DataCore announced today that SoftBank Telecom has deployed DataCore SANmelody as the storage virtualization platform to build, verify and test its disaster recovery process over a wide-area virtual infrastructure.

For the deployment and verification test, SoftBank Telecom established a connection between its data centers in Tokyo and Osaka (approximately 500 kilometers apart) via Infiniband, and configured wide-area virtual systems through the virtualization of servers, storage, and I/O.

In doing so, it successfully transferred the virtual server and virtual storage environments on the Tokyo side to its counterparts on the Osaka side automatically and at high speed. DataCore SANmelody provided the critical storage virtualization and storage mirroring software functionality needed to do remote site replication.

SANmelody provided the wide-area virtual volume duplication, data synchronization using iSCSI, and wide-area automatic failover and fail-back functions by enabling the virtual storage and VMware ESX virtual machines to work together across the entire infrastructure.

Specific benefits of SANmelody that were verified in the recent infrastructure-wide disaster recovery testing include:

Providing wide-area storage virtualization and remote site storage mirroring.
SANmelody's high speed network-wide mirroring and high-availability (HA) services were used to do the virtual volume duplication between Tokyo and Osaka. By linking these capabilities to the VMware ESX HA function, it became possible to provide automatic failover and fail-back configurations by way of the standard functionality of the virtualization software only, and it greatly facilitated the design and operation of the disaster recovery procedures and measures.

Supporting the use of wide-area Infiniband and iSCSI.
Data synchronization was performed on wide-area Infiniband via an iSCSI connection on a virtual NIC (Network Interface Connection) by using Xsigo Systems virtual I/O technology. The SANmelody's flexibility and hardware independent, open storage virtualization technology made it the ideal virtual storage basis to support a combination of virtual servers and virtual I/O.

Enabling a reduction in the costs of doing disaster recovery as well as a reduction in terms of complex work needed for customization ' previously obstacles to the introduction and operation of the new systems.

'It is clear that the combination of virtual storage and virtual servers in an overall virtual infrastructure make it much easier to do disaster recovery,' states Peter Thompson, Vice President of Asia Pacific, DataCore Software. 'SoftBank Telecom successfully completed an impressive, large-scale verification test of their disaster recovery measures using SANmelody to virtualize their storage over a wide-area, Infiniband-based virtual infrastructure. Virtual infrastructures make disaster recovery practical.'

The project confirmed that the HA functions of SANmelody and VMware ESX operated over wide areas spanning distances of over 500 kilometers. In addition, the collaboration with virtual I/O technology provided by Xsigo Systems will enable DataCore to better meet customer needs for iSCSI use over long distances, which is anticipated to increase in the future, and for the effective use of high bandwidth networks like Infiniband.