InfoStor articles from April 2003

InfoStor archives from April 2003

Users split over SAN management approaches.
April 1, 2003... When it comes to purchasing storage management software, end users generally fall into two camps: those who prefer to purchase products from a single vendor and those who prefer to buy best-of-breed (or point) products from multiple vendors....

Windows Server 2003 means better storage management.
April 1, 2003... This month, Microsoft finally introduced its long-awaited Windows Server 2003, which includes new storage management capabilities as well as other features. However, analysts say that the new storage management features are just the tip of...

Users weigh in on tape-vs.-disk backup debate.
April 1, 2003... In a recent InfoStor survey, industry analysts and integrators gave disk-based backup high marks. In fact, four out of eight respondents Said disk-based backup should be given "high" implementation priority this year (see "Analysts share...

VCs pour, and storage start-ups drink. (Editorial).(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... Despite the economic slowdown and IT spending clampdown, venture capitalists keep funneling money into storage start-ups at a surprising rate. Just a sampling of funding rounds over the last two months includes the following: * LeftHand...

LiveVault has secured $10 million in Series B equity financing. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... LiveVault has secured $10 million in Series B equity financing, bringing the total raised to $20 million since late 2001. Funding was led by Sevin Rosen Funds, with existing investors Matrix Partners, Atlas Venture, Adams Street Partners, Iron...

Arkivio announced the general availability of the Unix. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Arkivio announced the general availability of the Unix release of its auto-stor software, which enables automated and agentless discovery, monitoring, and reporting of data and storage resources across heterogeneous DAS/SAN/NAS environments.

JNI and Topspin Communications have entered into a co-branding and reseller agreement for InfiniBand switching technology. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... JNI and Topspin Communications have entered into a co-branding and reseller agreement for InfiniBand switching technology. Under the terms of the agreement, JNI will resell a co-branded version of the Topspin 90 Switched Computing System.

ADIC and MSC.Software have signed a reseller agreement for ADIC's StorNext Management Suite data management software. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... ADIC and MSC.Software have signed a reseller agreement for ADIC's StorNext Management Suite data management software, making StarNext File System and Storage Manager software available to MSC.

GlassHouse Technologies. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... GlassHouse Technologies has launched its Data Management Services for biotechnology and life sciences companies. Services include data classification, implementation, and storage risk audit.

AppIQ has secured $12 million in its second round of venture capital financing. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... AppIQ has secured $12 million in its second round of venture capital financing, led by original investors Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, bringing total capital raised to $20 million.

McData has enrolled in AppIQ's CIMIQ Partner Program. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... McData has enrolled in AppIQ's CIMIQ Partner Program, and AppIQ is one of the first members of McData's OpenReady Developer Program. The companies will be demonstrating a functionally complete CIM implementation in SNIA's CIM-SAN...

InfiniCon Systems has signed a distribution agreement with Appro. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... InfiniCon Systems has signed a distribution agreement with Appro, a developer of high-density, high-performance servers. Appro will integrate InfiniCon's InfinIO 7000 Shared I/O and Clustering System as a strategic interconnect and I/O...

EqualLogic has secured $15 million in its second round of funding. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... EqualLogic has secured $15 million in its second round of funding, bringing total capital raised to $27 million. Financing was led by TD Capital Technology Ventures, with Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners also participating.

CyberKey has entered into a licensing and software developer agreement with Iomega. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... CyberKey has entered into a licensing and software developer agreement with Iomega for its Active Disk technology. Under terms of the agreement, CyberKey users will be able to download Active Disk-powered-compatible applications from the...

Silicon Image has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TransWarp Networks. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Silicon Image has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TransWarp Networks, a privately held company focused on switching, CPU, and memory products, which will enable the company to broaden its storage offerings from PC to enterprise...

InfoStor magazine has added a Vendor Research Library (VRL) to its home page (www.infostor.com). (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... InfoStor magazine has added a Vendor Research Library (VRL) to its home page (www.infostor.com). This research tool lets IT vendors find solid research, facts, and industry data in one location. Visitors can search for white papers, case...

The Storage Networking Industry Association Europe (SNIA-E) and Fibre Channel Industry Association Europe (FCIA-E) will be merging by the end of May. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The Storage Networking Industry Association Europe (SNIA-E) and Fibre Channel Industry Association Europe (FCIA-E) will be merging by the end of May. The new organization, which will keep the current SNIA-E structure and "SNIA Europe" name,...

Fabric-based intelligence gets vendor nod. (News Analysis & Trends).
April 1, 2003... News last month that Brocade had signed up seven more independent software vendors (ISVs) as Fabric Application Development Partners signals a growing trend in the industry to move storage applications off hosts and disk arrays and into the...

NAS start-ups rely on distributed file systems. (News Analysis & Trends).(Scale8 and Spinnaker Networks)
April 1, 2003... Two network-attached storage (NAS) start-ups offering ATA-based systems are targeting the fixed content--or reference information--market, which is expected to grow 92% per year, according to The Enterprise Storage Group (ESG). However, both...

Start-up joins SRM software ranks. (News Analysis & Trends).(Deepfile)
April 1, 2003... Austin, TX-based Deepfile is adding a new twist to stand-alone storage resource management (SRM) products by offering automated SRM functionality built into a hardware appliance that supports CIFS and NFS. Launched in 2001, the start-up...

HP boosts NAS performance, slashes prices. (News Analysis & Trends).
April 1, 2003... Hewlett-Packard is increasing performance and cutting prices on its next generation of StorageWorks network-attached storage (NAS) devices. HP also introduced multi-pathing software to improve storage area network (SAN) connectivity and NAS...

Sony bests LTO, SDLT with 500GB S-AIT drive. (News Analysis & Trends).
April 1, 2003... Sony recently began volume shipments of Super AIT (S-AIT) tape drives, which the company claims creates a new class of "super" rape drives--a distinction warranted by the drive's industry-high 500GB native capacity. "We're fundamentally...

EMC broadens ATA support. (Recent ATA Product News).(Clariion arrays)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... EMC last month made two of its Clan ion arrays--the CX400 and CX600--available in parallel ATA configurations (support for Serial ATA is planned). EMO first integrated parallel ATA drives last year, when it introduced Centera, an ATA-based...

Legato gets into the ATA act. (Recent ATA Product News).(Legato NetWorker 7.0)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Among the new features of the recently released Legato NetWorker 7.0 is an enhanced DiskBackup Option. The company says that by allowing users to write and read multiple data streams'to and from a variety of new ATA-based disk-based backup...

Seagate and Best Buy are now offering Serial ATA hard drives. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Seagate and Best Buy are now offering Serial ATA hard drives to retail consumers. Best Buy is selling Seagate hard drive kits featuring the Serial ATA storage interface.

Technology Sciences Institute (TSI), a division of Ottawa's Willis College of Business and Technology. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Technology Sciences Institute (TSI), a division of Ottawa's Willis College of Business and Technology, will be the exclusive Authorized Training Reseller/Provider (ATRP) for Infinity I/O in Canada. TSI will offer Infinity I/O's storage...

LeftHand Networks received $20 million in funding. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... LeftHand Networks received $20 million in funding, bringing the company's total equity investment to $39 million. The Sprout Group, the venture arm of Credit Suisse First Boston, led the round, with participation from all of LeftHand Networks'...

iQstor Networks has signed a master reseller agreement with Hong Kong-based Skyway Technologies Ltd. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... iQstor Networks has signed a master reseller agreement with Hong Kong-based Skyway Technologies Ltd. to resell, service, and support its integrated SAN solutions in Hong Kong, Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea,...

TrueSAN Networks has a strategic alliance with SGI. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... TrueSAN Networks has a strategic alliance with SGI to integrate TrueSAN's Cloud-break storage networking software with SGI Total Performance storage systems. The companies will collaborate on bringing storage management capailities of the...

InfiniSwitch and Lane 15 Software have merged and will operate under the name of InfiniSwitch. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... InfiniSwitch and Lane 15 Software have merged and will operate under the name of InfiniSwitch. As part of the merger, InfiniSwitch announced the' completion of an additional round of venture financing. Current investors include Austin Ventures,...

EMC and Veritas Software have agreed to exchange a wide range of APIs for storage system and storage software technologies. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... EMC and Veritas Software have agreed to exchange a wide range of APIs for storage system and storage software technologies. This agreement extends access to previously exchanged APIs and includes new APIs relating to storage arrays, volume and...

EVault has secured more than $6 million in its third round of venture capital financing. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... EVault has secured more than $6 million in its third round of venture capital financing, led by investors Council Ventures of Nashville, TN, Massey Burch, The Business Engineering, Science & Technology Discoveries Fund of Toronto, River Cities...

Quantum has qualified Emulex. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Quantum has qualified Emulex's LightPulse PCI-X and 2Gbps family of Fibre Channel HBAs for use with its ATL P-Series, ATL M-Series, and Quantum DX30 in Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Solaris operating system environments.

Nishan Systems has signed RedBridge Technologies. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Nishan Systems has signed San Carlos, CA-based RedBridge Technologies, a provider of open systems storage solutions, to its partner program. Separately, EMC has qualified Nishan's IPS 3300 and IPS 4300 storage routers for EMC SAN Copy data...

Stack Computer has become a member of the EMC Authorized Services Network. (Business Briefs).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Stack Computer has become a member of the EMC Authorized Services Network and has been trained and qualified by EMC to deliver customers information storage networking professional services.

iSCSI gains a toehold in SAN market: early users report positive results, albeit in limited application and performance environments. (Special Report).
April 1, 2003... Few storage technologies have shown as much promise--and inflated expectations--as iSCSI, which enables end users to build purportedly low-cost storage area networks (SANs) that run over standard Ethernet TCP/IP networks. Assuming that they...

Designing Storage Area Networks--Second Edition, by John L. Hufferd. (Recently Published Books on).(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... Released this month, Designing Storage Area Networks -- Second Edition is designed to serve as a practical reference for users, integrators, and vendors designing or implementing Fibre Channel and/or IP SANs. The book is endorsed by the Storage...

iSCSI: The Universal Storage Connection, by John L. Hufferd. (IP Storage Networking).(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... This book tells you all you need to know about iSCSI in an easy-to-read format that includes bulleted chapter summaries, alphabetized iSCSI protocol data units (PDUs), and an exhaustive list of definitions and acronyms. "There's been a...

SRM software enables storage best practices: storage resource management functions include data collection, reporting, monitoring, capacity planning, event management, scheduling, automation, and resource management.(storage resource management software)
April 1, 2003... The first generation of storage resource management (SRM) software provides basic features such as reporting, monitoring, and trend analysis that help IT administrators understand the complexity of their storage environment. However, users are...

Business as usual: an intelligent storage network foundation-key enabler for business continuance and disaster recovery. (Advertisement).(Advertisement)
April 1, 2003... Business continuance is not a new concept; however, it has become top of mind with corporate executives from all industry segments. In fact, implementation of a business continuance strategy has become a necessary cost of doing business today....

Policies automate storage management: storage administrators are borrowing concepts used by IT departments in a variety of industries in order to automate time-consuming tasks.
April 1, 2003... Storage professionals have become accustomed to fighting fires. Even the basic task of provisioning a request for storage can become a headache for over-stressed IT departments. Whether it is crashing networks, conflicting backup requests, or...

File systems deliver on the promise of SANs: SAN file systems can help you manage and share existing storage resources and better equip you to handle future growth.
April 1, 2003... Many IT managers today find themselves struggling to efficiently manage "islands of storage." A solution to the management problem--one that enables IT managers to integrate these islands and thus realize the true promise of storage area...

Assessing SAN backup options: we are looking for options to back up our SAN. We have a xiotech disk array, eight servers, a Brocade switch, an SDLT library, and Veritas software. Are there options we should consider? iSCSI? (Reader-Expert I/O).
April 1, 2003... Rodney Nickerson Perpetual Technology Solutions Believe it or not, the kind of storage area network (SAN) you have is more or less irrelevant to the design of your backup system. Backup systems and primary disk storage systems are...

Why you need (more) storage security: an industry analyst explains the need for increased storage security, particularly in storage network environments. (Analyst View).
April 1, 2003... Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about storage security, but it is still a confusing issue to many IT administrators. Why? Because although security is a huge puzzle for any IT organization, the concept of focusing on security as it...

Leasing helps storage professionals manage costs: tight storage budgets call for a re-examination of "lease" versus "buy" options. (Opinion).
April 1, 2003... In recent years, maximizing budget dollars has become an increasingly important IT consideration. Now more than ever before, storage professionals are weighing purchasing options, which raises the all-too-critical question: Should organizations...

Consider the online alternative to tape-based backup: particularly for medium-sized companies, potential advantages can include reduced costs and manual labor, better data protection, and quicker data recovery. (Opinion).
April 1, 2003... If a disaster were to strike your company today, are you confident you could fully restore all of your data? An effective data-protection strategy is as critical to ensuring business continuity as a property insurance policy, but unfortunately...

Emulex ships PCI-X FC HBAs. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(Emulex LP10000 PCI-X)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Based on the company's new dual-channel, 2Gbps Thor controllers, Emulex's next-generation LP10000 PCI-X (133MHz) Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) can deliver more than 100,000 I/Os per second--a 20% improvement over the company's...

Promise controller supports Ultra ATA/133 channels. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Promise Technology's FastTrak family of ATA RAID controllers supports four independent Ultra ATN1 33 disk drive channels and is designed primarily for the PC market. Using four independent channels eliminates the master-slave drive...

JMR ships IDE RAID subsystems. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(JMR Fortra IDE RAID)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... JMR's Fortra IDE RAID subsystems come in a 3U form factor and support IDE (disk), Ultra16O SCSI (host), and 2Gbps Fibre Channel (host) interfaces. Capacity ranges from 960GB to 1.44TB. Features include ATA disk drives, a PowerPC RISC processor,...

Dot Hill recently introduced SANnet II NAS. (NAS Options Proliferate).(Snap Appliance Snap Server )(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Dot Hill recently introduced SANnet II NAS, an entry-level NAS appliance with 12 disk drive bays in a 2U form factor. It scales to 5.25TB by adding expansion units; supports NFS, CIFS, and NDMP 3.0 for serverless backup and heterogeneous access...

Snap Appliance. (NAS Options Proliferate).(Snap Appliance Snap Server )(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Snap Appliance has increased capacities on several of its Snap Server NAS devices, including the 120GB 1100, 240GB 2200, 320GB 4100 (1U), and 2.16TB 14000 (3U). The 2200 ships in RAID 0 mode and al lows users to reconfigure to RAID 1 or JBOD....

AMI Megatrends. (NAS Options Proliferate).(AMI Megatrends StorTrends 2104 NAS server)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... AMI Megatrends recently introduced the StorTrends 2104 NAS server with a Linux-based operating system. It supports up to 1TB with four 250GB Maxtor MaXLine Plus Ii ATA-133 drives. The 2104 is a 1U system that is bundled with StorTrends 2.0...

Apple enters RAID market at $4/GB. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(Apple Xserve)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Apple's Xserve RAID array is based on 14 ATA/100 drives with up to 2.5TB in a 3U rack enclosure. In some configurations the subsystem is priced at just over $4/GB. Features include dual Fibre Channel host interfaces, up to 1GB of controller...

Zzyzx RAID supports 2Gbps Fibre Channel. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(Zzyzx Peripherals RocketSTOR)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Zzyzx Peripherals is shipping RAID arrays with end-to-end (host to disk) support for 2Gbps Fibre Channel. Four models in the RocketSTOR line are available, with capacities ranging from 500GB to 36TB. Maximum performance is spec'd at 760MBps and...

Vixel puts 20 ports on embedded switch chip. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(Vixel SOC 320 InSpeed)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Vixel's 20-port SOC 320 InSpeed switch-on-a-chip is designed for OEMs and can be used in 16-drive JBOD storage arrays. Vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and Network Appliance have implemented Vixel's previous-generation chips in their disk...

Rancho expands SCSI. (New Products: Disk/Connectivity).(Rancho Technology jRTLVD-HVDR4E)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Rancho Technology's RTLVD-HVDR4E is a 1U quad rack-mount SCSI expander with two internal blowers for cooling and a fan failure LED indicator. The device converts between low-voltage differential (LVD) and high-voltage differential (HVD) SCSI...

ADIC launches iPlatform library. (New Products: Tape).(ADIC Scalar i2000)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... ADIC recently unveiled a new tape library architecture--the Platform--and the first library in that family, the Scalar i2000. What separates this library from others is its control mechanism, the amount of intelligence that has been embedded in...

FalconStor intros IPStor 4.0. (New Products: Software).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... FalconStor's IPStor 4.0 features enhanced manageability and performance, real-time data migration and virus scanning, accelerated backup and recovery, and disaster recovery capabilities. For better manageability, IPStor includes...

PowerQuest automates software management. (New Products: Software).(V2i Builder)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... PowerQuest recently introduced V2i Builder software for automating and centralizing management of operating system deployments, migrations, and software distribution. V2i Builder manages the OS, applications, and systems environments of PCs....

NuView upgrades file management software. (New Products: Software).(Storage Guardian StorGuard LAN Discovery Too)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Version 3.0 of NuView's StorageX software, which automates file management, features enhanced global namespace creation and management, adds multi-vendor NAS management, and supports Unix clients accessing files on Network Appliance filers....

Storage Guardian: SRM for less money. (New Products: Software).(Storage Guardian StorGuard LAN Discovery Tool)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Storage Guardian's StorGuard LAN Discovery Tool (LDT) is designed to help administrators expose inactive data and to reduce storage capacity requirements and backup windows. Differing from standard pricing structures in the SRM market, LDT is...

Peer Software provides 'fail-safe' data protection. (New Products: Software).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Peer Software's PeerSync Pro 7.0 provides continuous "fail-safe" data protection in the event of system failures. The software's data-routing capability can be programmed to automatically adapt to situations that compromise data availability...

Calendar.(Calendar)
April 1, 2003... Send brochure/conference information to Marcy Koff, marcyk@pennwell.com or fax: (603) 891-9297. May 4-8 Veritas VISION 2003 - Storage Redefined-- Las Vegas, NV The conference focuses on how to evaluate storage solutions, reduce...