Onaro: New Products to Support Virtualization

Onaro, Inc. announced new
solutions to extend its support for the virtualized data center and
further integrate storage with IT operations. The adoption of server
and storage virtualization by large enterprises has created new
challenges integrating networked storage into the balance of IT
operations. New and updated products in the SANscreen product family
are designed to meet this challenge by providing end-to-end service
visibility for both physical and virtual servers across SAN and now
also NAS networked storage environments.

While server
and storage virtualization are being deployed to reduce costs, each of
these technologies adds management challenges for data center teams.
Server virtualization requires cross domain optimization of both the
server and storage environment to maximize cost savings and ensure
service levels are met. Storage virtualization requires additional
end-to-end visibility from the application to the back-end storage
devices to optimize capacity planning and ensure application
availability.

Enhancements to Service Insight, along
with new NAS Insight, VM Insight, and new Array Performance Module for
Application Insight, meet these challenges and integrate NAS and SAN
into the balance of IT operations. The result is lower capital cost
for server virtualization projects of 20% or more and a 50% decrease in
application outage risk. In addition, organizations can now more
effectively integrate networked storage into IT operations to reduce
application provisioning times, improve cross domain trouble shooting
and support broader ITSM initiatives.

“The
virtualized data center requires a different approach to infrastructure
management that emphasizes a cross domain, service level view of the
environment,” said Dave Russell, vice president of research, Gartner.
“To maximize the return while minimizing the risks of large scale
deployment of virtualization technology, all infrastructure teams –
storage and server – need to work off a common service view of the
supporting infrastructure. Only by adopting this common view can
organizations advance to the next level of operational efficiency and
cost cutting.”

With VMs concentrating the storage I/O
requirements of several physical servers to a single server, balancing
loads from application to disk is critical to meet consolidation
targets without impacting application performance. A new Array
Performance Module for Application Insight discovers, collects, and
maintains array performance information. This data is added to the
fabric traffic information collected by Application Insight. With the
new Array Performance Module, Application Insight users are able to see
complete host-to-disk application load visibility. By intelligently
monitoring storage and server performance during consolidations,
organizations can reduce capital costs by an additional 20% or more by
optimizing physical to virtual server compression ratios.

NAS
Insight 1.0 is a new addition to the SANscreen product family designed
to support enterprise NAS deployments.  For organizations deploying
multiple filers to support enterprise applications and VMs, NAS Insight
1.0 provides global visibility across all networked attached systems
through a single pane of glass. For organizations deploying VMs on
networked attached storage, this common view is critical to meeting
service level objectives.

Service Insight 4.5 has
been enhanced to provide service path visibility for companies
deploying storage virtualization technologies. This service path
visibility starts from the virtual host and continues through the
entire networked storage environment including switches, virtual
storage devices, arrays, volumes, and finally disks. By deploying
Service Insight 4.5, organizations can take advantage of SANscreen’s
ability to reduce capital costs, decrease operating costs and improve
service quality in a highly virtualized environment.  As part of this
release, Service Insight will support virtualization technologies from
IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Incipient.

 “Virtualization
technology introduces fresh demands for server and storage teams to
integrate their operations more closely,” said Bryan Semple, vice
president of marketing, Onaro, Inc.  “These new and upgraded SANscreen
products enable the close cooperation required of data center teams to
effectively deploy virtualization technologies across both SAN and NAS
environments.”

Service Insight 4.5, Application Insight for Arrays 1.0 and NAS Insight
1.0 will be generally available December 31, 2007. Pricing for Service
Insight starts at $85 per port. Pricing for the Array Performance
Module for Application Insight and NAS Insight starts at $75,000.

Onaro Inc.