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Build a high performance, highly reliable Storage Area Network with DataCore SANmelody or SANsymphony
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Real-time, High Availability Mirroring with Automatic Failover
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Thin Provisioning - Allocate Now, Only Pay for the Disk Space Used
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Instantly snapshot your data - Ready for rollback and backup
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Replicate Your Data to a Remote Site using the Internet
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Boost Performance using RAM and Processors
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Create Tiered Storage and Get the Best Value from your Storage
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SANmelody is licensed by the size of storage you want to use and the
features you want to use.
Additional capacity can be licensed by the TeraByte. New features
such as HA, DR and Snapshot can be added at any point.
You only pay the difference between the license you have now and
the license you want!
If your organisation delivers nationally recognised qualifications
you can purchase SANmelody licences with a 50% discount.
Government organisations, local councils, etc. benefit from a 15%
discount on the cost of licences.
Most organisations want high availability for their storage
as well as their virtual machines. To help you get started
you can take advantage of DataCore’s 2-for-1 HA/DR Jump
Start promotion.
You buy one ½TB or 1TB SANmelody HA/DR
license and get the 2nd free of charge!
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Frequently Asked Questions about DataCore SANmelody & SANsymphony
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What is a SAN / Storage Area Network?
For an introduction to SANs please have a look at our Guide to Storage
Area Networks.
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What is SANmelody? What is SANsymphony?
SANmelody and SANsymphony is software that turns a PC into a high-powered, feature
rich Storage Area Network (SAN). SANmelody and SANsymphony use low cost commodity PC
hardware to deliver outstanding performance and enterprise class functionality and
availability.
A SANmelody storage area network is limited to 32 TeraBytes with up to 2 PCs
(often called nodes) working together to deliver high availability.
SANmelody is also DR (disaster recovery) capable allowing to stream data from
a pair of SANmelody servers to another pair of SANmelody servers across the
Internet or private link.
A SANsymphony storage area network is designed for larger enterprise systems and
can manage an unlimited amount of storage, supports multiple nodes for N +1 levels
of availability, performance allocation, deliver advanced I/O metrics, etc.
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What is Thin Provisioning?
Thin Provisioning lets you create a disk of up to 1 PB (1024 TB) that doesn’t
actually consume any physical space i.e. it’s a virtual disk. It only starts
to consume space when data is copied to it. Thin Provisioning keeps your
costs down as it allows you to add storage to your SAN as it’s required and
removes the need to move data between servers, repartition, etc
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What's the Largest Disk Size SANmelody and SANsymphony Support?
1 PB (1,024 TB).
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Are SANmelody and SANsymphony Reliable?
Yes. We wouldn’t recommend or use them if they weren’t. We have DataCore
powered SAN systems in use that have been running non-stop for over 2 years
without any interruption or reboot.
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Do SANmelody and SANsymphony offer True High Availability?
Yes. SANmelody and SANsymphony can create “multi-pathed” (MPIO) volumes and
your servers can use either SAN node to read and write data.
As data is written to the SAN it’s held in 2 places simultaneously to ensure
that even if one of the SAN units is lost unexpectedly (or as part of
maintenance, upgrades, etc) no data is lost, there is no interruption and
your servers can continue to operate as normal. This is called “fail-over”.
When the missing SAN unit is restarted the mirrored data will be
resynchronised and your servers can “fail-back” automatically i.e. read and
write from their preferred node. The ability to fail-back to a preferred
path is especially useful when your SAN units are in different buildings or
sites and you want to control how much traffic is passed along inter-site links.
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What Virtualisation platforms can I use SANmelody and SANsymphony with?
SANmelody and SANsymphony are certified for use with:
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Do SANmelody and SANsymphony support iSCSI, Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet?
Yes. You can use any combination of iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) or Fibre Channel
over Ethernet (FCOE). If you want to use FC you may need to be licensed for it.
Check with your DataCore partner.
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What is a Snapshot?
Snapshots are an instant, “point-in-time” copy of a disk. They are normally
used as a staging area for backups or as roll-back points. If you wish you
can take multiple snapshots of the same disk.
A snapshot consists of a source disk and a destination disk. When you’ve
taken a snapshot, the destination disk can be allocated to a backup server.
This is very useful if you’re running out of time when backing up to tape
overnight. The snapshot can “exist” as long as you need it to and it doesn’t
interfere with the normal operation of your servers so your backup can run
for as long as it needs to.
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What is a VSS Snapshot?
A VSS Snapshot uses Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy to synchronise data and
trigger a snapshot at exactly the right moment. Using VSS, SANmelody or
SANsymphony can quiesce applications on your server (Exchange Server, SQL
Server, Active Directory e.g. anything that is VSS / Shadow Copy aware) and
its data and then take a snapshot. This means that the data, transaction
logs, etc on your snapshot destination disk is ready for backup and restore.
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Can a Snapshot really be taken in an Instant?
Yes. It doesn’t matter whether there is only a few GB of data or TB the
snapshot will be taken instantly. Snapshots that are VSS synchronised will
need a few seconds for your server to synchronise its’ databases and
transaction logs.
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What is a Complete Image Snapshot?
A Complete Image snapshot creates an identical copy of the source disk on
the destination disk. This has performance benefits but the destination
disk will consume as much disk space as the source disk.
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What does a Snapshot Source Update do?
Source Update makes the source disk look like the destination i.e. it rolls
back all the changes that have happened since the snapshot was taken.
This is really useful when you’re making changes or upgrading software.
Creating and taking a snapshot only takes a couple of minutes but it could
save you hours.
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What kind of Storage can I use with SANmelody and SANsymphony?
You can use just about any kind of storage that you can attach or present
to the PC; SATA, SAS, SSD or storage provided by iSCSI and fibre channel.
This is one of the things that SANmelody and SANsymphony so much more flexible
and powerful that a traditional hardware based SAN.
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What kind of Support will I get from DataCore?
Your first point of contact should be your reseller. They’ll know your
system and your requirements and can probably solve any problems you have
immediately.
DataCore provide support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and
operate several technical support centres around the world that "follow
the sun". Support is provided by e-mail, web site and phone and most
countries have a free phone DataCore technical support number.
More information is available here.
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I Don't Have a DataCore Reseller! Who Should I Contact?
If you're in the UK you can contact us! We're always looking for new customers.
We're one of the top UK DataCore partners and support a wide range of DataCore users,
including banks, charities, schools, colleges, small and large businesses and
utility companies.
If you’re outside the UK please visit the DataCore Partners page.
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What does SANmelody or SANsymphony Cost?
It varies according to your requirements. SANmelody and SANsymphony are
licensed by the features you want and the amount of storage you want to
manage.
For example, if you don’t want the DR or Snapshot features, don’t pay for
them. If you aren’t sure how much space your SAN will eventually need, only
licence what you need right now.
All DataCore licences include "Carry Forward" Value Protection. When you
need to licence more storage or add new features you only pay the
difference between the licence you bought originally and the one you’re moving to. You
don’t get penalised for starting small.
If you'd like a quote please contact us and tell us how much space you want,
the kinds of things you’ll be using a SAN for and we’ll create a tailored
quote for.
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