3PAR offers rapid online recovery of virtual machines
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3PAR, a provider of utility storage technology, has unveiled plug-ins to VMware software that will let information technology managers improve management of virtual machines and related storage resources.
Organizations deploying virtual server infrastructures can often overlook the storage aspects of virtualization. This can hamper storage availability and utilization.
To that end, 3PAR, a provider of utility storage technology, has unveiled plug-ins to virtualization software from VMware that will let information technology managers improve protection, recovery and management of virtual machines and related storage resources.
Federal agencies that have both companies’ products include U.S. Coast Guard, the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Office of Personnel Management.
3PAR is giving users more control over their virtual environments with new software plugs-in for VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server. The 3PAR plug-ins provide VM-aware snapshots, online recovery and virtual machine-to-storage mapping, said Vish Mulchand, 3PAR’s director of software product marketing.
The 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter Server gives administrators better visibility into their storage resources from the vCenter management console, Mulchand said.
As storage moves across a virtual environment, administrators can lose visibility, he noted. Server administrators need to see what is happening in their environment from their perspective, not from a storage manager’s viewpoint, he said.
As a result, the plug-in enhances visibility into storage resources and gives a precise view of how individual virtual machines are mapped to datastores and individual 3PAR InServ Storage Server volumes.
3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere lets administrators rapidly provision new virtual machines from VM copies and recover backup VM data online. The technology takes multiple disk-based snapshots of the data. Snapshots are available on demand, instantly, in read-only and/or read-write form.
"As storage networking and storage virtualization have become more sophisticated, users have started to demand more refined tools and processes,” said Jeff Byrne, an analyst with the Taneja Group.
3PAR has eliminated some performance and management challenges administrators face with its snapshot and online recovery capabilities, he said.
The plug-in for VMware vCenter Server, part of the management console, is available at no charge. The Recover Manager plug-in is optional. Pricing starts at $3,000.
3PAR InForm software includes both the operating system and additional software products that run on the 3PAR InServ Storage Server and on Microsoft Windows, Linux, or Unix hosts.