Abracadabra! A new release of Virsto One
Posted Monday, September 13, 2010 in News 0 comments
Unfortunately, I live life as a muggle*.
Arthur C. Clarke's third Law of Prediction states, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” When we tell customers what our software can do to improve storage management in virtual server environments – for example, when we say we can cut VM storage hardware costs by over 50% while improving total I/O throughput by 100% – they think there is no way we can do this without magic.
Every once in a while (mostly when I wish I am not a muggle) I get the urge to make magic predictions of my own. Today, I predict, you will LOVE the new release of VIrsto One.
What's new?
Increasing Virsto alignment with Microsoft
We are expanding Virsto One support for three Microsoft technologies.
- Integration with Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 (DPM) – incredibly fast data protection
- Support for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) – faster provisioning speed with Rapid Provisioning
- Expanded Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) – now supports both writer and provider models
The combination of Virsto One and these Microsoft technologies allow customers an unprecedented level of flexibility and management for their virtual environments. Virsto One now seamlessly integrates into DPM Protection Groups, allowing users to backup and restore virtual machines from Virsto One vDisks. Using the Rapid Provisioning option within VMM, Virsto One users can provision virtual machines (VMs) using no-dupe clones, without waiting for a bit-for-bit copy of the .vhd. The writer and provider model ensure that VSS can perform a full server backup to help protect all data required to fully restore the server.
We are committed to the Microsoft virtualization platform and will continue to deliver capabilities that can make your Hyper-V deployment higher performance, lower cost, and simpler to manage.
Joining the System Center Alliance
We're also announcing that we've joined Microsoft's System Center Alliance. This expansion of our partnership with Microsoft on the technology and marketing fronts will help Microsoft and Virsto deliver superior joint solutions for public and private clouds built on Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization.
This expanded relationship is on top of Virsto's inclusion as a charter member of Microsoft's BizSpark One alliance for venture capital-backed startups seen by Microsoft as having the highest potential. We're proud to be working with Microsoft on multiple fronts.
Other cool new features
Version 1.2 of Virsto One has improved ability to visualize disk usage. We've also added an export feature to complement our existing import capability for simple migration of virtual hard disks into and out of Virsto One.
Oh, by the way, v1.2 is about 15% faster overall than our v1.0 from 6 months ago. Normally, a 15% performance boost is a big deal. But when you're already tripling I/O throughput, people don't get so excited about another 15%! Still, our engineers are rightly proud of the code optimizations that are in the latest version. The next version, parts of which are in QA testing already, are significantly faster still, so nobody should think we're finished with the performance enhancements.
Performance, performance, performance
Did someone mention performance? Since long before our very first beta release of Virsto One, we have been focused on pushing the envelope of I/O performance to relieve the bottleneck caused by the VM I/O Blender. The graph below is a sample of how Virsto One can obliterate the VM I/O Blender for Hyper-V.
“The answer, my portenting friend, is…”
While this graph shows our intrinsic contribution to Hyper-V, it does beg the questions, “Oh Great Carnac, do other hypervisors suffer from the VM I/O Blender? And will Virsto One ever solve this and other VM storage problems for other hypervisors?”
As to the first question, the answer is an emphatic yes. You needn't be clarvoyant to know this. It is easy to show that the VM I/O Blender impacts VMware, Xen, all the hypervisors.
The biggest difference between the virtualization platforms is that one of them – Hyper-V – has a very high performance, hardware independent, and inexpensive solution: Virsto One.
As to the second question, I will make those magic predictions later.
Staying in the here and now, Virsto One v1.2 is not magic. Merely very clever software.
To learn more about the updated Virsto One, check out the official press release or participate in our webinar.
* That's "non-magic folk" for those of you who are not familiar with the adventures of Harry Potter.
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