December 5, 2011
Bothell, WA

Moose Logic is proud to announce that we have been chosen by Marathon Technologies to be their West Coast training partner for the everRun® MX product line. Moose Logic will be delivering the Installation and Administration course at their office in Bothell, Washington. For more information and class schedules, please visit our Marathon training information page.

Recently, Scott Gorcester, Moose Logic’s founder and President, spent some time with Stephen Bigelow, a Senior Technology Editor with Techtarget.com. The resulting podcast on high-availability technology and trends can be downloaded at http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/podcast/Expert-QA-High-availability-technologies-and-trends. You can also listen on-line or read a transcript of the podcast if you’d prefer.

Business Benefits Include Cost Savings, Accessibility, and Agility

August 23, 2011 – Bothell, WA — Moose Logic, the Pacific Northwest’s leading provider of outsourced IT solutions, today announced it has added cloud computing to its service offerings to help businesses take advantage of the benefits of this powerful new computing model.

“We are very pleased to be offering cloud services,” said Scott Gorcester, President of Moose Logic. “Instead of building and maintaining expensive IT systems on premise, businesses will now have the option of simply plugging into whatever IT resources they need, and only having to pay for what they use on a monthly basis. The cloud computing model is similar to the way businesses now consume and pay for electricity.”

The 3 key business benefits of cloud computing include:

1. Cost savings – businesses can significantly reduce capital expenditures for hardware; paying only for what they use on a monthly basis.
2. Accessibility – anytime, anywhere access to applications and data from any device.
3. Agility – instant scalability; meaning companies can add and remove users based on demand

To help local businesses understand the value of moving IT to the cloud, Moose Logic is offering a complimentary Cloud Assessment. During the assessment, Moose Logic will review current hardware, licenses, data and applications as well as assess network, security and backup. Upon completion of the assessment, the company will present recommendations to the business owner on how they might benefit from a move to the cloud.

Moose Logic’s cloud services are currently available. To learn more or sign up for a complementary Cloud Assessment email sales@mooselogic.com or call 206-774-0619.

Team Moose at Heart Walk 2010

Moose Logic would like to thank all of those who sponsored our participation in Heart Walk 2010. We were able to contribute over $500 to the fund-raising effort. As of this date, the Puget Sound Heart Walk event has raised over $1.3 Million in donations this year for the American Heart Association. If you would still like to contribute, you can do so through the Puget Sound Heart Walk Web site. And thank you, from the bottom of our…um…hearts!

Top Apple Producer Finds DataCore Storage Virtualization Software as Tasty as One of Their Red and Delicious Apples.

COWICHE, Wash. & FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.– DataCore Software, a leading provider of storage virtualization software, today announced that Evans Fruit Company has deployed DataCore Software for storage virtualization and Citrix XenServers for server virtualization. The combination of DataCore and Citrix delivers a highly-available virtual infrastructure that makes provisioning new servers and adding disk space easy and far less time consuming. “The virtual infrastructure that encompasses both server and storage virtualization has made my life easier for provisioning new servers and adding disk space,” comments Jeremy Hines, Manager of IS, Evans Fruit Company. “And it is the total virtualized environment, spanning Citrix Xen and SANmelody that makes this possible.”

Evans Fruit Company had two key business objectives: to overcome the time-consuming burden of updating drives with direct-attached storage, and the labor-intensive burden of managing physical servers. These objectives would be resolved by virtualizing both storage and servers, enabling the IT department to be more efficient and productive.

A Virtualization Environment Based on DataCore and Citrix That Meets Business Objectives

Founded in 1949, Evans Fruit Company is the largest grower of Red Delicious apples in the state of Washington. The IT infrastructure relied upon to run this top fruit producer has recently gone through a huge upgrade, whereby DataCore partner Moose Logic has deployed two DataCore SANmelody, software-based, SANs that provide storage virtualization to Evans, while Citrix XenServers have virtualized the company’s servers. Prior to bringing in DataCore, Evans was reliant on direct-attached storage. Whereas they had some replication set up, it was all based on individual, point solutions for specific servers – Exchange, Payroll, etc.

“We pulled all of our data from direct-attached storage over to the DataCore virtualized SAN and changed all of the servers to virtual servers running on Xen,” states Hines. “Now the Citrix XenServers point to the DataCore virtualized storage for both their operating system and all the necessary data storage. This DataCore-Citrix combination works really well.”

The DataCore SAN was implemented prior to virtualizing servers; however, both storage and server virtualization happened in the same month, as a “Step 1” and “Step 2” process. Now running on the highly-available virtual infrastructure are Microsoft Exchange and Windows Share (for Microsoft, Excel, etc.), as well as Payroll, which is a legacy, DOS-application that uses a Btrieve, flat file database.

Three Xen virtual hosts, meaning three physical servers, run all of the virtual machines. Two DataCore SANs running on SUN x4250s are physically separated, albeit in the same building, connected to each other via Ethernet. According to the IT staff, SANmelody makes it much easier to add storage to a machine, which is done by carving a new LUN (logical unit number) and then attaching it to the machine. Doing so immediately provides administrators with what amounts to a new hard drive, the size of which is easily increased. Notes Hines, “You carve out a new LUN, copy the data, and then drop the old LUN. It is pretty straightforward. We really like that in terms of ease-of-use.”

A virtualized, shared storage infrastructure made enormous sense to Hines and his team. Moreover, Hines stresses that thin-provisioning is a feature that enables Evans Fruit Company to forego buying large quantities of disk space up front, only to leave most of it empty.

The efficiency of virtual storage extends to the servers, which are much easier to manage in a virtualized environment. “Replacing a server on physical hardware can be quite the trick,” remarks Hines. “With virtualized servers, I can easily decide that I want to modify the servers or do upgrades. This can be done by live-migrating some servers from an existing node, powering down and old node, plugging in a new node, and transferring the master operations role to the new node. I can then bring the servers up on the new node, and finish replacing the whole cluster that way. This way, I have suddenly upgraded processor and possibly RAM, without having to do anything to make the servers work again.”

As far as the overall implementation itself, Hines lauds DataCore partner Moose Logic. “The virtualization implementation went as smoothly, as quickly and as easily as it did because Moose Logic is as good as they are at what they do,” he notes. “As far as the set-up and the planning of the deployment, they really know their stuff. I just can’t say enough good things about Moose Logic – I am definitely a fan.”

A Key Differentiator: DataCore Redundancy – High Availability Made Easy

Hines emphasizes that DataCore gives him peace of mind due to the synchronous mirroring capabilities – whereby redundancy is assured via two nodes in the same (or stretched, metro-clustered) location. Synchronous mirroring enables Evans Fruit Company to run DataCore storage virtualization software on two separate hosts. He notes that many entry-level SANs that possess two controllers actually have the controllers built into the same box. Two machines in the same casing do not offer the benefits of two separate hosts that can be stretched across a campus or metro region. He is equally impressed that, with DataCore, he can use industry-standard hard drives instead of using proprietary gear that plugs into a vendor’s hardware SAN.

“One of the great things about DataCore is that it is easy to have two copies of SANmelody running on different nodes so that our data is redundant,” notes Hines. “If we lose one node, we are OK. For our XenServers, we have a pool of XenServer hosts – so that any machine can be booted off of any host because they are all linked back to both nodes.”

Beyond this, Hines is equally pleased that DataCore also offers remote (asynchronous) replication, whereby a copy of the SAN can be supported at a very remote, offsite location. He stated that many of the entry-level SANs that Evans Fruit Company considered do not support asynchronous replication. “Having the ability to do asynchronous replication is a big deal for us – and something we will certainly embrace in the future,” comments Hines.

Software-based Storage Virtualization Wins the Day

DataCore’s storage virtualization approach is software-based, an approach shared by Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer towards server virtualization—a key differentiator that appealed to Evans Fruit Company.

“The fact that DataCore offers a software solution was highly appealing to us,” concludes Hines. “Obviously you need good server hardware to run it on, for the sake of reliability. DataCore’s software runs on Windows 2008 x64. It has all the features that a higher-end SAN would have, but is available for a smaller implementation.”

About Evans Fruit Company

Evans Fruit Company is fully committed and specialized in providing our partners and customers with consistent ongoing supplies of fresh, crunchy, flavorful apples at service levels that others can not or will not attempt to compete with.

For more information, call (509) 678-4127 or visit http://www.evansfruitco.com.

About DataCore Software

DataCore Software develops the storage virtualization software needed to get the highest availability, fastest performance and maximum utilization from storage resources in physical and virtual IT environments. It provides the critical 3rd dimension on which the success of server and desktop virtualization projects hinge, regardless of the models and brands of storage devices used.

For more information, call (877) 780-5111 or visit www.datacore.com.

About Moose Logic

Moose Logic is a Citrix Gold Solution Advisor and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, in addition to being a DataCore partner, and specializes in virtualization solutions. For more information, call (206) 774-0619, or visit http://www.mooselogic.com/about.

DataCore, SANmelody and the DataCore logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Washington Archives Management Deploys DataCore for a High-Availability Storage Virtualization Solution to Safeguard Citrix XenServer and Maximize Business Uptime

A shared storage approach from DataCore combined with Citrix XenServer delivers high availability – thereby eliminating costly, storage related downtime

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida – March 23, 2009 – DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced that its SANmelody(tm) software has been selected and deployed at Washington Archives Management (WAM) to serve as a high availability virtualized, storage area network (SAN) that works in conjunction with virtual servers from Citrix to deliver the redundancy this customer was desperately seeking. Now WAM has a fault-tolerant storage virtualization infrastructure that provides automated failover and failback recovery in the event of a network or hardware calamity in order to maximize business uptime. WAM is a 50-person archiving service that stores, archives and manages paper records.

“A forward-thinking approach combined with technological advances in virtualization has meant that our firm could avoid past failures,” says Tom Radford, System Administrator, Washington Archives Management. “And by deploying redundancy in our network – as well as leveraging advances like automated failover and multi-pathing, XenMotion and above all a software-based SAN that delivers on the promise of virtualization, WAM has made it possible to eliminate costly, storage related downtime.”

WAM’s bread and butter is hardcopy storage. It also engages in document imaging and X-ray digitizing. WAM archives all of these various documents offsite as part of it service. For over two years, DataCore partner Moose Logic has managed the whole network for WAM. “However, when a hardware failure occurred we took that failure as an opportunity to upgrade and grow our infrastructure,” explains Radford. “DataCore partner Moose Logic was tapped to re-architect how our company addressed storage and did so by deploying a SAN solution from DataCore.”

A hardware failure leads to a fresh start on the storage front

“Two ESX servers had WAM’s environment virtualized onto them, but the ESX servers had no shared storage,” notes Steve Parlee, Senior Systems Consultant, Moose Logic. “The two servers were running local, internal storage – and one had a direct-attached drive shelf. This was not a very convenient set-up because we could not, for example, VMotion the guests between servers in case of a failure.”

Moving the virtualized guests to the other server (in case of a hardware failure) was difficult because there was no shared storage – no SAN was in place, which is necessary to “motion” the virtual guests. As fate would have it, the firm did experience one ESX server failure and therefore was forced to run on only one ESX server. Without redundancy in the network, if any other component had failed, Washington Archives Management would have been “out of business” until it was fixed.

WAM considered two options. The firm could either go back to where it had been with the two VMware ESX servers and simply try to become more stable, or it could do some forward-thinking and put in place a SAN that would make the consequences of hardware failure a thing of the past. “We could have just replaced the ESX server and stayed on the path we were – risking future hardware failures that would yet again impact business operations,” says Parlee. “The choice Washington Archives Management made was to go with a shared storage approach and to use DataCore as the foundation of that whole strategy.”

Utilizing XenServer and shared, network storage – a “no-brainer”

Moose Logic advised WAM to deploy DataCore because it allows the firm to replicate in real time their storage between two nodes. In addition, Moose Logic replaced the ESX servers with Citrix XenServers. With the XenServers, Moose Logic was able to utilize something called multi-pathing. “With muti-pathing, we have been able to take down half of WAM’s network for maintenance – without impacting day-to-day operations,” comments Parlee.

“Because of the shared storage and the fact that the storage is virtual, WAM now has the ability to ‘XenMotion’ the guests back and forth between two different pieces of hardware,” continues Parlee. “The other notable capability is high-availability. If any of the Citrix XenServers were to crash, it will automatically restart on the other server. And what makes this possible is the back-end, shared storage.”

What accounts for the storage being “virtual” lies in the fact that DataCore enables a system administrator to take a “volume” (i.e. a piece of disk space for storage) from each of the two SANmelody nodes and mirror them. When these volumes are mirrored together, this creates a single “virtual volume” which is what is then presented to the application server (e.g. XenServer, Windows Server, etc.). By doing this, the application servers only see the one instance of the “virtual volume,” but in reality that virtual volume is tied to the mirrored volumes. It is this key feature – inherent to SANmelody – that enables the system to failover.

A virtualized IT environment – radically simple, high-availability storage virtualization solution

The redundant SANmelody SAN servers that are currently in operation on the back-end are mirrored to each other using synchronous replication. “It is all about the redundancy – the fault-tolerance for failover,” explains Parlee. “We can lose up to three components – two servers and a switch – and everything keeps running. You see, either one of the SANmelody servers can present storage. Only one is presenting it at any time, but if one goes down, without impacting the environment whatsoever, the system seamlessly switches over to SANmelody number two and just keeps right on running.

Summarizes Radford, “The bigger picture here is that technology like this has previously been prohibitively expensive for a small to mid-size business customer. Sure, large companies have been deploying virtual servers and virtual SANs, but they have had to pay a huge price for doing so. DataCore’s SANmelody enables the small business to get this kind of virtualization environment built and to do so without paying for Fibre Channel or paying over $100,000 for the SAN alone, which is what has made having a SAN unattainable for a large number of customers – before DataCore paved the way.”

Free 30-day trial – Try DataCore Today!

For a free 30-day test drive, please visit: www.datacore.com/SANpackages.

About Washington Archives Management

Washington Archives Management offers a complete range of information management services that are designed to support customers’ strategic and day-to-day operational requirements. The company focuses on providing safe, secure, and economical storage and retrieval options for its customers. Their professional and friendly staff utilizes the latest technological tools to optimize customers’ ability to track, archive and access records. For more information please visit www.washingtonarchives.net.

About Moose Logic

Moose Logic is a managed services provider that designs, develops and maintains networking systems and IT infrastructures. With over 500 systems under management today, Moose Logic is a recognized leader serving Pacific Northwest businesses of all sizes. Launched in 1993, Moose Logic utilizes industry leading computing solutions, fault-tolerant business critical solutions, and best-of-breed virtualization products. Moose Logic is a certified reseller for Microsoft, Citrix, DataCore Software, NSI Software, Motion Computing Tablets, Ultrabac, Marathon Technologies, Scriptlogic and Watchguard Technologies. For more information on Moose Logic, visit www.mooselogic.com.

DataCore Software

DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization SAN software, fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services with the agility and savings of hardware independence. DataCore lowers the cost and complexity of IT by making storage efficient, fast, flexible, fail-safe and virtual. DataCore’s portable storage server software simplifies and automates capacity expansion and centralizes storage management for Windows, UNIX, Linux, MacOS, NetWare, VMware and other leading open system and virtual server platforms. DataCore is privately held and its corporate headquarters are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. For more information, call (877) 780-5111 or visit www.datacore.com.

DataCore, the DataCore logo and SANmelody are trademarks or registered trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. Other DataCore product or service names or logos referenced herein are trademarks of DataCore Software Corporation. All other products, services and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Corporate Contacts:
DataCore Software
Tel: 954-377-6000
publicrelations@datacore.com

– or –

Red Nine PR
Stuart Smith
336-896-1874
ssmith@redninePR.com