Weekly compilation of storage news:EMC updates SAN Advisor
EMC Corp. announced the availability of ControlCenter (storage
area network) SAN Advisor 5.3 change management and
configuration-validation software. New enhancements include support
for zone configurations, which allows users to validate and
simulate changes to existing zones, model new zones and specify
zoning policies in a SAN design.
Previously, SAN Advisor validated SAN environments using a
default set of around 150 best practice rules. With SAN Advisor
5.3, users can now customize SAN Advisor's rules engine to
selectively validate specific areas of the SAN and comply with
specific company policies. The new version also includes a memory
feature that allows users to manually input data for devices the
software doesn't recognize by default just once.
SAN Advisor 5.3's pricing is based on capacity and starts at
$5,000.
HP, EMC finally settle out of court
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and EMC have signed a five-year patent
cross-licensing deal that will end four years of litigation. Under
the terms of the settlement agreement, HP will pay EMC a $325
million payment.
The lawsuit was originally brought by EMC against storage
management company StorageApps in 2000, claiming StorageApps'
products infringed EMC patents on creating mirror copies of system
files; HP acquired StorageApps in 2001 and took on the dispute as
well. The two went back and forth with suits, countersuits and
counterclaims until last May when HP lost a jury trial and was sent
to arbitration to determine damages. HP had appealed the judgment,
but Monday's settlement finally ends all legal cases between the
companies over the patent disputes.
IBM offers email archiving for SMBs
IBM announced a new email archiving offering aimed at small and
midsized businesses (SMB), called the IBM CommonStore eMail
Archiving Preload. The product comes in two flavors, for Exchange
and Notes/Domino. The product is implemented on blades that are
inserted into IBM's System x BladeCenter. All emails are extracted
and stored in the centralized content repository using IBM Content
Manager. The product is all IBM's own code, the company boasts in a
press release and will be generally available in October. IBM said
it will be offering other packages of essentially the same code in
the future; e.g., pure software that organizations can implement
themselves on hardware other than blades.
TeraCloud touts storage analytics software
TeraCloud Corp. announced the availability of TeraCloud Integrated
Storage Analytics software. The product allows users in both
distributed and IBM z-system mainframe environments to create
performance reports and apply performance best practices to their
environments without the need for additional storage, the company
claims.
BakBone, Mirapoint partner on email backup
Email archive maker Mirapoint Inc. and backup software maker
BakBone Software Inc. announced they have entered into a strategic
partnership to offer Mirapoint customers a combination of BakBone's
NetVault backup and restore software, and Mirapoint's Secure
Messaging Infrastructure email archiving product.
The integration between the products comes because the Mirapoint
appliance relies on NDMP backups and BakBone has completed NDMP
certification. The companies said the product package is the first
backup product integration with the Mirapoint box.. NetVault Backup
will be bundled and sold through Mirapoint's price list with
Mirapoint offering a single point of contact for customer
support.
LG Electronics deploys Riverbed Steelhead
appliances
Riverbed Technology Inc. announced that LG Electronics has
selected and deployed its wide area data services (WDS) Steelhead
appliances at several dozen sites in countries around the world to
accelerate application performance over its wide area network (WAN)
and control bandwidth costs.
Prior to the installation of Riverbed's Steelhead appliances, LG
was experiencing increased bandwidth usage across all locations and
applications, and a significant increase in the number of internal
applications requiring network access, including many custom
applications. In addition, several internal applications, including
the LG's purchase/sales/inventory application, could not be
accessed by employees in remote offices because application
performance was so slow. LG said it selected Riverbed's WAN
optimization appliance because it produced the fastest response
times in prepurchase testing. The other products evaluated by LG
were not disclosed.
Crossroads releases iSCSI bridge and router
Crossroads Systems Inc. announced general availability of its
iSCSI NearEdge 6220i-b storage bridge and iSCSI NearEdge 6220i
storage router, which will allow users to deploy an IP SAN by
bringing network-aware capabilities to their existing direct
attached SCSI-based storage.
Avamar releases NDMP accelerator for NetApp filers
Avamar Technologies announced an enhanced version of its NDMP
Backup Accelerator, designed specifically for Network Appliance
Inc. (NetApp) filers. The product, built on the Avamar Axion
software, is meant to reduce the amount of time required to perform
daily full filer backups by deduplicating backup data on the back
end.
Postini deploys Archivas
Digital archiving software maker Archivas Inc. announced that
email management service provider Postini Inc. has deployed its
Archivas Cluster (ArC) in its redundant data centers to provide
archive storage for its managed-services customers.
DataDirect networks debuts 560 TB storage system
DataDirect Networks Inc. unveiled the S2A9550, which it claims
boasts up to 3 GBps performance, automated data protection
capabilities and 560 terabytes (TB) capacity. The system is
designed to support both block-level and file-system
configurations, as well as compute clusters from IBM, Dell, HP,
Cray, SGI, Bull and others. The S2A9550 also contains
hardware-based RAID-6 and double parity protection.
Kazeon announces $21M funding
Kazeon Systems Inc. announced $21 million in its second round of
venture capital (VC) funding, with investment from Menlo Ventures
and Focus Ventures, bringing the total investment in the company to
$44 million. This second funding round will allow Kazeon to expand
U.S. and international sales, marketing and engineering, the
company said.
News analysis from SearchStorage.com this week:
Hospital: Storage capacity planning 'very difficult'
City relegates EMC Clariion to secondary storage
Storage analysts: RAID is changing
EqualLogic updates storage provisioning software