3PAR^® (NYSE: PAR), the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today two new 3PAR InForm^® software plug-ins for VMware vSphere™ and VMware vCenter™ Server which provide virtual machine (VM)-aware snapshots, rapid online VM recovery, and VM-to-storage mapping. Together, 3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere and the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter Server enable joint 3PAR and VMware customers to simply, efficiently, and non-disruptively protect, recover, and manage virtual machines and related storage resources in their virtual datacenter and cloud computing environments.

“With the combination of 3PAR and VMware virtualization, we can go directly to the VMware vCenter™ Server management console for visibility into resource utilization from our hosts all the way down to our InServ volumes,” said Christian Alvarado, Director of Information Technology at LVI Services. “We can simply and quickly virtual machine snapshots and initiate rapid online recovery—even of individual files—directly from the VMware vCenter Server management console. This means we have greater control of our virtualized server environment while sping less money, less time on training, and less time on recovery. Plus we no longer have to take VMs or storage offline during recovery.”

Rapid Online Recovery: 3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere™
3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere was designed to give VMware administrators the benefits of rapid provisioning of new virtual machines from VM copies, cost-effective use of storage resources for disk-based VM backup and rapid recovery, and superior granularity over the recovery process by enabling the creation of hundreds of VM-aware, point-in-time snapshots without the use of agents. Recovery Manager gives administrators automated protection and recovery of Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs), VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File Systems (VMFS), individual VMs, and even individual files within VMware vSphere environments.

Enhanced Visibility into Storage Resources: 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter™ Server
To give administrators access to powerful management capabilities from within the VMware vCenter Server management console, 3PAR offers the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter Server. This plug-in gives users enhanced visibility into storage resources and precise insight into how individual VMs are mapped to datastores and individual 3PAR InServ^® Storage Server volumes. In addition, quality of service (QoS) acteristics for individual storage volumes—such as RAID level, subtem failure protection level, drive type, and volume type—are now displayed within the VMware vCenter Server management console. Key benefits of the 3PAR management plug-in include reducing administration time and improving clarity across application-to-VM-to-storage layers.

“3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere™ and the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter™ Server give joint customers the power of seamless, rapid online recovery from within the VMware vCenter management console,” said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances, VMware. “By directly integrating 3PAR snapshot creation and rapid online recovery into this console, 3PAR, combined with VMware vSphere, is helping customers simplify their storage requirements as they move toward building private clouds.”

In a recent survey of storage best practices performed by the Taneja Group, more than half of the respondents acknowledged the need to improve existing virtualized server backup and recovery tools and processes. 38% of users said they plan to move from traditional, agent-based backup in the guest operating tem and pursue approaches more tailored to virtualized servers, such as hypervisor- and array-based snapshots.

“Existing agent-based and even proxy server-based approaches to backup and recovery for VMware vSphere™ environments can be disruptive or limit recovery point service levels,” said Jeff Byrne of Taneja Group. “As storage networking and storage virtualization have become more sophisticated, users have started to demand more refined tools and processes. By enabling snapshot creation and rapid online recovery from within the VMware vCenter™ Server management console, 3PAR has eliminated the performance impacts, complexity, and management drawbacks inherent in other approaches.”

“Our highly virtualized InServ platform already gives VMware vSphere™ customers improved efficiency and ROI for their virtual datacenter and cloud computing environments,” said David Scott, 3PAR President and CEO. “Now 3PAR and VMware have come together to give joint customers a new way to get more out of VMware vSphere with enhanced visibility, VM snapshot capability, and granular, rapid online recovery from within the VMware vCenter™ Server management console.”

3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere™ and the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter™ Server are available immediately. The Management Plug-In is available at no ge to 3PAR customers. Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere™ starts at US $3000 per InServ Storage Server.