DataCore announces SANsymphony-V10

Today DataCore announced their latest SANsymphony-V release. After the merge of SANmelody & SANsymphony, SANsymphony-V10 is the 10th generation of DataCores flagship product. Interestingly DataCore uses the terms  “software-defined” and “Virtual SAN”. Whether the product of the definition of the terms corresponds everyone should decide for themselves. But this is another story.

What is DataCore SANsymphony-V?

What DataCore definitely does is automating and simplifying storage management and provisioning. I really like it the simplicity. DataCore SANsymphony-V can deliver enterprise-class functionality, like synchronous mirroring, replication, snapshots, clones, thin-provisioning and tiering . It runs on x86 hardware with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or 2012. Multiple servers can grouped together for load balancing and redundancy. A storage pool can created out of the internal or external flash and roting rust. Single or mirrored virtual disks can be carved out of this storage pool. Hosts can access these virtual disks using iSCSI or Fibre-Channel. Because DataCore SANsymphony-V10 can use several different technologies as backend for storage pools, it’s easy to replace backend storage. You can add or remove disks to or from storage pools. If you backend storage is an old EMC CLARiiON and you get a new HP MSA 2040 Storage, you can replance the old storage without disruption.

What’s new in SANsymphony-V10?

I took this information directly from the DataCore SANsymphony-V10 announcement page:

  • Scalability has doubled from 16 to 32 nodes; Enables Metro-wide N+1 grid data protection
  • Supports high-speed 40/56 GigE iSCSI; 16Gbps Fibre Channel; iSCSI Target NIC teaming
  • Performance visualization/Heat Map tools add insight into the behavior of Flash and disks
  • New auto-tiering settings optimize expensive resources (e.g., flash cards) in a pool
  • Intelligent disk rebalancing, dynamically redistributes load across available devices within a tier
  • Automated CPU load leveling and Flash optimizations to increase performance
  • Disk pool optimization and self-healing storage; Disk contents are automatically restored across the remaining storage in the pool; Enhancements to easily select and prioritize order of recovery
  • New self-tuning caching algorithms and optimizations for flash cards and SSDs
  • ‘Click-simple’ configuration wizards to rapidly set up different use cases (Virtual SAN; High-Availability SANs; NAS File Shares; etc.)

Along with new feature DataCore has announced is a new licensing model. Aside the traditional server license, there will be a Virtual SAN license which includes tiering, adaptive caching, storage pooling, synchronous mirroring, thin provisioning and snapshots/ clones. Both variations, the traditional SANsymphony-V10 and the Virtual SAN, running on Windows Server 2012. So the Virtual SAN will not be a virtual appliance. AFAIK it will only be a special license.

The general availability is scheduled for May 30, 2014. So stay tuned. :) I hope to get SANsymphony-V10 as fast as it’s possible into my lab.