Stikeman Elliot Adopts DataCore's SANsymphony-V

DataCore Software, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based provider of storage virtualization software, has announced the implementation of its SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor in the offices of Stikeman Elliot. Toronto-based Stikeman, one of Canada’s largest firms, with more than 500 attorneys in offices across North America, Europe, and Australia, has employed Datacore’s technology in its Montreal and Toronto hubs in an attempt to decrease storage server downtime and improve disaster recovery capabilities.

The SANsymphony-V hypervisor acts as a virtual management platform for an array of data storage options, including electronic memory, solid-state drives, disk devices, and cloud storage tiers. The technology automates the tiering of storage disks among available devices depending size of a workload, and the projected cost of storing the data on a given device (see definition of hypervisor).

Stikeman’s network and systems administrator, Marco Magini, says that the adoption of SANsymphony-V has addressed some of the firm’s persistent issues with server unavailability. According to Magini, the firm’s initial efforts at server virtualization resulted in 24- to 48-hour data backup periods. The hypervisor, combined with a “vSphere [high availability] infrastructure spread across two physical sites with multi-pathing,” has reportedly improved performance by Stikeman’s existing data storage devices, and removed the firm’s need for traditional backup tapes.