VMworld Briefing Note - Akorri
We asked James Comstock, Akorri’s VP of Marketing, for his take of the effect of server virtualization on the SRM market and how their product BalancePoint was different from the other solutions in the SRM space. He took a step back and explained that the first thing is to get a base understanding on the customer’s part about how important the problem they’re trying to solve is, essentially the need to performance tune and manage the resources in the environment. According to Comstock, there’s been a ‘bubble of over-provisioning’ in the virtual server environment, when organizations first virtualize they typically over-allocate storage. As they get through that bubble, they start to get interested in solutions to optimize resources. This is where Akorri can help, with end-to-end system management.
Friday, September 3, 2010
He said SRM solutions typically range from ones that provide real time, physical layer monitoring to those which focus on colorful reports and server-centric views. Comstock said, “As people move their infrastructures into the cloud they’re going to need more from their SRM tool than pretty pictures in order to identify problems and maintain service levels. What Akorri focuses on is providing actionable information to bring intelligence to decisions about storage management. Similar to why a traveler buys a GPS, they need to know what to do next.”
Bullies and Victims
Akorri’s BalancePoint 3.5 has several new features. One is BalancePoint Predictor which helps identify VM workloads which are competing for resources (bullies) and those which are experiencing slow downs (victims) and the business impact of their ‘relationship’, before problems occur. Also new is Hyper-V support, enhanced VMware support and expanded support for NetApp V-series, HP SVSP and HDS.
Eric Slack, Senior Analyst
VMworld Briefing Note
Storage Switzerland is at VMworld in force again this year and as in years past we will be doing our best to bring you continuous updates from the event. These reports are quick summaries of our meetings at the show; look for more detailed analysis on our blogs on Network Computing.
