Virtualized storage solution protects IT infrastructure and provides effective disaster recovery and storage management

READING, England, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced that together with DataCore's trained and accredited partner, Vcentral, it has installed SANmelody(TM) as the storage area network (SAN) virtual infrastructure at FUJIFILM UK.

"Consolidation was becoming increasingly necessary to stem the pressure on the team having to backup, manage and ultimately move redundant servers," stated Manish Amriwala, network and desktop support team manager, FUJIFILM UK. "We needed a dedicated SAN and virtualized servers that would accommodate our growth and transition us from the restrictions of disk space provided by direct-attached storage."

After considering the results of a full cost of ownership report provided by Vcentral, which predicted that FUJIFILM UK could have an effective, robust, virtualized environment using only two-thirds of the hardware whilst also providing a watertight disaster recovery (DR) solution, FUJIFILM UK deployed three DataCore SANmelody 2.0 Fibre Channel SANs running on HP ML370 G5 machines with 12 x 146Gb SAS disks on each machine. Two SANmelody servers act as identical mirrors in active mode, while one is located in a separate DR site five miles from the main data center and is connected using a 10Mb LAN extension link. In this configuration, SANmelody robustly supports the four VMware servers and twelve virtual servers and applications running on the network and provides a full DR solution.

Rollout commenced in March 2008 and within two months all major applications were transferred onto the 12 virtual servers. The network carries 3.4 TB or 1.7 TB mirrored of data - with a further 50% expansion remaining available. Installation was a seamless and relatively painless process noted Manish. "Within just 2-3 hours we had an operational business continuity and disaster recovery solution up and running," he said. "Now maintenance and allocating storage is much easier. Using SANmelody in a mirrored configuration, patches and new applications and servers can be easily uploaded; as one SANmelody box can be taken down without any interruption to business applications as the other SANmelody takes over."

In addition, there have been notable financial benefits in terms of cost savings managing the new virtualized data center environment. The team has equated the reduction of costs for the entire virtualization campaign to be roughly GBP 50,000 - GBP 80,000 per annum - in terms of reduction of man days for management and maintenance.

"What FUJIFILM UK together with Vcentral have installed is a highly resilient, cost-effective, stable onsite SAN solution that has allowed for full disaster recovery - and they are reaping the benefits of a hardware-agnostic, flexible and 'portable' software solution," commented Keith Joseph, regional manager, DataCore Software.

About FUJIFILM UK

FUJIFILM London is the UK subsidiary of Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd of Japan. The Company was first incorporated as a limited company in 1976, having previously been the subsidiary of FUJIFILM Germany. Our Head Office is in Swiss Cottage, north London, and we have extensive distribution and technical operations to the southeast of Bedford.

FUJIFILM UK has a staff of around 450, of which the vast majority are British. From quite modest beginnings, our business has become very strong in the UK. We have been a market leader for more than 4 years with our FinePix range of digital cameras. We have also supplied almost three quarters of the new digital Frontier minilabs that are now appearing in many high street shops. Our core product, photographic film, is still regarded by enthusiast and professional photographers alike as the ultimate in product quality. Even in the less well-known field of computer media, we are a leader, with our ATOMM coating technology creating mould-breaking products like the 200 GB LTO(TM) data cartridges and, coming soon, our NANO CUBIC technology offering incredible one-terabyte storage capacities for data cartridges and three gigabytes for floppy disks. http://www.fujifilm.co.uk

About Vcentral

Vcentral specialise in the design and delivery of innovative business solutions which help organisations streamline processes, optimise existing assets and save money. By providing vendor independent advice and expertise in all areas of virtualisation, from desktops and their applications, to servers and storage, Vcentral tailor solutions to meet the individual requirements and budgets of today's enterprise. Working with Vcentral our customers are finding new ways of empowering technology for high profile projects such as business continuity and desktop management, to improve business agility and reduce cost of ownership. For more information visit us at http://www.vcentral.co.uk.

About DataCore Software

DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization SAN software, fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services with the agility and savings of hardware independence. DataCore lowers the cost and complexity of IT by making storage efficient, fast, flexible, fail-safe and virtual. DataCore's portable storage server software simplifies and automates capacity expansion and centralizes storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, MacOS and NetWare operating systems as well as hypervisors from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and other suppliers. DataCore is privately held and its corporate headquarters are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, call 877-780-5111 or visit http://www.datacore.com.

DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANmelody are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE DataCore Software