Both Barrels Communications Ltd

Delivers 10x storage performance improvement while providing integrated, multi-tier data protection for virtual desktops

FalconStor Software today announced FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) SAN Accelerator for VMware View™, an SSD-enhanced storage solution that increases the performance of VMware virtual desktop environments while delivering integrated, multi-tier data protection. FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View performs backup and recovery for the entire virtual desktop environment and for each virtual desktop – and, for the first time, enables integrated self-service file recovery for individual virtual desktop users.

VMware View delivers tremendous efficiencies in the deployment and management of enterprise users’ desktop and laptop computers. Virtual desktop operation and management can be enhanced by storage capabilities to maximize performance, availability and efficiency. FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View dramatically enhances the efficiency of virtual desktop management throughout the virtual desktop lifecycle – accelerating virtual desktop booting, login, operation, logoff, patch/update and security management through 10x storage performance improvement.

Virtual desktop deployments also require advanced data protection and storage efficiency features for storing desktop images, user data and settings that need to be backed up and recoverable in the event of a system failure, user error or data center disaster. The FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View employs snapshots, thin clones, replication and file-level protection to enable a three-tier data protection service:

- entire VMware View environment – comprehensive, enterprise-class continuous data protection that allows IT managers to recover locally or from a DR site in the event of system-wide failure

- all VMware View user data repositories – complete data protection for user data located within the VMware View environment and redirected folders on a separate NAS appliance

- self-service file-level recovery – users can recover their own individual files as needed, saving storage administrators significant time and expense.

“Virtualization in general and virtualization of desktops in particular have amplified I/O unpredictably as read/write I/O storms occur frequently without warning; the only solution to date has been to add more disk drives,” said David Vellante, chief research advocate, Wikibon. “Wikibon has been emphasizing the requirement for different architectures to exploit the potential of flash to improve I/O performance. We are very pleased with the innovation that FalconStor has shown with its flash-on- storage-controller implementation, which is much more efficient for VDI than SSDs. The FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator neatly exploits the VMware I/O separation improvements to offer a solution that combines low-cost SATA with 2 to 3 percent high-performance flash as a cache that can adapt in real-time. Wikibon believes this is a best-of-breed solution for high-performance workloads.”

“The rapidly adopted paradigm shift of virtual servers and desktops ushered in by VMware’s innovation has created the need for storage environments with integrated data protection designed for the new virtual data center,” said Jim McNiel, chief strategy officer for FalconStor. “Virtual environments not only demand flexible, scalable virtual storage environments, but also require backup and DR systems that work with the unique characteristics of virtual machines. We designed the FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View™ to deliver the kind of storage environment that virtual desktops require – improving performance and data protection in one elegant solution.”

Pricing and availability
The FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware View is available immediately through FalconStor’s network of channel partners. The average cost for an implementation of up to 5,000 users is $35 per virtual desktop.

About FalconStor Software
FalconStor Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC) is the market leader in disk-based data protection. FalconStor delivers proven, comprehensive data protection solutions that facilitate the continuous availability of business-critical data with speed, integrity and simplicity. The Company’s TOTALLY Open™ technology solutions, built upon the award-winning IPStor® platform, include the industry leading Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication, Continuous Data Protector (CDP), File-interface Deduplication System (FDS), and Network Storage Server (NSS), each enabled with WAN-optimized replication for disaster recovery and remote office protection, and the HyperFS™ file system. FalconStor products are available as OEM or branded solutions from industry leaders, including Acer, Data Direct Networks, Dynamic Solutions International, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi Data Systems, Huawei, Pillar Data Systems, SGI, SeaChange and Spectra Logic and are deployed by thousands of customers worldwide, from small businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises.

FalconStor is headquartered in Melville, N.Y., with offices throughout Europe and the Asia Pacific region. FalconStor is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information, visit http://www.falconstor.com.

FalconStor today introduced a low-priced virtualisation promotion in order to increase reseller margins on smaller virtualisation projects.

“Virtualisation starts to make sense as soon as a company reaches just three physical servers,” explains Philippe Bruiant, director of channel sales operations, FalconStor EMEA. “And, when you consider how common it is to have a file server, print server, email server, network server or a database server, that actually means a heck of a lot of businesses.”

“However, many of these businesses will not be interested in zero downtime, or fault tolerance, or disaster recovery. Consequently, projects for this sort of customer tend to be of low value, generating low margins for resellers – and this makes them unattractive projects. This highly competitive offer is for resellers that are willing to virtualise the servers and storage of customers with limited requirements and provides the resellers with ‘instant margin’,” Bruiant said.

Until June 15th, the FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) Virtual Appliance with a one terabyte storage capacity license is priced at €800, a reduction of €400, on proof of purchase of a VMware vSphere™ 4 Essentials Bundle. VMware is currently offering its vSphere™ 4 Essentials Bundle at US$495 instead of US$995. Products are available from VMware- and FalconStor-accredited channel partners respectively. [See Notes to editors for more details.]

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About VMware vSphere™ Essentials
About VMware VSphere™ Essentials provides an all-in-one solution for small businesses to consolidate and manage many application workloads while reducing hardware and operating costs with a low up-front investment.

About FalconStor NSS
FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance transforms internal disk storage of servers (DAS) into an iSCSI SAN. A cost-effective, highly available infrastructure for the small/medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and remote office/branch offices (ROBOs), it enables VMware‘s advanced features yet needs no additional storage network investment. All FalconStor solutions come in three deployment options: virtual appliance, storage appliance, or gateway appliance (connects to third-party storage devices).

Note to editors
Both products in the bundle are available from VMware- and FalconStor-accredited channel partners, respectively. Both products must be purchased within 10 working days of each other. Proof of VMware vSphere purchase will be asked by FalconStor. Offer price valid for orders received by June 15, 2010.

FalconStor Software, Inc. today announced that The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea has completed an important upgrade to its storage management infrastructure with FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS).

The upgrade to FalconStor NSS is significant because it enables the Borough to leverage its existing storage arrays for use with VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager in its VMware environment in order to provide automated disaster recovery. FalconStor NSS serves as the gateway for storage virtualization and replication, utilizing the Borough´s storage arrays and provisioning them as virtual disks to the VMware environment, enabling VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager in their multivendor SAN infrastructure.

“Upgrading to FalconStor NSS means we have gained the functionality of VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager, which we really needed,” said Barry Goodall, IT manager for The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. “But we’re still entirely vendor neutral when it comes to choosing replacement storage arrays, some of which are entering their end-of-life phase now. This puts us in a stronger negotiating position with respect to the hardware vendors, saving taxpayers’ money without compromising the quality of our IT and storage infrastructure.”

“The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea is realizing the promise of server and storage virtualization through their use of FalconStor NSS with VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager,” said Thomas Barrett, vice president for Northern European Sales & Operations for FalconStor. “They are now reaping the benefits, maximizing their system and data availability and improving their physical resource utilization.”

Other benefits of upgrading to FalconStor NSS includes access to advanced features, such as thin provisioning, and performance-enhancing benefits, such as true active-active failover for high data availability, leading to improved storage performance.

The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea first deployed FalconStor software solutions in 2005 and has remained a customer continuously since then. More than 20 terabytes of data are now under the management of its FalconStor NSS system. The solution manages both SAN and NAS, and replicates data between the Council’s primary and DR data centres.

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New solutions for heterogeneous disaster recovery, storage virtualisation management and a deduplication virtual appliance expand FalconStor’s support for VMware vSphere 4

FalconStor today announced comprehensive offerings for supporting, enhancing and extending data protection in VMware vSphere™ 4 environments with new solution introductions and expansions. The initiative encompasses continuous availability, virtual storage management and a breadth of virtual appliance solutions – all three areas critical to maximizing the business value of virtual infrastructure deployments in heterogeneous environments.

At VMworld 2009, FalconStor is introducing new storage management and new disaster recovery (DR) extensions for VMware vCenter™ Server and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager that provide virtual machine storage provisioning as well as automated failback of remote virtual machines to the primary data center. Additionally, FalconStor is demonstrating its new FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System Virtual Appliance (FDS VA) for easy-to-deploy data deduplication for VMware vSphere 4 environments.

“Managing separate point data protection solutions for a physical data center and for a virtual environment is challenging, complex and can be error prone,” said Dave Russell, Research Vice President, Storage Technologies and Strategies, at Gartner. “Companies should seriously consider storage virtualization and data protection solutions that are tightly integrated and can provide the same level of services for both physical and virtual infrastructures.”

Continuous availability: added features for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
FalconStor solutions provide continuous availability of physical and virtual as well as local and remote resources, giving IT managers comprehensive business continuity and DR coverage. FalconStor’s two new DR extensions for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager automate failover of physical and virtual hosts to the DR site and provide automated failback support of virtualized servers from the DR site to the primary data center:

• FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) – Extends VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager functionality across the data center by adding support for physical-to-virtual machine failover. This unique implementation dramatically speeds site-level failover and reduces DR costs.
• FalconStor® Failback Manager for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager – Lets VMware vSphere™ 4 users automate the failback process to the primary data center in a single step once the restoration of data center services are complete. VMware and FalconStor customers can experience a single simplified function, accelerating return to normal operations and minimizing human error.

“With these new solutions for VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager, FalconStor continues its tradition of adding value in the area of data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery,” said Bernie Wu, vice president of business development for FalconStor Software. “The combination of our respective solutions is designed to lower costs and remove the barriers to deploy continuous availability in a VMware vSphere™ 4-enabled data center of any size.”

These new features complement FalconStor® Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, which integrates FalconStor’s replication capability with Site Recovery Manager. In addition, FalconStor’s replication technology provides replication and bandwidth efficiency over the WAN and supports heterogeneous infrastructures that require replication between multi-vendor SAN/DAS environments. FalconStor and VMware customers now have an alternative replication and DR solution when dealing with a mix of SAN/DAS vendors between primary and DR sites. Customers will find that Falconstor has built a complete set of DR solutions around the VMware platform that fits their budget and protection needs.

Continuous availability: added data protection, performance and efficiency
FalconStor solutions provide VMware customers with complete end-to-end continuous availability and backup protection as a critical component of the virtual data center. FalconStor enables backup optimization by completely eliminating the backup window and offloading backup operations from VMware production environments. In addition, FalconStor’s deduplication technology reduces the backup infrastructure needed to support VMware-enabled backup applications.

Additional FalconStor solutions for continuous availability include:

• Newly introduced FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System Virtual Appliance (FDS VA) – Optimizes VMware backup infrastructure by eliminating redundancies in VMDK files and significantly reducing the storage capacity required to support VMware backup applications. This storage capacity optimization solution allows for longer retention time of backup online while reducing infrastructure costs thus improving the recoverability of VMware environments.
• FalconStor® HyperTrac™ VMware Edition – Provides impact-free backup of VMware environments through its tight integration with VMware Consolidated Backup and the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. It removes any performance impact on production environments by offloading the backup process of VMware virtual disk files (VMDKs) to a standby environment allowing virtual machine backup to proceed unimpeded and to scale to the largest VMware environments.

New FalconStor virtual storage management integration with VMware vCenter Server
FalconStor® Storage Manager for VMware vCenter™ Server extends FalconStor’s advanced storage management capabilities into VMware vCenter Server as a plug-in tool. Users can now create virtual machines with data stores allocated from storage managed by FalconStor software within the VMware vCenter management client. The FalconStor Storage Manager also enables users’ easy access to key features such as virtual machine replication, thin provisioning and storage migration. VMware and FalconStor customers can now leverage FalconStor’s multi-vendor storage virtualization management tools within VMware vCenter Server to further reduce storage management costs. FalconStor NSS provides primary storage virtualization well-suited for VMware vSphere™ 4 and is VMware Ready Certified. FalconStor NSS offers built-in snapshot data protection and mirroring and integrates with popular applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Oracle Database running in virtual machines.

New FalconStor FDS VA creates breadth of virtual appliance solutions
FalconStor virtual appliances now support VMDirectPath I/O from VMware to provide high-performance storage access that increases the throughput of FalconStor NSS VA running on the VMware platform by tenfold. With the introduction of the FalconStor® FDS VA, FalconStor now offers its entire storage solution portfolio as a virtual appliance that runs on VMware ESX and VMware ESXi, including FalconStor® Virtual Tape Library (VTL), FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP) and FalconStor NSS. This extensive solution coverage brings a high level of storage virtualization and data protection services to VMware vSphere 4 customers.

FalconStor FDS VA includes a NAS interface allowing native backup tools provided by Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Oracle Database to send disk-based backup files to FalconStor FDS VA for efficient deduplication. Unlike other deduplication technology, no modifications to VMware virtual machine guest operating systems or applications are required. FalconStor’s deduplication virtual appliance hosted on VMware vSphere™ 4 participates in FalconStor’s global deduplication technology, allowing remote and branch offices to offer thin replication to a centrally based FalconStor FDS repository saving valuable WAN resources.

FalconStor and VMware
As a VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program member, FalconStor has developed unique technologies to create value for VMware environments. Customers who are evaluating storage solutions for VMware environments should take into consideration such features as storage replication with built-in WAN acceleration, agnostic storage virtualization and next-generation backup/recovery for customers that use VMware vSphere™ 4.

Additionally, FalconStor integrates its solutions with the VMware vStorage capabilities and interfaces provided by the VMware platform to ensure a better end-user experience. FalconStor is an active innovator and contributor to the VMware partner ecosystem, with products available from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace, products that integrate with VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager, VMware vCenter Server, and Storage Virtualization Device and Storage Array certifications.

Enabling customers to transform their existing direct-attached storage into an iSCSI virtual SAN appliance for VMware environments, FalconStor Software today announced FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) Virtual Appliance for VMware ESX.

FalconStor NSS is an enterprise-class software storage solution that offers storage virtualization, provisioning, management and data protection. The FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance is built for VMware ESX and enables the creation of iSCSI SANs based on the server’s internal storage resources. This makes it an ideal solution for SMB as well as remote branch offices of large enterprises that are consolidating servers and storage with virtual machines and virtual SAN appliances.

Using application-aware snapshot and replication technology, FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance protects a broad range of critical business applications running on VMware virtual machines, including: Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server and SharePoint Server; Oracle Database; Lotus Notes; Sybase Database Management; IBM DB2; and more.
The FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance has been validated by the VMware Ready Virtual Appliance program, assuring customers of its full compatibility with VMware.

By offering trial downloads and a free limited version of FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance, FalconStor is helping to accelerate adoption of virtualization throughout the small-to-medium sized business (SMB) and remote-office markets.

“FalconStor is delivering on its continued commitment to providing a complete line of virtual storage and data protection solutions for VMware environments in all segments of the market,” said Bernie Wu, FalconStor vice president of business development. “FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance extends our enterprise-class storage offering to the remote office and SMB markets, and the free version evangelizes the benefits of virtualization to a much broader audience.”

“FalconStor is providing customers with an easy, affordable virtualization path to secure their applications,” said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances, for VMware. “VMware is making huge strides in lowering the cost of managing valuable IT resources for enterprise IT infrastructures. With the FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance, SMB customers can easily deploy cost-effective iSCSI virtual SAN appliances, enabling them to enjoy the advantages of virtual storage and VMware flexibility and resiliency.”

FalconStor’s entire virtual appliance suite is available on the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace, the industry’s largest online directory of virtual appliances with more than 900 available for download. Virtual appliance versions of FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS), FalconStor Continuous Data Protector™ (CDP), and FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with de-duplication are available for download on the Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

A trial version of FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance can be downloaded from the FalconStor website and from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace as of September 16th 2008. This full-featured version includes patented FalconStor® MicroScan™ replication technology with built-in WAN acceleration and high-availability storage. FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance has gained VMware Ready validation, assuring customers that it is fully compatibility with VMware Infrastructure.

In addition, a free, limited version of FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance can be downloaded from September 16th 2008. The FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance free edition is a pre-built, pre-configured, and ready-to-run virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX and VMware ESXi.