Virtual Iron Releases Version 3.7

Virtual Iron Software released version 3.7 of its virtualization platform. According to the company, with their support for logical disks, users of server virtualization can take advantage of all the performance and scalability benefits of raw SAN storage with the optimal flexibility and ease of use of virtual disk storage.

With Virtual Iron 3.7, users can now configure their virtual servers to access two types of disks:

• Logical disks – High-performance disks that can be assigned to one or more virtual servers. The size can be smaller than the underlying physical disk, allowing the under-lying disk to be partitioned amongst multiple virtual servers. They can be supported on Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and local storage.

• Raw SAN disks – Offer the best performance. They are used when one or more virtual servers use one entire physical LUN.

“Virtual Iron continues to reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise-class virtualization and management,” said Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer at Virtual Iron Software. “With logical disks, server virtualization users can now consolidate storage and move it around easily as they migrate workloads from one server to another. This adds tremendous flexibility and performance to the management of their virtual infrastructure.”

Virtual Iron’s Virtualization Manager presents a unified framework for controlling local or SAN disks that are accessible to managed nodes and their virtual servers. In this framework, users create one or more disk groups, and sub-divide them into one or more logical disks. Logical disks have additional utility in that they can be copied (cloned) and exported into Microsoft VHD files for use by different virtual servers. Neither of these capabilities is available in the management of raw SAN disks.

You can download the free version, here.