Coraid formed a technology alliance with Veeam to run the latter’s backup software on its EthernetDrive SAN storage.

“Server virtualization drives dramatic changes in storage requirements, forcing companies to think carefully about their architecture and the ROI of legacy storage networks,” said Carl Wright, executive vice president of worldwide sales and business development at Coraid.  “The combination of Coraid and Veeam offers an easy-to-use, cost effective backup and recovery solution designed specifically for the dynamic nature of virtual machines.”

The Veeam Backup & Replication software supports vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. In conjunction with Coraid’s hardware, customers can use it to achieve a price/performance ratio five-to-eight times ahead of that delivered by Fibre Channel alternatives, according to the company. One of the big selling points of Coraid’s SAN is that it’s very easily deployable, and companies can get up and running after just a few minutes sent on installation.

The networking industry had a few product announcements from some of the biggest names in IT this week. Yesterday IBM and NEC said they fused together their technologies to create a controller/switch hybrid that’s based on the up and coming Open Flow standard. The two companies have high hopes for the offering, which competes with more traditional solutions in a very new way.

Earlier this week, Cisco unwrapped its own new line of products. The Linksys HomePlug AV represents one of the networking giant’s only new initiatives in the consumer space lately- an area that it has been focusing less on ever since CEO John Chambers decided its time to tim the fat off his then staggering company. The new products are designed to deliver internet connection to the more isolated parts of a household, and come in two different kits.