Alternative Technology announced the availability of four Virtualization Solution Kits, specifically packaged for the small and medium business (SMB) and remote and branch office environments.

The Virtualization Solution Kits combine LeftHands’ Virtual SAN Appliance and VMware Infrastructure Acceleration Kits to deliver the robust benefits of server and storage virtualization – including high availability, scalability, and shared storage without requiring SAN hardware. These solution kits make complete virtual infrastructure solutions affordable for SMB and remote and branch office environments.

SMBs don't traditionally have the resources or IT skills to manage complex data storage environments, so they rely more on solution providers for complete solutions. The Virtualization Solution Kits are prepackaged, so providers can offer even lower cost, easier to deploy solutions that take advantage of the benefits of enterprise-class virtualization. The Virtualization Solution Kits enable SMB and remote office customers to optimize technology assets, reduce operational costs, and simplify IT asset management and administration operations, using a single hardware platform for server virtualization and shared storage.

Customers realize tremendous benefits from server virtualization. However, this new architecture increases the need for a more highly available IT infrastructure, and this traditionally requires an investment in physical shared storage. LeftHand Networks’ VSA provides a cost-effective shared storage solution via a redundant SAN with automated failover. The combination of the VSA and VMware Infrastructure Acceleration Kits provides an automated, high-availability solution for both application servers and storage with “failover” and “failback” between physical servers.

“The Virtualization Solution Kits consisting of products from LeftHand Networks and VMware open up a growing SMB and remote office market opportunity for our solution providers,” said Tom Zorn, executive vice president, Alternative Technology. “With the various Virtualization Solution Kit options, SMB customers can purchase the kit that best meets their high-availability requirements today, in cost-effective easy-to-install packages. And, as their business needs evolve and grow, both VMware and LeftHand have upgrade paths into more robust virtualization and iSCSI SAN solutions,” said Zorn.

“Alternative Technology brings significant channel and market reach and a strong reputation for providing leading solutions to the server virtualization market," said David Bangs, vice president of sales at LeftHand Networks. “With LeftHand Networks’ highly available physical and virtual SAN solutions, Alternative Technology offers leading-edge technologies to help SMB and remote office customers to reap the full benefits associated with VMware virtualization. We look forward to working with Alternative Technology to drive new opportunities and to bring these solutions to the SMB and remote office markets.”

The relationship with Alternative Technology extends LeftHand Networks’ distribution in North America, and brings additional value to LeftHand Networks’ resellers through Alternative Technology’s focused product offering, advanced technical services and top-notch sales support. As a subsidiary of Arrow Electronics, Alternative Technology connects LeftHand Networks’ resellers with complementary enterprise-class storage products through Arrow’s Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) unit, including: HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Network Appliance, EMC and Hitachi Data Systems.