Sanbolic, Inc., provider of software for simplifying and sharing SAN storage, announced the availability of the Melio clustered file system 2010, a high performance clustered file system solution for Windows Server 2008 R2.


                                Melio FS appears as a local drive 
                                     and is managed like NTFS,
                   while providing shared access to SAN storage

Sanbolic also announced that Melio is now being sold as part of the Melio Virtualization Suite, which is aimed at Hyper-V deployments and costs $249 per server. The product suite also includes LaScala clustered volume manager, VSS-based snapshots, and policy-based file and snapshot migration software. Sanbolic's software can be used with any industry standard SAN hardware, and provides Hyper-V with a shared storage solution with performance and features, such as flexible back-up solutions, unmatched in VMware's virtualization product suite. Customers can download the evaluation software . Additional information about Sanbolic solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is available at the Microsoft Virtualization Partner Website.

The Melio Product Suite family uses a single installer and allows customers to access additional features with a license key upgrade. Melio Enterprise Suite and Melio Data Center Suite add support for concurrent shared access to all file types on a SAN volume, as well as Sanbolic's AppCluster active-active SQL clustering software and FilerScaler management software for shared-data file serving cluster. The Melio Data Center product suite also offers additional infrastructure management features, including remote volume configuration and assignment, RAID 1, dynamic volume expansion, quality of service management, and shared access to SAN application data volumes from virtual machines. Four licenses for virtual machines are included with each host license of the data center suite.

Sanbolic's software supports Live Migration on Hyper-V, and is fully compatible with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. The Failover Clustering feature recognizes Sanbolic volumes as active-active storage resources, simplifying the configuration of Windows Server 2008 R2 failover clusters. Sanbolic's Melio Enterprise and Data Center product suites can also be used with Windows application servers running on physical and/or virtual servers. Typical deployments include active-active SQL server clusters and SQL server consolidation, as well as shared-data scale out clusters of Windows file servers or web servers.

"With this announcement, customers will benefit from a shared storage solution compatible with any heterogeneous Hyper-V environment comprising Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2," said Dai Vu, director, virtualization solutions marketing, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp. "Sanbolic's Melio cluster files complements Hyper-V in delivering enterprise virtualization solutions, and bringing new functionality to key Windows workloads, such as SQL Server and file serving."

Sanbolic software currently supports Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Sanbolic distributes its product solutions worldwide through a network of distributors, OEMs, VARs and system integrators.