FalconStor v7 Reveals Service Oriented Data Protection Story
"Yeah, we do that." That's the response many software providers of storage virtualization give when asked if they can offer a specific storage function. But that "Can do" attitude reveals the heart of the problem of these providers: they end up acquiring a "jack of all trades, master of none" reputation. Today FalconStor Software still answers, "Yeah, we do that," but now provides a more well articulated service-oriented data protection story to complement its storage solutions.
FalconStor Software as much as any provider of storage virtualization software personifies the perception of it being a "jack-of-all-trades." Its underlying storage virtualization technology has given FalconStor the flexibility to adapt to changing market demands and bring new products to market. A quick review of its website reveals to be true as it offers the following solutions:
Today FalconStor Software begins to change its story on a number of fronts with is release of V7. Over the last 18 months FalconsSor has invested a significant amount of time and energy to first test each of its solutions and then ensure they are first easier to deploy and then use by its customers as it ran thousands of tests (7,000 according to FalconStor) to make sure they are easier to deploy and manage.
FalconStor has also changed its release strategy for new products and features. Prior to publicly announcing any new product or feature, it is doing longer betas with existing customers. In this way when a new product or feature is announced, it has customers who can speak to their experiences with the product or feature and are not leaving prospective customers with questions as to how easy it is to implement.
A prime example of this is that as FalconStor publicly announces FalconStor V7, it is also making an enterprise customer available (Sunrise Communications of Zurich, Switzerland) who can testify to how it uses FalconStor in its environment. Sunrise uses most of FalconStor's software (CDP, FDS, NSS & VTL) in its environment to accomplish objectives such as delivering on SLAs, failing over 100's of VMs in seconds, offering a comprehensive recovery solution and uniformly managing all of its products.
This poignantly illustrates how FalconStor has changed its story in another important way. Rather than just saying, "Yeah, we can do that," it now says, "Yeah, we can solve that problem and here is how you can build on our technology to address multiple issues in your environment."
In that vein FalconStor provides more guidance as to which of its solutions organizations should implement first so they can optimize the current backup processes with VTL and FDS to initiate disk-based backup and data deduplication.
Once these issues are resolved, FalconStor can point organizations to its NSS and CDP solutions to implement business continuity and disaster recovery issues, especially in VMware environments where there is a mix of physical and virtual servers. Then using its RecoverTrac technology, which is integrated into both CDP and NSS, customers can deploy service-oriented DR, by organizing and automating failover and failback of complete IT services such as what Sunrise Communications is already experiencing.
But maybe what FalconStor has most importantly done with this release is to give organizations a hint of the type of synergies that they may see by using FalconStor's data protection suite as a foundation for service-oriented data protection.
By way of example, FalconStor FDS and VTL solutions will for the first time store their data in the same back end repository and have it globally deduplicated. The decision to start capitalizing on the synergies of these two products goes back to the order of problems it is first trying to solve in customer environments - namely backup and recovery.
By enabling its FDS and VTL solutions to share the same repository and globally deduplicate data, organizations can now deploy the most appropriate solution in their environment (FDS at remote and branch offices, VTL in the home office) and then replicate and store the data from these two interfaces in the same back end data repository. This approach centralizes data management even as it reduces the amount of data under management.
But this consolidation also hints at what else FalconStor might be able to accomplish longer term. If it can centrally store the data behind its FDS and VTL interfaces in one central repository and then centrally manage them, what is to stop it from extending that same functionality to its CDPand NSS solutions?
After all, they are all built on the same underlying technology and, while there are specific performance and scalability concerns associated with each interface, it does create some interesting possibilities as to where FalconStor might go with its portfolio of solutions in the future.
In one sense today is no different than yesterday in terms of what products that FalconStor offers. FalconStor still offers its CDP, FDS, NSS and VTL solutions just as it always has with some added bells and whistles that any new product release will include.
But what is fundamentally different about FalconStor is how it is crafting and telling its story. No longer is it just "Yeah, we do that" type of provider. FalconStor now provides its solutions while endeavoring to minimize or even eliminate the setup associated with deploying them.
At the same time, FalconStor is also delivering a definitive roadmap for its customers as to how they can best leverage its technologies. In so doing, they can deploy them at the right time when it makes the most sense for them even as FalconStor provides some hints as to what synergies organizations might glean from using FalconStor exclusively across their environment.
FalconStor Software as much as any provider of storage virtualization software personifies the perception of it being a "jack-of-all-trades." Its underlying storage virtualization technology has given FalconStor the flexibility to adapt to changing market demands and bring new products to market. A quick review of its website reveals to be true as it offers the following solutions:
- FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP)
- FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System (FDS, its network attached deduplication disk library)
- FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS, storage virtualization software)
- FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL)
Today FalconStor Software begins to change its story on a number of fronts with is release of V7. Over the last 18 months FalconsSor has invested a significant amount of time and energy to first test each of its solutions and then ensure they are first easier to deploy and then use by its customers as it ran thousands of tests (7,000 according to FalconStor) to make sure they are easier to deploy and manage.
FalconStor has also changed its release strategy for new products and features. Prior to publicly announcing any new product or feature, it is doing longer betas with existing customers. In this way when a new product or feature is announced, it has customers who can speak to their experiences with the product or feature and are not leaving prospective customers with questions as to how easy it is to implement.
A prime example of this is that as FalconStor publicly announces FalconStor V7, it is also making an enterprise customer available (Sunrise Communications of Zurich, Switzerland) who can testify to how it uses FalconStor in its environment. Sunrise uses most of FalconStor's software (CDP, FDS, NSS & VTL) in its environment to accomplish objectives such as delivering on SLAs, failing over 100's of VMs in seconds, offering a comprehensive recovery solution and uniformly managing all of its products.
This poignantly illustrates how FalconStor has changed its story in another important way. Rather than just saying, "Yeah, we can do that," it now says, "Yeah, we can solve that problem and here is how you can build on our technology to address multiple issues in your environment."
In that vein FalconStor provides more guidance as to which of its solutions organizations should implement first so they can optimize the current backup processes with VTL and FDS to initiate disk-based backup and data deduplication.
Once these issues are resolved, FalconStor can point organizations to its NSS and CDP solutions to implement business continuity and disaster recovery issues, especially in VMware environments where there is a mix of physical and virtual servers. Then using its RecoverTrac technology, which is integrated into both CDP and NSS, customers can deploy service-oriented DR, by organizing and automating failover and failback of complete IT services such as what Sunrise Communications is already experiencing.
But maybe what FalconStor has most importantly done with this release is to give organizations a hint of the type of synergies that they may see by using FalconStor's data protection suite as a foundation for service-oriented data protection.
By way of example, FalconStor FDS and VTL solutions will for the first time store their data in the same back end repository and have it globally deduplicated. The decision to start capitalizing on the synergies of these two products goes back to the order of problems it is first trying to solve in customer environments - namely backup and recovery.
By enabling its FDS and VTL solutions to share the same repository and globally deduplicate data, organizations can now deploy the most appropriate solution in their environment (FDS at remote and branch offices, VTL in the home office) and then replicate and store the data from these two interfaces in the same back end data repository. This approach centralizes data management even as it reduces the amount of data under management.
But this consolidation also hints at what else FalconStor might be able to accomplish longer term. If it can centrally store the data behind its FDS and VTL interfaces in one central repository and then centrally manage them, what is to stop it from extending that same functionality to its CDPand NSS solutions?
After all, they are all built on the same underlying technology and, while there are specific performance and scalability concerns associated with each interface, it does create some interesting possibilities as to where FalconStor might go with its portfolio of solutions in the future.
In one sense today is no different than yesterday in terms of what products that FalconStor offers. FalconStor still offers its CDP, FDS, NSS and VTL solutions just as it always has with some added bells and whistles that any new product release will include.
But what is fundamentally different about FalconStor is how it is crafting and telling its story. No longer is it just "Yeah, we do that" type of provider. FalconStor now provides its solutions while endeavoring to minimize or even eliminate the setup associated with deploying them.
At the same time, FalconStor is also delivering a definitive roadmap for its customers as to how they can best leverage its technologies. In so doing, they can deploy them at the right time when it makes the most sense for them even as FalconStor provides some hints as to what synergies organizations might glean from using FalconStor exclusively across their environment.
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