Truly Nolen Exterminates Hard-Wired Data Storage Approach with Flexible Storage Virtualization...

Truly Nolen Exterminates Hard-Wired Data Storage Approach with Flexible Storage Virtualization from DataCore Software

By Embracing Virtual Storage in Conjunction with Server
Virtualization from VMware, National Pest Control Company Achieves
Total Virtualization and a Disaster Recovery Plan in Place
TUCSON, Ariz. & FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(Business Wire)--
DataCore Software, the leading provider of storage virtualization
software, today announced that its SANmelody(TM) software has gone
from simply providing more storage capacity to serving as the
foundation of a replication and disaster recovery (DR) solution at
Truly Nolen, one of the nation's most visible pest control
specialists. In a scenario that DataCore witnesses time and time
again, Truly Nolen was struggling with disk space issues. The
bottom-line for Truly Nolen is that the new DataCore SAN helps them
manage storage better and enhances efficiency by making it simple to
dynamically add capacity where needed only when they need it. In
addition to the storage issues Truly Nolen was encountering on its
existing, physical servers, the company also wanted to implement a
fault tolerant SAN for business continuity and DR. After engaging with
DataCore Premiere Partner The Pinnacle Group, Truly Nolen selected
DataCore SANmelody to be the foundation for just that.

"We knew that DataCore could improve our high availability and
serve as the lynchpin of a disaster recovery solution," noted Themis
Tokkaris, systems engineer, Truly Nolen. "However even beyond capacity
issues and disaster recovery plans, we were also thinking about
virtualization in terms of our legacy servers. Instead of buying 10
physical machines, with a SAN in place we could virtualize those
machines and leverage storage resource pooling - or virtualization -
to serve storage to those virtual machines."

Truly Nolen looked at no less than five other vendors before
selecting DataCore, including LeftHand Networks, EqualLogic, EMC, and
HP, among others. According to Tokkaris, "When we compared all of the
features that the other vendors were providing to DataCore's SANmelody
features, we found that DataCore's software-based solution provided
all the storage management, high-availability and disaster recovery
features at a lower cost than the other vendors provide. SANmelody was
the most cost-effective solution that we could recommend to our
management team in order to get their 'go-ahead.'"

A disk space odyssey: capacity constraints, cumbersome migrations,
wasted resources

Truly Nolen did not have a SAN prior to DataCore, instead relying
on direct-attached storage, which is still the case in some instances.
The traditional approach to data storage was not working. "We were not
able to allocate more space to existing servers that were running out
of space," explained Tokkaris. "One of the key reasons for embracing
DataCore initially was simply to allocate more space dynamically from
the DataCore-powered SAN." Moreover, before DataCore, IT
administrators at Truly Nolen were forced to do an image backup or
remove the drives of a particular server, purchase new drives, install
them and rebuild the server.

Apart form the fact that this is labor-intensive - wasting the
time of administrators and thereby incurring unnecessary costs, the
traditional approach also wastes storage resources. "DataCore saves
money on resources that would otherwise be wasted," commented
Tokkaris. "When you deploy a new server and do not have virtualized
storage, you commit storage capacity to that server that most of the
time is excessive. You might undersize, but typically you oversize and
waste disk space."

The Solution

Having the SAN in place provided the foundation for Truly Nolen to
begin a server virtualization project. IT administrators moved their
applications to two physical servers virtualized by a two node VMware
ESX server cluster, which replaces the legacy servers that have been
retired. The company now has web services, databases, e-mail servers,
etc. and the backup software running on virtual machines. "We
virtualized five servers and are maintaining and monitoring
performance," noted Tokkaris. "Slowly and gradually, we will add
more." One physical server exclusively runs DataCore SANmelody storage
virtualization software to perform the following essential services:

-- Fielding all storage-related I/O from the ESX servers coming
over iSCSI SAN connections.

-- Aggregating disk capacity from drives connected to these two
servers into a virtual storage pool.

-- Allocating virtual disks (many of them thinly provisioned)
from the virtual pool over the iSCSI connection. This shrinks
allocation time to a few minutes and reduces consumption.
SANmelody automatically alerts administrators when the free
space in the pool hits a low-water mark. This is a trigger to
add more physical disks to the pool before the remaining space
is exhausted.

Truly Nolen has developed a disk-to-disk to tape solution by
virtue of utilizing the SANmelody system. Two data pools make up a
total of 2.5 TBs. One pool is for fast access SAS drives and another
array in the pool comprises SATA drives that are used for storing less
critical servers that require less speed. Backups are sent to those
slower drives to be offloaded to tape. Since system engineers at Truly
Nolen are using the SANmelody snapshot feature to take snapshots of
the data volumes on the SAN for faster recovery or for testing
purposes, these different drives allow them to offer different service
levels from the pool. For example, they use the slower drives as
destinations for online point-in-time snapshots, since those have less
demanding requirements for testing patches and generating backup
tapes.

Currently SANmelody is running SQL databases, Microsoft IIS Web
Servers (6.0), dot-Net application servers, and the Windows Software
Security (WSS) update services server. Next in line will be the
company's network management server, its centralized anti-virus
server, as well as its production database server and email system.
"We will add more applications to the DataCore SAN over time," noted
Tokkaris. "Gradually we want to move all of the critical data of the
organization - specifically email and the customer management solution
to the SAN for faster access." Currently its customer management
database is hosted on two physical servers in a cluster by itself.

"Truly Nolen engaged The Pinnacle Group because of our industry
expertise in the virtualization space and relationship with DataCore
Software," said Aaron Schneider, Sales Engineering Director, The
Pinnacle Group. "Our job is to find the best possible solution for our
customers. We understood Truly Nolen's needs from a storage aspect and
helped the company design a centralized storage solution that would
not only satisfy its immediate requirements, but scale as capacity
increased. The SANmelody solution will easily support 'bolt-on'
functionality for disaster recovery and integrate seamlessly with
VMware's Virtual Infrastructure for a highly available,
fully-redundant solution." The Pinnacle Group is a Premier Partner
with DataCore Software and an expert in virtualization, storage, high
availability and disaster recovery infrastructures.

Next step - disaster recovery

Truly Nolen is planning to achieve business continuity first by
asynchronously mirroring to another SANmelody-powered system in
another city and cloning part of the ESX environment. This will
involve adding a third DataCore SANmelody server for asynchronous
replication. In terms of Phase II, Truly Nolen will add synchronous
mirroring within the data center. The company will synchronously
mirror its virtual disks between two SANmelody servers using separate
disk drives to achieve high-availability with automatic failover
failback recovery capabilities.

"SANmelody will enable Truly Nolen to replicate its critical data
to a remote site, which will serve to protect us further," explained
Tokkaris. "The key is to have DataCore SANmelody serve as the one data
source that protects all of our critical data and is replicated
remotely. By having this, we will be able to achieve all our disaster
recovery and business continuity objectives - allowing us to run
whether a failure takes down several disk drives, an entire DataCore
server, or the primary connections from the ESX hosts to the DataCore
virtual storage pool."

DataCore Software Free 30-day Trial

With virtualized storage, customers receive enduring ROI benefits
from the comprehensive storage management services provided by the
software. For more information and a free 30-day test drive, please
visit: www.datacore.com/trialsoftware.

About Truly Nolen

Founded in 1938, Tucson, Arizona-based Truly Nolen of America is
one of the largest family owned pest control companies in the United
States. Truly Nolen has 69 branch offices in Arizona, California,
Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. The company also has
independently owned and operated franchises in an ever-growing number
of territories including California, Delaware, Florida, Iowa,
Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina,
Tennessee, and Texas as well as Puerto Rico. For more information,
please visit www.trulynolen.com.

About The Pinnacle Group

Our goal is to help our customers build a computing infrastructure
that synchronizes business with technology. We recognize the
importance of budget constraints in today's volatile economy. We
maximize your ROI by knowing how to solve IT issues correctly the
first time and by implementing those solutions with a trained and
experienced engineering team.

The Pinnacle Group is a Premier Partner with DataCore Software,
VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC), and a Global National Reseller
with HP.

About 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.

DataCore Software, Fort Lauderdale
Bettye Grant, 954-377-6000
publicrelations@datacore.com
or
Red Nine PR
Stuart Smith, 336-896-1874
ssmith@redninePR.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008