Symantec blames piracy for Veritas licensing snafu
Symantec Corp. said that a software piracy ring is slowing down the
licensing rollout of the new Backup Exec 11d product and
complicating technical support for users. In a story first reported
by
Computerworld, Symantec officials said that a piracy ring
creating counterfeit versions of Backup Exec in North America was
partly to blame for a delay in new licenses for Backup Exec 11d, as
well as technical support issues. On top of the piracy issue,
Symantec has installed a new enterprise resource planning (ERP)
system to consolidate its own -- as well Veritas' licensing
programs -- a long and complex process that has taken its toll on
the company and its customers. Upgrade invitations for Backup Exec
aren't expected to be fully rolled out until late February at best,
according to Symantec officials.
FRCP rules prompt data
retention scrutiny
Today is the day many in the legal and storage industries have been
waiting for -- the date the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
(FRCP) take effect in U.S. courts. Most notable among them for
storage managers is the new Rule 37(f), which stipulates that if
the defendant in a lawsuit has made a "good faith" effort to
maintain a data retention/deletion policy, that party will not be
held liable for failure to produce a record.
Backup software maker CommVault Inc. took advantage of today's
switchover date by announcing a new Outlook Add-In feature for its
QiNetix Data Archiver software. The new feature, free with the Data
Archiver product, will allow legal managers to perform discovery
searches within the Outlook client without needing full
administrative permissions on the Exchange server.
Email archivers are also having a field day. Email archiver
MessageOne announced new failover and single-instance storage
features for its email management services (EMS) products. Managed
services provider Azaleos announced a new total cost of ownership
(TCO) calculator tool for its Exchange outsourcing customers.
Finally, there was a flurry of announcements of support for
Exchange 2007, from Network Appliance Inc.'s (NetApp) SnapManager
4.0 for Exchange to EMC products, including DiskXtender, to
products from Mimosa Systems Inc., Zantaz Inc. and Symantec.
Symantec also issued reminders about its
Enterprise Vault tool, released in August to
get a good jump on the new rules. Finally, vendors across the
board are crawling out of the woodwork to offer general advice
to users about how to evaluate, manage, and/or change storage
infrastructures to take advantage of the new rules.
"It will take case law and landmark precedent-setting cases to
show companies what the courts are really going to do with these
new rules," admitted David Campbell, product marketing manager for
Enterprise Vault at Symantec. "But this is at least causing many
organizations to re-evaluate their strategies around data
retention." (See,
Users wary of Rule 37(f) data retention
'loophole,' Aug. 14.)
One CommVault user said the new Outlook Add-In feature would
probably finally push him into implementing Data Archiver. Joe
Martins, vice president of IT at Design Within Reach, a furniture
importer, said his company already uses CommVault's Galaxy backup
software but has another product, GFI Software Ltd.'s MailArchiver
for Exchange, still in his shop.
"The GFI product was very inexpensive and worked well for
internal and legal searches," Martins said. Prior to the Add-In,
CommVault's product would have still required IT time and resources
to assist in searches, according to Martins. The new ability to let
end users do their own heavy lifting will help him justify the
increased cost, he said.
Backup security flaws flagged
Word circulated widely this week following a posting on a Web site
run by the The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) that
version 11.5 of CA Inc.'s BrightStor ARCserve Backup product's tape
engine contains a critical security flaw. The problem, according to
CERT, is malformed code that could result in denial of service
(DOS) attacks on backup servers. Meanwhile, security experts said
backup and recovery applications are coming under more frequent
attacks by hackers. CA, which already disclosed two other security
weaknesses in the ARCserve product in October, said it was looking
into the problem.
A security flaw in Symantec's Veritas NetBackup 6.0 PureDisk
Remote Office Edition product was also exposed this week; Symantec
responded with a patch for the vulnerability, which could have
allowed attackers to gain remote control over a system.
IDC says disk storage grew another 50%
According to IDC's most recently released Worldwide Quarterly Disk
Storage Systems Tracker, worldwide external disk storage systems
factory revenues in the third quarter of 2006 grew 9.9% from a year
ago to $4.3 billion, marking 14 consecutive quarters of
year-over-year growth. For the quarter, the total disk storage
systems market grew to $6.2 billion, up 7.9% from the prior year's
quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped was 783
petabytes, up 50.2% from a year ago.
EMC lead the market with 21.4% revenue share followed by
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) with 17.6% revenue share. IBM maintained
the third position with 13.7% market share while Dell Inc. and
Hitachi Data Systems Inc. (HDS) rounded the top five in a
statistical tie with 8.0% and 7.9% revenue share, respectively.
After a slowdown in growth during the first two quarters of 2006,
the iSCSI storage area network (SAN) market returned to triple
digit year-over-year growth in the third quarter. IDC said there
was also an increase in the average size and selling price for disk
storage systems in the third quarter and attributed it to a trend
toward consolidation in users' environments.
McData announces FICON read acceleration
McData Corp. announced FICON read acceleration for its UltraNet
Edge Storage Router and USD-X platforms. The new read acceleration
function can be coupled with the products' existing write
acceleration capability to reduce tape backup and recovery time
over a wide area network (WAN).
Isilon prices IPO
Isilon Systems Inc. set its planned initial public offering (IPO)
at 8.35 million shares for between $8.50 and $9.50 per share late
last week, meaning shares will begin trading hands in just a couple
of weeks. Isilon may have been bolstered in its IPO plans by the
success of Riverbed Technology Inc., which went public
mid-September at a starting price per share of $9.75 and has since
topped out at around $35.00 per share.
Cape Cod Healthcare picks EMC
EMC announced that Cape Cod Healthcare, Cape Cod's largest provider
of healthcare services with more than 400 physicians and 4,000
employees, is using EMC software, storage and services, including
Clariion, SAN Copy and the recently announced EMC NetWorker module
for Meditech software to protect data on its 15 production servers.
NTP Software announces Encryption Sentinel.
NTP Software announced the release of a new product, NTP Software
Encryption Sentinel, which prevents an organization's data from
being accessed by an unencrypted client system. Using the software,
users can designate sensitive data on their storage hosts, and the
NTP tool then ensures that this data can only be copied to or read
by an encrypted client, regardless of whether the data is encrypted
on its storage host.
Exanet updates clustered NAS management software
Clustered network attached storage (NAS) maker Exanet Inc.
announced the release of ExaStore -- Intelligent Cluster Management
(ICM), which will add storage management to its ExaStore product.
The software's capabilities include continuous data protection
(CDP), snapshots and virtual volumes, which Exanet claims will
allow for storage expansion on the fly
NEC buddies up with Archivas
NEC Corp. of America announced a new partnership with Archivas
Inc., in which NEC will integrate and sell Archivas Cluster (ArC)
software with its line of modular storage arrays and servers.