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PROCESSOR

April 21, 2006

Original article on PROCESSOR web site

Acronis Tackles Virtualization & Size Barriers

Managing Hard Drives used to be easy today, however, technology demands have increased, and corporations have multiple virtual systems on a single disk. And with the birth of the Internet, companies also have a bigger responsibility to hang on to their proprietary information.

Stephen Lawton, spokesperson for Acronis (www.acronis.pt), a Massachusetts-based storage management solution provider, says virtualization, newer file systems, and an increase in data are vastly changing the disk management space.

Virtualization Still Reigns

One of the most significant changes in corporate disk management today, Lawton says, is the explosive growth of virtualization. "Today, a 200 GB disk drive isn't just a drive; it could be a virtual computer. Disk management is more than just keeping track of operating systems, programs, and data; it is now a question of managing and maintaining multiple virtual systems on a single physical box."

Lawton says being able to run multiple "computers" with one set of hardware is useful, especially in the server consolidation market. He says, "As IT departments try to reduce costs, they generally look for approaches that will have the smallest Acronis Tackles Virtualization & Size Barriers impact on their users. Virtualization is one approach to meet that requirement. With virtual machines, you can create multiple systems and configurations from one set of hardware. Or you virtualize the software rather than the hardware. That way, each version of the system has a virtual version of the software — at a lower cost."

According to Lawton, the current state of the disk management industry is already demanding bigger and better. "Some years ago we talked of disk farms in the gigabytes, then terabytes. We seem to be passing petabytes and going directly into exabyteclass storage systems. What this means is that there is a whole lot more data to manage, back up, secure, and simply store. The tools we developed for the days of megabyte-class storage systems simply do not scale well into the exabyte systems. We not only need to manage larger disks, but we'll have new file systems and new ways of putting data onto disks. That will necessitate new management programs — ones we haven't even imagined yet."

One of the biggest challenges in the disk management industry today is size. But Lawton says Acronis is ready. He says, "Here is what we see for our future this year: We are going to support huge hard disks, and we are going to support bigger sector sizes. At the moment, hard disk drives have usually 512 bytes per sector. During the next year we expect disks with bigger sector sizes. We are going to support better dynamic volumes and GPT (GUID partition table) partitions." Lawton says basic partitioning technology has been around for quite a while and, for the most part, has been optimized significantly. He says overall hard disk management isn't what it was just a few years ago.

The Acronis Way

As far as Lawton is concerned, Acronis' approach is very straightforward. He says, "We offer two modes for managing disks in Acronis Disk Director Server. The first mode is the automated mode — a wizarddriven repartitioning tool that's just easier to use than any other partitioning tool out there. We also have an automated mode that includes the manual settings for all the bells and whistles that one requires for an enterprise product." Lawton says Acronis' Disk Director Server, the company's enterpriseclass version of the consumer Disk Director Suite, works hand-in-hand with Acronis' True Image Enterprise Server, a disk imaging and disaster recovery solution that lets users restore an image to different hardware.

Acronis also works with 64-bit Windows. Lawton says, "If you have a server running that OS, you need our products; you just won't find what you need from other vendors. And the Windows tools, while usable, are very complex and do not allow you to resize and do other changes to Windows partitions while still running Windows. If you want to FDISK (a DOS command) a drive, you have to reformat and reinstall the software." Lawton says if you have ever tried to partition a disk using FDISK, you know what frustration is. Any changes made to a hard disk require a complete reformat of the disk and therefore a reinstallation of software. He says thirdparty programs such as those from Acronis make disk partitioning a snap, without putting data in jeopardy.

Lawton believes that IT managers, specifically, will be interested in Acronis' technology, simply because the product is easy to use. He says, "You don't need to have your highest-paid and most highly trained engineers doing disk management. That frees them up for other tasks. As new systems come in, you can have a technician handle things like partitioning, drive configuration, and software deployment using either Acronis Snap Deploy or Acronis True Image, depending on your deployment protocols."

The key differentiator between Acronis Disk Director Suite/Server and the other products, Lawton says, is the dual-mode operations. "For simple, straightforward tasks like repartitioning or creating a partition from unused disk space, the automatic mode is ideal, even in a corporate environment. Where greater granularity is required, we offer the manual mode."

Upward & Onward

Lawton says the road ahead looks good for Acronis in particular. The company just added 64-bit support to Acronis Disk Director Suite :10 and Acronis Disk Director Server. They've also just launched the latest versions of the corporate Acronis True Image family. On top of this, Acronis is in the process of working on an Acronis True Image for the Mac on Intel. Lawton says, "We see 2006 as the Year of the Virtual Machine. To that end, we are optimizing our products for virtualization. We already have the ability to restore images to different hardware, but we are constantly looking for ways to further refine that process."

Lawton concludes, "In the HD management arena, there's a lot happening, but we're seeing most of that work being done in more exotic aspects of disk management. Partitioning in and of itself has become sort of the old technology here; it's what you can do with it that's really exciting."