Both Barrels Communications Ltd

FalconStor today announced that Diamond Point International (DPI) has joined its UK reseller channel. DPI is the European distributor of Violin Memory, with which FalconStor announced the FalconStor® NSS SAN Accelerator flash memory-based storage system in March 2010. DPI will resell this solution as well as other solutions from FalconStor’s data protection portfolio.

“Diamond Point is very excited to become a FalconStor partner” said John Vaines, managing director at DPI. “As the main distributor for Violin Memory in Europe, I can see great advantages marrying the two technologies together. The FalconStor NSS gateway gives us a certified connection to a virtualised environment and a level of sophistication that power users of Violin high-performance solid state storage arrays have come to expect.”

Thomas Barrett, regional director for northern Europe, FalconStor, said: “Using FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator, a solid-state layer of 1 percent of a SAN´s total storage capacity will increase overall SAN performance by more than 100 percent. With solid state disk prices falling, we think this is a solution that more and more customers will look at in order to squeeze more value and performance, cost-effectively, from their SANs. Working with DPI is an entirely logical step for both parties, and we look forward to a productive relationship.”

Diamond Point International is a distributor and manufacturer of computer equipment and GPS devices, headquartered in Rochester, Kent, UK, and servicing a mix of OEMs and system integrators.

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Notes to editors
In March 2010, FalconStor and Violin announced FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator, the first flash-memory-based storage system that simultaneously accelerates reads and writes for mission-critical applications as well as general SAN performance.

FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator leverages solid-state storage as an on-demand dynamic storage tier to accelerate both writes and reads with two key features: FalconStor’s SafeCache™ and HotZone® technology respectively. Either solid-state disks or solid-state memory resources can be dedicated to specific workloads or can be global to the whole storage environment, allowing efficient allocation of the solid-state storage cache. The intelligent algorithms of SafeCache and HotZone features accelerate and protect applications where performance enhancements are needed the most.

One of Europe’s largest accounting firms, Mazars, has deployed FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS), powered by FalconStor IPStor® software, to strengthen its storage capacity.

Delivered in conjunction with FalconStor partner Intercept IT, the FalconStor Network Storage Server provides cutting edge disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities, while retaining Mazars’ existing storage infrastructure, maximising the return on its existing storage investment.

Mazars’ requirements for its new storage solution included deployment of storage to VMware as well as new applications such as improved stability of the storage; replacement of the existing disaster recovery (DR) plan; provision of business continuity (BC) in the event of disk failure; simplification of storage management; and reuse of existing storage infrastructure.

Intercept IT and FalconStor met these requirements by assisting Mazars with the selection of the relevant optional services available as part of the FalconStor NSS solution:

• Snapshot Director for VMware ensures the transactional consistency of VMware applications
• Synchronous Mirroring option protects the RAID subsystem, ensuring storage stability
• Replication option provides DR capabilities
• TimeMark® option delivers Business Continuity by creating scheduled or on-demand point-in-time snapshots
• Storage Service Enabler option enables seamless migration of data to the newly configured storage system
• Application-aware Snapshot Agents ensure the transactional consistency for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL servers

A total of 4TB of storage serving 20 HP servers is now managed and protected by the FalconStor NSS solution – a volume reported as doubling annually. A virtual and service-enabled fibre channel SAN spans multiple sites, replacing direct-attached storage (DAS). Two NSS servers in an active/active configuration replicate to a single, remote, disaster recovery NSS server. DotHill SANet II and Xyratex storage subsystems provide the storage capacity.

Jayson Dudley, service delivery manager at Mazars, said, “We wanted to lay down solid foundations for our growing data protection and storage management needs. The FalconStor NSS solution delivered all the functionality we required, managed by a single console. We’ve also been quite proactive in deploying VMware, but a virtual platform, like a physical one, needs protection. FalconStor Snapshot Director for VMware VI3 is a cost-effective, easily-deployable way to ensure complete application data integrity for our Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server virtual machines running on VMware ESX with the FalconStor NSS.”

Steve Whitfield, sales manager at Intercept IT, said: “Tackling so many issues in a single deployment could have been expensive as well as complicated. But FalconStor not only made it straightforward to implement, its lack of vendor lock-in also enabled us to re-use the customer’s existing hardware, which reduced the overall project expenditure for the customer.”

Thomas Barrett, Northern Region Director, FalconStor, said, ”This project demonstrates that companies do not need to shy away from simultaneously tackling all the issues in their storage infrastructure. The nature of the FalconStor NSS optional services means that there is little additional headache involved in addressing everything at once.”

About Mazars
Mazars is an integrated, independent and international firm, specialising in audit, accounting, tax and advisory services. Based on its European heart and its international dimension, Mazars has built a unique integrated partnership and can rely on the skills of 8,000 professionals to fully operate in 42 countries around the world.

About Intercept IT
Intercept IT is one of the UK’s leading Solution Providers, whose consultants are acknowledged as experts in their fields by many leading vendors, such as Microsoft, HP, Citrix, VMware and Softricity. The business is focused on enabling organisations to harness the power of centralisation and virtualisation technologies, in order to reduce IT management time and cost, whilst providing an enhanced user experience. By empowering a workforce with location and device independent access to the information and services they require, businesses are able to make faster, smarter decisions, leading to increased productivity and measurable operational benefits. Centralisation, virtualisation and optimisation are the three core pillars around which the business is built.