SANmelody by DataCore

[jpp]

Anyone else out there using SANMelody ? (

http://www.datacore.com)

I find it's a great way to get your feet wet in SAN technology without spending a bundle. This was especially critical for the non-profit I work for, because even iSCSI SATA turnkey solutions with a decent amount of storage would have cost us $40k.

You can build your SAN piecemeal, starting with "low intelligence" and building up to a full-fledged SAN with all the intelligence that goes with it.

It supports Fiber or iSCSI.
I have implemented it at my company with iSCSI, and so far so good. For about $2k for the SANmelody software, I was able to take 2 Terabytes of mass storage (a Storcase SATA array of 250 gig drives, cost about $6k) and statically share it among several servers (I'm using Microsoft iSCSI initiator on the client servers, which is free).
I also have snapshot capability.

When we are able to spend more money, we can get more intelligence, e.g an auto provisioning option, which allocates space dynamically to servers as they need it.

Although it sounds like it, I'm not posting this to advertise DataCore. I'm just interested to share experience/opinions with anyone else using this product (I searched this forum and only got one hit mentioning this product)
Thanks.

John Padovano
Manager of Technology
EngenderHealth
"Improving Women's Health Worldwide"
jpadovano@engenderhealth.org

 

[xmario2013]

Hi John:
That sound intersted, I was actually looking at this product yesterday, but not sure if that is for us

what application you have running there ?

we have oracle , exchange, file sharing probably CRM, IIS, Linux and SQL server down the line, we need to replicate and fail over our application and data to our other site so users can continue use it when there is a server down
do you have any experience doing that with this software ?

Thanks

 

[jpp]

We are currently using the SAN for general file sharing, e.g. for end-user files, norton ghost images, etc.

we have not done any fail over stuff yet, but DataCore does have an "asynch" option where you can have one unit replicate over ip to another unit that is offsite.
I see they also have a failover option, but it requires the two units to be connected via Fiber Channel.