Symantec blames piracy for Veritas licensing snafu
Weekly compilation of storage news: Symantec says that software counterfeiting is throwing a wrench in tech support ; FRCP rules take effect.
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.
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.
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.
