Weekly compilation of storage news:Symantec debuts Storage Foundation 5.0; earnings
slip
Symantec Corp. announced Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 High
Availability (HA) for Windows, which adds new support for
multipathing that will be released as a standard feature of Windows
Vista later this year, and a feature analysts are praising called
Fire Drill, which allows for nondisruptive failover testing in the
Storage Foundation environment.
"Ease of use and clicks-to-install is getting warn out" in
product differentiations, said Greg Schulz, founder and analyst
with the StorageIO Group. The Fire Drill feature, he said, goes
further toward ease of use by allowing nondisruptive "what if"
testing in the environment. "I think you're going to see a lot of
'me toos' after this -- more vendors are going to want to get on
the bandwagon," Schulz said.
Also new to this release is Veritas Storage Foundation Basic for
Windows, a free version of Storage Foundation for Windows, which
includes Dynamic Multipathing (DMP) and runs on physical and
virtual servers with system configurations that do not exceed four
volumes or two physical processors in a single physical system.
The software will also include a new set of configuration
wizards that make setup faster and allow administrators to use a
GUI to schedule point-in-time copies when using the FlashSnap
Option. The software also now includes dynamic optimization of
storage volumes and load-balancing algorithms that work across
heterogeneous storage arrays.
Meanwhile, however, Symantec preannounced this week that it
expects its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2006 to miss
targets, and CEO John Thompson said publicly that the problem can
be attributed to disappointing sales from the Veritas data center
management software group.
Analysts say Symantec needs to get its product lines and the
messaging around them straight; the company has a boatload of often
overlapping products, many with intricate interdependencies. "I
think they're wrestling with the challenge of getting their message
out," Schulz said. "They need to get everything under one umbrella
and continue to build out their capabilities while integrating
things further."
Symantec will hold a formal earnings call Jan. 24. Symantec
stocks plummeted just over 13% between closing Friday and opening
Wednesday on the heels of Thomas' statements.
Seagate introduces tiny, fast SAS drive
Seagate Technology introduced the Savvio 15K drive, a new 15K rpm
addition to the Savvio line of 2.5-inch SAS enterprise drive
solutions. Seagate said that the Savvio 15K drive was recently
validated as the world's fastest drive within the latest HP
ProLiant servers in benchmark testing.
Sun touts NAS customers, adds NAS box
Sun Microsystems Inc. announced that the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech) and the National Archive Publishing Co. (NAPC)
have selected Sun StorageTek NAS appliances to host file data. At
Caltech, the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) heads up
computational science and engineering research; NAPC specializes in
preservation, custom publishing and other academic services.
Sun also announced the Sun StorageTek 5220 NAS appliance, an
entry-level
network attached storage (NAS) appliance for
departments, workgroups or remote offices in large enterprises.
The StorageTek 5220 NAS appliance offers optional remote data
mirroring among StorageTek 5000 NAS appliances, includes iSCSI
target support and starts at $28,990 (U.S. list price) for a 2
terabyte (TB) configuration.
Law firms deploy Riverbed
Riverbed Technology Inc. announced that two law firms, Pepper
Hamilton LLP and Loeb & Loeb LLP, as well as Electronic
Evidence Discovery Inc., an electronic discovery services company,
have deployed Riverbed's Steelhead wide-area data services (WDS)
appliances.
Interstate Hotels and Resorts upgrades Sepaton
Sepaton Inc. announced that one of the nation's largest independent
hotel management companies, Interstate Hotels and Resorts has
deployed the S2100-ES2 virtual tape library (VTL) to replace the
previous version of Sepaton's product, the S2100-DS. Interstate
uses EMC's Legato backup software to back up Network
Appliancefilers onto the Sepaton VTL.
Permabit offers grid storage
Permabit Inc. announced the availability of Permabit Dynamic
Information Grid, which combines Permabit's Dynamic Information
Services
content-addressed storage (CAS) software and
grid storage. A grid design eliminates major data migration as
the system is expanded, automates load balancing and automates
deduplication. The system will be integrated and distributed by
Avnet Computing Systems (ACS).
Scentric announces Enterprise Classification Suites
Scentric announced the availability of Scentric Destiny Enterprise
Suites for Data Privacy, e-Discovery and Compliance. Each suite
combines preconfigured software that has also been revised to
manage more data. The product packages, which also include a year's
maintenance in the licensing price of $80,000, start with the
ability to classify 25 TB of data and are then sold in increments
for 50 TB, 100 TB and 150 TB. The three packages are the Enterprise
Suite for Data Privacy, which can automatically flag, migrate,
delete or restrict access to information classified as containing
personally sensitive information. The Enterprise Suite for
e-Discovery preclassifies data for possible future litigation
purposes. The Compliance Suite combines both the Data Privacy and
e-Discovery products and adds 20 templates preconfigured to
correspond with major corporate regulations including the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA) and the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). A 150 TB
Compliance Suite would start at $250,000, according to the
company.
Hitachi to resell Onaro
Continuing a strategy of partnering for new business that began
with the recent announcement of an OEM deal with BlueArc, Hitachi
Data Systems (HDS) announced that it will resell Onaro Inc.'s
SANscreen storage management software. Under the terms of the
agreement, HDS will market, sell and provide first-level support
for HDS' SANscreen customers. HDS is already a member of Onaro's
recently launched Service Connections program and will use Onaro's
SANscreen Service Connect
application program interface (API) to
provide information to its Hitachi HiCommandSuite Software.