Virsto One Software Upgraded

Virsto Software announced its Virsto One software will add advanced support for Microsoft datacenter and infrastructure solutions, including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 and Microsoft System Center, through its work with Microsoft as a Microsoft System Center Alliance partner.

The new release, Virsto One v1.2, supports Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Further, Virsto One complements the recently announced Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack 1, which enables greater virtual machine density by optimizing available memory for servers and desktop virtualization deployments. Virsto One has the unique ability to relieve the storage performance bottleneck caused by the virtual machine I/O blender found in all virtualization solutions today, and can as much as triple I/O performance.

"One of the biggest obstacles to fully virtualizing our data center has been I/O performance," said Rob McShinsky, senior systems engineer, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. "We selected Hyper-V for a number of reasons, and coupled with Virsto One we’ve been able to further consolidate servers and save money by minimizing our spending on VM storage. With the tighter Microsoft integration and the capabilities in the System Center solutions, we see Virsto One playing a significantly expanded role in our data center."

Enhanced Support
for Microsoft System Center Technologies
Virsto One v1.2 can reduce virtual machine storage consumption by 90 percent, triple I/O throughput, and provision virtual hard disk (VHD) clones in less than a second. The performance delivered by Virsto One’s unique architecture is ideal for test and development environments, server consolidation, cloud application hosting and centralized desktop virtualization.

New support for Microsoft technologies includes:

• Tight integration with Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 – delivering users with an incredibly fast, best-of-breed data protection solution for Microsoft server applications running on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
• Support for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – faster provisioning with the Rapid Provisioning feature.
• Full implementation of Microsoft VSS – ensuring that users deploying storage compatible with Hyper-V and the Hyper-V VSS Writer can perform a full server backup that helps protect all of the data required to fully restore the server.

Additionally, the new release offers increased usability features for visualizing disk usage and includes a new export feature which complements existing import capabilities, making it easier to migrate data into and out of Virsto One.

"What Hyper-V does exceptionally well is bring the benefits of server virtualization to customers at a low total cost of ownership," said Jim Schwartz, director of virtualization solutions, Server and Tools Business at, Microsoft Corp. "Coupling Dynamic Memory in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V with a solution like Virsto can improve memory usage and disk I/O performance when using dynamic virtual hard disks to deliver even lower TCO. Partner innovation like this is a major reason that we’re focused on providing customers an ecosystem of strategic ISVs to support the growing number of Hyper-V and System Center customers."

Providing Superior VM Density
Virsto One’s unique architecture enables users of Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization to achieve superior levels of VM density and I/O performance. Customer deployments in environments such as test and development show that Virsto One can triple a server’s I/O throughput on both high end and commodity storage hardware.

"Microsoft’s Dynamic Memory capabilities solve memory bottlenecks. Virsto One delivers breakthrough storage performance in virtual environments. The combination of the two is unbeatable," said Mark Davis, CEO of Virsto Software. "The momentum behind Virsto’s partnership with Microsoft, signified by membership in the System Center Alliance, is growing."

About Virsto One
Most data storage technologies deployed with virtual servers today were not designed specifically for virtualization, and were built based on assumptions that are true for physical servers, but are false for a virtual data center. Virsto One is designed to increase the agility of storage in virtual environments and help users take advantage of the opportunities native to virtualization. Initially supporting Hyper-V, Virsto One is architected to be storage- and hypervisor- agnostic and enable users to virtualize storage-intensive workloads, maximize consolidation of server and storage hardware, reduce storage management complexity and significantly reduce overall storage costs.

The new version of Virsto One is now available. Pricing is per server socket. Hyper-V users may download a free 30-day evaluation.