Software-Defined Storage for VMware Virtual SAN

Nexenta has announced the availability (GA) of its NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN™. The solution, which simplifies and streamlines the provisioning and management of file services on top of VMware Virtual SAN™, allows users to create a hyper-converged solution without the need for costly external storage arrays
Designed for VMware vSphere® environments, VMware Virtual SAN is the first policy-driven storage product that automates manual storage tasks, delivering a more efficient and cost-effective operational model. Taking advantage of the VM-level storage policies, NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN, sits on top of the Virtual SAN automatically and dynamically matching the systems requirements with the correct storage.

NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN utilises local Virtual SAN storage in servers to deliver high performance NFS and SMB file services to Virtual Machines and Virtual Desktops (VDI), all managed through a single VMware vCentre™ console. Combining Nexenta's SDS solution with VMware Virtual SAN enables read/write caching using server-side flash, optimising the I/O data path to deliver better performance than a virtual appliance or an external device. The hyper-converged solution also has an extremely low TCO, because Nexenta’s SDS solution is at least a third of the price of deploying an external NAS solution.

“3rd platform computing requirements are driving significant evolution in data centre infrastructure requirements, driving the demand for increased agility,” said Eric Burgener, research director at IDC. “Software-defined hyper-converged solutions are raising to prominence as a very flexible, scalable, and extremely economical alternative to shared storage solutions for certain workloads, and VMware Virtual SAN promises to be a key player in this market. With NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN, customers now can deploy the VMware solution on top of Nexenta’s high performance and well integrated NFS and SMB file services to provide additional software-defined storage options for both virtual server and virtual desktop environments.”

“We are focused on helping enterprises simplify, scale and automate their entire IT environments,” said Gaetan Castelein, senior director, product management, Software-Defined Storage, VMware “Nexenta’s latest SDS solution, NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN, complements our VMware Virtual SAN™, creating a hyper-converged storage infrastructure for the Software-Defined Data Centre.”

"NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN™ supports our goal of helping enterprises unlock the potential of their storage and ultimately their data centres. Working closely with VMware we have created a solution that offers users a hyper-converged solution that can granularly scale-up or scale-out your storage environment giving users the flexibility to grow their storage environment without costly over provisioning. It's hardware-agnostic and it’s very simple, easy-to-use design increases operational efficiency, saving enterprises both time and money,” said Tarkan Maner, Chairman and CEO of Nexenta.

Other features of NexentaConnect for VMware Virtual SAN include:
· Easily provisions file services (NFSv3, NFSv4, SMB) on Virtual SAN within minutes
· Integrates management through VMware vCentre
· Provides Security and Domain integration, AD with AAA and Kerberos support
· Delivers capacity savings using inline compression and deduplication
· Can store all files needed to maintain the virtual infrastructure
· Provides IO acceleration with inline compression and advanced caching logic
· Enhances performance and health monitoring
· Delivers folder and volume level snapshots, replication and backup capabilities for DR scenarios
· Maintains data integrity during various stress, network/disk/host recovery
· Is 100% compatible with VMware HA and DRS
· Is serviceable via Rest APIs
· Is validated for VDI workloads up to thousands of users
· Leverages VSAN data protection and high availability