StorMagic, developer of iSCSI SAN management software for virtualised server environments,has signed up twenty VMware Partner Network resellers over the past three months, following the launch of the StorMagic SvSAN storage virtual appliance.

These resellers include Active Network Solutions, Engitech, DataScape, Admitelsa, New Datum and Westerhout in Europe, and E-Safe Technologies, PBG, Flytrap Technologies, JP Schwartz and DSN Group in the United States. Asian partners include Proware in Taiwan, as well as Core Micro Products in Japan and Rorke Data in China.

The recently announced StorMagic channel partner program, which serves resellers and system integrators in the VMware community, offers lead generation, sales and technical support through tools such as:

• Reseller portal
• Dedicated technical support
• Partner -specific 'Promo Key' for free end-user downloads of the StorMagic SvSAN.

SvSAN is a storage virtual appliance for VMware environments that provides shared datastores by leveraging the disk drives of VMware ESX. With SvSAN, users can deploy a high-availability shared storage solution for VMware environments for less than £1,400/€1,500.

“We are looking forward to working with StorMagic because the SvSAN will help us differentiate our offering and make us more competitive,” said Frank Westerhout, CEO at Dutch-based StorMagic reseller ClassBase Software & Westerhout Beheermaatschappij BV. “Many products are offered for VMware environments, so it takes one that truly stands out from the crowd in order to secure business, and I am confident that StorMagic’s SvSAN will be a clear advantage for us.”

“Today’s economic challenges are forcing customers to further embrace leading-edge virtualisation technologies to maximise investment protection and further reduce costs,” said Andrew Hoffman, managing partner at Flytrap Technologies. “Partnering with StorMagic has allowed us to offer a more competitive virtual SAN appliance to augment the ever evolving virtual ecosystem. This ultimately allows us to provide greater value and ‘bang for the buck’ over more traditional offerings.”

“The recruitment of VMware-focused partners puts us head-to-head with more traditional, larger competitors, but we are looking forward to the challenge,” said Mike Stolz, vice president of marketing at StorMagic. “SvSAN is a disruptive solution that allows our customers and partners to extend their VMware environments into a highly available infrastructure without the cost and complexity of traditional SAN approaches. Today, this is very appealing to all end-users out there who are closely monitoring their CAPEX and OPEX.”

StorMagic SvSAN works with VMware vCenter Server to enable administrators to manage datastores, the StorMagic iSCSI SAN, and the internal RAID controller from a single interface. With capacity starting at 2 TB and scaling to unlimited storage, the SvSAN lets administrators create, manage and provision datastores through a single-operation, which allows them to rapidly deploy datastores without managing multiple applications. Add-on features include active-active mirroring for high-availability and capacity management upgrades.