Sanbolic, a market leader in distributed data management, today announced support for System Center 2012. System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager is available today, and System Center Operations Manager and System Center Orchestrator support will be available by the end of Q2.

Sanbolic Melio can be used both to manage storage for Windows Server Hyper-V, and to manage application data for physical or virtual Windows Server application servers. Using Melio with System Center 2012 will simplify the provisioning of highly available physical or virtual Windows Server workloads on heterogeneous SAN or DAS storage while adding improved data protection, storage live migration, and granular QoS management. Melio supports virtualized Windows Server workloads or private cloud environments across heterogeneous hypervisors.

Sanbolic Melio is purpose-built to alleviate the data management and performance challenges encountered in distributed physical and virtual application environments. By abstracting logical storage from heterogeneous storage hardware and providing a centrally managed shared pool of storage across physical and virtual Windows Servers, Sanbolic enables scale-out and high availability for critical enterprise services such as SQL Server, file and web serving, and virtual desktops.

Melio will integrate easily into environments managed by System Center 2012. Extensive storage level reporting can be used by System Center Operations Manager to manage service performance. Cluster -wide snapshots within Melio can be backed up by System Center Data Protection Manager. System Center Virtual Machine Manager can use Melio as a shared storage resource for Windows Server Hyper-V, adding performance and scalability, as well as features like granular quality of service management and storage live migration.

Melio can be managed through its own interface and through a WMI API, and can be managed through PowerShell commandlets in the new release. Integration with System Center Orchestrator simplifies the automation of logical storage management in private clouds, allowing administrators to easily migrate workloads across storage hardware, manage quality of service for critical workloads, and mirror data across sites for disaster recovery using any industry standard SAN storage or a Sanbolic SoftSAN using local server-side hard disk or solid state storage.

“Sanbolic provides advanced software-based storage management capability for Windows Server virtual machines that can be managed using System Center Virtual Machine Manager,” said Sergio Klarreich, Director Strategic Alliances, Management and Security Division, Microsoft Corp. “With the addition of Melio’s management packs for System Center 2012, Sanbolic now extends the ability to provide infrastructure as a service that is elastic, self-service, and usage- based in a Microsoft private cloud.”

Sanbolic Melio’s management pack for System Center Operations Manager, PowerShell Commandlets, and System Center Orchestrator integration pack will be available in Q2.