StorMagic announced the StorMagic SvSAN, a storage virtual appliance that helps small to mid-size organizations build a cost-effective virtual SAN. The StorMagic SvSAN is designed to enable the deployment of a high-availability shared storage solution for VMware ESX environments for less than US$2,000.

StorMagic SvSAN includes features users would expect from an enterprise-class SAN and provides optional licenses for high availability and capacity management. By turning unused storage capacity into a virtual SAN, the solution is designed to enable users to take advantage of high-end features of VMware environments such as VMware VMotion, without the need for an external SAN. StorMagic SvSAN is also designed to work with VMware vCenter, so that administrators are able to manage datastores, the StorMagic iSCSI SAN, and the internal RAID controller from one interface.

With capacity that starts at 2 TB and scales to unlimited storage, the SvSAN enables administrators to create, manage and provision datastores through a single-step process, which allows them to rapidly deploy datastores without managing multiple applications.

"Our customers' IT budgets are still shrinking while their data needs continue to grow," said Mike Stolz, vice president of marketing at StorMagic. "With SvSAN, we are enabling these organizations to create, manage, and provision storage in their VMware environments through a highly affordable and easy-to-use console."

The StorMagic SvSAN is available now. Capacity management licenses are available for 4, 8 and unlimited data storage. For a limited time, qualified customers can get a promo key for free access to the StorMagic solution. Add-on features include active-active mirroring for high-availability and capacity management upgrades.

• Storage Virtual Appliance for High-Availability Environments