IBM in June will release a new version of its
TotalStorage storage area network (San) File System software
designed to work with a wider variety of new server and storage
environments.
Unlike previous versions of the San File System, which supported
only IBM products, version 2.1 will work with storage devices from
IBM rivals including EMC, Hewlett-Packard, and Hitachi Data
Systems. It will also now support the Red Hat Linux Enterprise
Server 3.0 and Sun Microsystems' Solaris 9 operating systems.
The software, which will begin shipping on 29 June, has also
been enhanced to allow customers to move data from one device to
another without disrupting their server operating systems, said
Jeff Barnett, manager of IBM's storage software strategy. "The
environment itself is designed so that it isolates your server
environment from your storage environment," he said.
IBM's San File System is based on Sanergy technology the company
acquired from Mercury Computer Systems in 1999, and while it was
initially released as a product last autumn, it has been under
development for some time, said Arun Taneja, founder of storage
industry research firm Taneja Group. "IBM's San File System
is fairly mature in that regard, because it didn't start from
scratch," he said.
San file systems are useful for companies looking to provide a
number of different servers with identical views of data on the
network, Taneja said. "This kind of stuff comes into play where
there are large amounts of data, you have heterogeneous server
environments, and you have the need for several servers to work
with each other on a particular application."
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News
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