Microsoft continues using 2012 acquisition StorSimple as it announces a virtual machine version of the StorSimple solution and adds locally pinned volumes to the StorSimple 8000 series.
The StorSimple Virtual Array is a version of the StorSimple solution in virtual machine form installed on exisitng hypervisors. It uses a hybrid cloud storage approach for on-demand capacity scaling in the cloud and cloud-based data protection and disaster recovery.
Customers can run it as a VM on Hyper-V or VMware ESXi hypervisors and configure it as a File Server (NAS) or iSCSI server, with the hybrid approach storing hottest data locally and (optionally) tiering stale data to Azure. Each virtual array handles up to 64TB of data on the cloud, with a central StorSimple online portal allowing for management of virtual arrays in different branch and remote offices.
In addition, as mentioned earlier the StorSimple 8000 series gets locally pinned volumes-- fully provisioned volumes without data tiering to the cloud, thus ensuring local guarantees for primary data independent of cloud connectivity.
Pinned volumes allow the hosting of workloads sensitive to cloud latencies (such as SQL or Virtual Machines) while still providing the benefits of the cloud for backups and location-independent disaster recovery. Microsoft says customers can host multiple workloads on StorSimple devices by using locally pinned volumes in tandem with existing tiered volumes.
Joining the update is the launch of the StorSimple Cloud Appliance 8020-- an appliance offering maximum provisioned capacity of 64TB together with the provisioning of SSDs for Azure VMs.
Go Announcing the StorSimple Virtual Array
Go Announcing Locally Pinned Volumes for Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 Series
