some perspective into how, and why, FalconStor remote replication is the best in the industry.
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