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VMware Unveils Storage Virtualization Certification Program

VMware Unveils Storage Virtualization Certification Program

New Program Enables Vendors to Certify Storage Virtualization Devices for VMware Environments, Providing Greater Choice for Customers

PALO ALTO, Calif., September 27, 2007— VMware, Inc., the virtualization leader, today announced a new hardware certification program for storage virtualization devices.  Combined with the virtualization-enabling technologies in VMware ESX Server, this program is designed to enable customers to have more choice in deploying virtualized storage solutions with VMware Infrastructure.

“VMware is committed to working with our storage partners to offer customers the greatest choice of storage vendors when deploying virtualization across their organization’s infrastructure,” said Parag Patel, vice president of alliances at VMware.  “As enterprises increasingly standardize their IT environments using virtual infrastructure, it is important to have a breadth of storage hardware options available to them.”

By enabling hardware vendors to certify storage virtualization devices for VMware Infrastructure, VMware and hardware vendors together are poised to bring to market the complementary technologies of server virtualization and storage virtualization.  As a result of this program, customers will be able to leverage the flexibility of management, cost efficiency and high availability of VMware Infrastructure as well as storage virtualization to create an end-to-end solution.

Patel continued: “VMware Infrastructure leverages and drives significant new adoption of iSCSI and fibre channel SANs with its native capabilities for distributed volume management, VMware VMotion and rapid application recovery. Many customers are looking to implement network-based storage virtualization as their VMware environments continue to grow in order to optimize the storage resources that support these new capabilities. This new certification program is designed to fully support this capability by leveraging the native capabilities of VMware Infrastructure.”

VMware has worked closely with its storage ecosystem partners to extend partners’ storage virtualization services to virtualized environments, including collaboration to integrate products such as VMware Site Recovery Manager with third-party LUN-based replication. This new program to certify storage virtualization devices, with their complete feature sets, is another step forward in VMware’s ongoing efforts to work with the storage industry to bring server and storage virtualization together to improve customers’ flexibility, efficiency and total cost of ownership.

VMware launched its hardware certification program in 2000 to enable VMware and its hardware partners to fully test and optimize their products for VMware Infrastructure. Nearly 2,000 different server and storage hardware models are currently certified, representing products from 46 vendors. VMware is working directly with its Global- and Premier-level Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program members to certify their storage virtualization devices. VMware is also working to expand the certification program to the broader storage ecosystem, including to Select-level TAP members, later this year with testing done by VMware’s authorized testing centers or by AppLabs or Cognizant Technologies. These global IT services companies specialize in testing and are authorized by VMware to test eligible hardware for all standard VMware hardware certification categories.

VMware continues to work with the world’s largest networked storage system vendors including EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM and Network Appliance to attain certification of their storage offerings later this year.

Partners Discuss the VMware Storage Virtualization Certification Program

“EMC is committed to helping customers maximize their virtual infrastructures from the server through to the storage,” said Chuck Hollis, vice president of technology alliances at EMC. “Through the VMware hardware certification program, we are making it easier for customers to deploy leading EMC technology in their VMware environments.”

“By leveraging the complementary server virtualization technology from VMware, Hitachi is delivering a true end-to-end virtualization solution—from server to storage—enabling customers to reap the benefits of sophisticated virtualization services across their entire storage environment,” said John Mansfield, senior vice president of global solutions strategy and development at Hitachi Data Systems. “Establishing Hitachi’s storage virtualization market leadership, the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform and Network Storage Controller deliver safe multi-tenancy and logical partitioning capabilities that ensure quality of service for a host server, while at the same time provide consolidation advantages designed to improve utilization and management of storage assets.”

“VMware’s new certification program should further enhance the market demand for HP StorageWorks virtualization products,” said Rick Steffens, vice president and general manager of storage area networks of StorageWorks division at HP. By combining VMware technology with HP's virtualization technology, we’re helping customers configure a complete, fully certified HP StorageWorks virtualized infrastructure from the server through multiple tiers of storage, along with simplified management and higher application availability.”

“IBM's work with VMware offers customers increasing options for creating virtualized, efficient, sophisticated data storage solutions,” said Andy Monshaw, general manager at IBM System Storage. “Our industry-leading storage virtualization offering, IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), allows customers to dramatically reduce the energy consumption in their data center by using less physical hardware and more virtual hardware, thereby creating reduced power usage and improved performance. IBM continues to work closely with VMware as it expands its certification program for storage virtualization devices to include network storage virtualization platforms, so that our joint customers enjoy the full benefit of storage and server virtualization today.”

"NetApp V-Series provides VMware customers a comprehensive heterogeneous storage virtualization system for multiprotocol, multivendor storage environments," said Brendon Howe, general manager of V-Series business unit at Network Appliance. "Customers that combine V-Series with VMware Infrastructure can improve storage utilization leveraging core NetApp technology such as thin provisioning and data deduplication. In addition, customers can accelerate development via instant cloning and on-demand data provisioning and realize significant cost savings and enhanced server utilization by migrating backup and recovery activity from servers to storage."

About VMware

VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems.  Organizations of all sizes use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California and majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC).  For more information, visit http://www.vmware.com.

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