Primary Data’s Universal vSphere Storage APIs Provider Certified for vSphere Virtual Volumes

Primary Data, Inc. announced that its DataSphere data virtualization platform will be designed to serve as a Universal vSphere Storage APIs for ‘Storage Awareness’ storage provider for vSphere Virtual Volumes, one of the most powerful features in vSphere 6.

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vSphere Virtual Volumes provides finer control at a per VM level, allowing the underlying storage to become VM-aware, and simplifies storage management through the use of policies.

By abstracting storage into a global dataspace through data virtualization, DataSphere delivers a breakthrough solution that will allow existing storage to be VMware VASA-compliant.

“By separating the storage data path from the control path, Primary Data’s Universal vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness Provider is designed to enable existing storage resources, from server-side flash, shared and cloud storage to be presented as a single, adaptable, easy-to-manage vSphere Virtual Volumes datastore managed in VMware vCenter Server,” said Simon Robinson, senior analyst, 451 Research.

Once vSphere Virtual Volumes are supported by DataSphere, virtual disks can be moved transparently and non-disruptively across storage types, so that businesses can quickly respond to changing workloads and requirements without costly storage over-provisioning. DataSphere enables datastores to scale up in capacity and performance without disrupting VMs, so that companies can add resources as they grow without any downtime.By integrating with VMware vCenter Server through a single datastore, storage management is simplified, and with automated, policy-based data mobility provided by DataSphere, VMs can be placed on the lowest cost, highest performance storage that meets VM service level objectives.

“With DataSphere serving as a Universal VASA provider that leverages existing storage across a global dataspace, Primary Data accelerates and simplifies the adoption of vSphere Virtual Volumes so that enterprises will be able to deploy powerful new technologies like vSphere 6 as soon as they come to market,” said Lance Smith, CEO, Primary Data. “The combined power of VMware virtualization solutions and the DataSphere platform is a major step toward achieving truly efficient, dynamically adaptive datacenters.“

Unveiled last week, the storage-agnostic DataSphere platform transparently connects diverse storage infrastructure under a single global dataspace, allowing data to easily move between local, shared, and cloud storage. Operating out of band to ensure peak performance and virtually limitless scalability, DataSphere provides a policy-driven method to align application workload intelligence with the capabilities of the underlying storage. This enables the dynamic and non-disruptive movement of data across heterogeneous vendors, types, protocols and locations, delivering substantial cost savings by eliminating the need to manage and overprovision separate storage systems.

“Enterprises have many storage options ranging from high-performance server flash, high-protection SAN and NAS, to low cost, long-term archival cloud solutions, but until now, there has not been a way to leverage these diverse resources across a single global dataspace,” said David Flynn, CTO and co-founder, Primary Data. “At VMworld 2015 US, we’re showcasing how data can finally move freely across storage systems without application interruption.“

DataSphere will be available this fall as software or integrated in a virtual or dual-node, highly available hardware appliance,