DataCore announced that Integral Networks will deliver its storage virtualization solutions. Integral Networks provides total network consulting, IT management, outsourcing and computer service to companies nationwide. The real draw that Integral Networks had to DataCore was the fact that DataCore's SANmelody serves as the backbone of an organization's IT infrastructure. "We came into contact with DataCore because I was starting to do more with virtualization," said Bryan Badger, senior systems engineer, Integral Networks. Another DataCore customer, Span the Wan, manages the data center for Integral Networks and was responsible for the introduction between the two companies. "DataCore customer Span the Wan not only put me on to DataCore but was a catalyst in getting us interested in the virtualization space in general. The timing was perfect because I was tired of buying all of these stupid servers," added Badger.

Integral Networks was also becoming interested in VMware on the server side and learned that in order to get the most out of VMware, companies need a SAN backend to do advanced functions like DRS as well as VMotion. "The price point of DataCore is great. Its SANmelody product is solid and Integral Networks' base infrastructure is running it in our data center courtesy of Span the Wan," noted Badger. "We were so impressed with it in production that literally within a month, Integral Networks became an authorized DataCore reseller."

Integral Networks is now in the process of helping clients like JMR Construction gain the benefits of going virtual. "We needed Integral Networks' help in coming up with a better approach to deal with our growth of servers and storage and we are pleased with the outcome and cost savings from using DataCore and VMware," commented Ron Rivard, vice president, JMR Construction. "The combination increased productivity by making a small number of servers and storage devices do the job that took many to do - making it much more feasible than the alternative hardware-centric approach."

As a DataCore user themselves, Integral Networks runs SANmelody in production running three VMware ESX hosts and thirty-six servers right now. The company's entire infrastructure runs on these currently - fifteen of the total number of servers run Integral's business. The other servers belong to Integral's business clients. In addition, Integral is involved in the VMware virtual hosting provider program. The firm hosts domain controllers, file servers, Exchange servers and terminal servers for its clients in a VMware environment - all supported by DataCore. "We are hosting clients' full infrastructures out of our data center - virtually. SANmelody supports their storage needs and it is the backbone of our system," explained Badger.

"Integral Networks' mission is to offer 'stabilization within a company's IT systems and entire infrastructure,'" said Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of sales and business development, DataCore Software. "What better way to do this than by offering DataCore's best-in-class storage virtualization SAN solutions? Storage virtualization extends virtual infrastructure all the way through to storage, providing dramatically improved storage utilization, flexibility and cost savings, together with enterprise-class, SMB-priced, storage control and data protection."

Integral Networks will offer the full line of DataCore's SAN storage virtualization, disaster recovery, and continuous data protection solutions, including the newly announced, SANmelody-based VM Starter SAN and Feature-Packed Storage Virtualization Solutions. The partner will also promote and sell DataCore's SANsymphony, as well as the company's continuous data protection (CDP) solution, Traveller, which allows users to go "back in time" to restore systems and data to previous states. All DataCore products are portable, software-based solutions that run on standard Intel and AMD based hardware servers, blades or on Virtual Machines (VMware, Citrix XenServer, Oracle VM, Sun VM, Virtual Iron, and Microsoft Virtual Servers).

An interesting side note is that currently Integral Networks is in the midst of moving its primary data center from one location to another. To ease the transition, what Integral Networks is doing is deploying an additional SANmelody storage server at the new data center. This will enable them to mirror and synchronize their storage and move the firm's VMware ESX hosts as needed to the new data center. “This way we will ensure that everything is up and running and we can just shut the system down at one data center and turn it on in the other," commented Badger. Integral Networks is also in the process of establishing a remote site data center consisting with SANmelody, whereby Integral can offer long distance asynchronous replication, thereby ensuring failover from different sites.