InfoStor articles from June 2003

InfoStor archives from June 2003

End users demand better management tools.(according to TheInfoPro)
June 1, 2003... If you're like the majority of your colleagues, you're dissatisfied with the storage management tools that vendors are providing, at least for storage area network (SAN) environments. In an extensive survey of IT managers conducted by...

SNIA expands support for end users.
June 1, 2003... In its ongoing effort to expand communication between end users and vendors, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is launching a customer focus committee (CFC) to coordinate its end-user forums. The CFC's goal is to ensure...

Vendors move toward fabric-based intelligence.(Industry Overview)
June 1, 2003... Although initial shipments of "intelligent" switches are still several months out, a variety of hardware and software vendors are already in queue to grab a share of this emerging market--a marker analysts say is set to take off next year. ...

Interoperability demos don't prove anything. (Editorial).
June 1, 2003... We just wound down on a grueling spring show season. It started in March with the Brocade Conference, followed by Storage Management, Storage Networking World, EMC Technology Forum, Veritas Vision, Storage World Conference, IDC Storage Forum...

EMC. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... EMC has expanded its relationship with Microsoft to provide software for storage systems operating within Windows-based computer networks. EMC will integrate Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 storage APIs with its ControlCenter storage management...

Acopia Networks. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Acopia Networks, a developer of Adaptive Resource Networking products, has secured $30 million in Series B financing, bringing the total capital raised to more than $40 million. Investors include Charles River Ventures, Accel Partners, and...

QLogic. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... QLogic plans to enhance security in its SANbox2 line of switches by implementing the IETF-standard Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) protocol. Microsoft's RADIUS protocol is used in the Internet Authentication Service (IAS)...

CipherOptics. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... CipherOptics, adeveloper and manufacturer of high-performance information-protection solutions, has secured $9.6 million in Series B funding. Financing was led by Kodiak Venture Partners, with additional support from Origin Partners L.P., Axiom...

Hitachi Data Systems. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Akara has completed the Hitachi Data Systems Interoperability Demonstration Program (IDP) with Akara"s OUSP storage extension device and the Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V and Lightning 9900 series of products. The verification...

Vyant Technologies has received SunTone Certification from Sun Microsystems for RealTime V2.0, Vyant's data-recovery software for enterprises. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Vyant Technologies has received SunTone Certification from Sun Microsystems for RealTime V2.0, Vyant's data-recovery software for enterprises. The SunTone Initiative is a collaborative effort to define best practices and audit solution-provider...

Fujitsu Storage System Division-Japan. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Fujitsu Storage System Division-Japan has selected Overland Storage's Neo Series tape automation for use with its server systems. Fujitsu chose the Overland Neo 2000 with LTO Ultrium 1 automated storage solutions and will offer the Overland Neo...

Exabyte. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Exabyte has an agreement with Tokyo-based Logitec that will allow the Asian computer peripheral manufacturer to of-3 fer VXA-2 tape drives to its customers

Pioneer-Standard Electronics. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Pioneer-Standard Electronics finalized an agreement for Pioneer-Standard KeyLink Systems to distribute CNT's UltraNet Edge Storage Router. KeyLink Systems is currently the only authorized distribution partner in North America for this product.

EVault. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... EVault has entered into a strategic reseller agreement with Kraft Kennedy & Lesser (KKL), a technology integrator for law firms and legal departments. Under the terms of the agreement, KKL will integrate and support EVault InfoStage...

Akonix Systems, Communicator, FaceTime Communications. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Iron Mountain has teamed with Akonix Systems, Communicator, FaceTime Communications, and Imlogic to expand its electronic records management offerings to include compliant Instant Messaging records archiving and retention solutions.

Invio Software. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Invio Software has a professional services agreement with GlassHouse Technologies, in which GlassHouse will provide design and implementation services to Invio customers for the deployment of storage practice automation solutions across their...

MaXXan Systems and FalconStor Software. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... MaXXan Systems and FalconStor Software will deliver FalconStor's IPSror suite of storage management software on MaXXan's I/O optimized hardware platform. The integrated MaXXan Storage Appliance powered by FalconStor IPSror software will be...

Atempo's Time Navigator is now qualified with Storage Tek's BladeStore disk subsystem. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Atempo's Time Navigator is now qualified with Storage Tek's BladeStore disk subsystem The combination of the two is intended to complement traditional tape-based backupand-recovery architectures.

GA Services, LLC. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... GA Services, LLC, an enterprise solutions and services provider for the open' systems marketplace, and FalconStor Software have joined forces to deliver storage solutions designed specifically to provide small to mid-tier companies with cost...

Online backup/recovery holds appeal for SMBs. (News Analysis & Trends).
June 1, 2003... Atlanta-based Adams Outdoor Advertising has no IT staff, which is not unusual for a small-to-medium business (SMB). However, the company still needs the most reliable technology possible for backup and recovery in its 13 offices east of the...

Adaptec ships iSCSI host adapters. (News Analysis & Trends).
June 1, 2003... Adaptec has begun shipments of an ASIC-based host bus adapter (HBA) that fully offloads iSCSI and TCP/IP protocol processing from host CPUs. The HBA will compete with iSCSI cards from Alacritech and Intel and, later this year, QLogic, Emulex,...

EMC to enter Windows-based network-attached storage market. (News Analysis & Trends).
June 1, 2003... In the next quarter, EMC plans to ship a Windows-based network-attached storage (NAS) appliance (the NetWin 2000), marking the company's departure from its proprietary approach to NAS (the high-end Celerra server). EMC CEO and president Joe...

Start-up promises WAN file transfers at LAN speeds. (News Analysis & Trends).
June 1, 2003... Tacit Networks is tackling network-attached storage (NAS) problems such as scalability and the slow speed of remote file access by enabling the most current files to be shared among remote offices instantaneously. Other vendors are also trying...

Diligent extends virtual tape to open systems. (News Analysis & Trends).
June 1, 2003... Diligent Technologies is expanding its tape virtualization software beyond mainframes by allowing open systems backup applications to use disk instead of tape as a backup medium. Last year, Diligent acquired EMC's Israel-based R&D...

SAS spec moves forward. (News Bytes).
June 1, 2003... The SCSI Trade Association (www.scsita.org) last month announced that the Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) 1.0 specification has been sent out for public review by the T10 Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards...

Emulex holds onto #1 spot. (News Bytes).
June 1, 2003... According to a recent report from Gartner Dataquest, Emulex held on to its leadership position in the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) market last year. Emulex led in terms of port shipments (43% market share) and revenue (48% market...

Spectra benchmarks iSCSI, FC. (News Bytes).
June 1, 2003... Spectra Logic benchmark tests have demonstrated that SCSI-based backup is essentially equal to Fibre Channel-based backup in Microsoft Exchange environments. The tests were conducted over Gigabit Ethernet and a 1Gbps Fibre Channel SAN. The...

UCSD Establishes Storage Users Group. (News Bytes).
June 1, 2003... The Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has launched a Website, StorageNetworking.org, in an attempt to form storage user groups. ISIC's goal is "to educate IT personnel and facilitate...

Start-up targets brocade, cisco, McData. (News Bytes).
June 1, 2003... Sandial Systems hopes to tackle the big boys in the high-end, director-class SAN switch market. Although Sandial claims to be in general availability shipping mode, it is not disclosing product details, which are due in the next quarter. One...

3X Speedup for WS 2003 file serving. (News Bytes).
June 1, 2003... Tests commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by VeriTest show a 3x file-sharing performance improvement when Windows Server 2003 servers are equipped with Alacritech's Gigabit Ethernet Server and Storage Accelerator cards. That's compared to...

NetScout moves into SAN performance management. (News Analysis & Trends).
June 1, 2003... Westford, MA-based NetScout Systems is leveraging its established LAN and WAN products to provide a storage area network (SAN) performance monitoring and analysis solution that has not previously been available, according to analysts. Last...

Disk drive/array interface options expand: in addition to mainstays such as Fibre Channel and parallel versions of ATA and SCSI, Serial ATA is shipping now, and a serial version of SCSI is due next year.
June 1, 2003... Like the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times," storage professionals doubtless dream of working in a field that is less "interesting" and more predictable, with fewer complex decisions to make. Take, or example, disk...

ISCSI presents options for the channel: the standard is finalized, Microsoft is onboard, and there are enough products available to build IP SANs, but success may depend on VARs and integrators.
June 1, 2003... The value of iSCSI can be summed up in one word: leverage," says Lee Payne, senior systems engineer at Overland Storage. The ability to leverage existing IP-based networking infrastructure is a key goal--and interoperability cornerstone--for...

'Active' SRM goes beyond reporting: all SRM tools have basic reporting capabilities, but "active" SRM is what will save you management time and money.
June 1, 2003... Storage is becoming more complex every day. In most organizations, critical data resides in a combination of direct-attached and networked storage, accessed by many distributed applications. The supporting hardware includes not only storage...

Comparing disk-to-disk (to tape) backup models: a number of options exist to overcome some of the inefficiencies of traditional tape-based backup approaches.
June 1, 2003... The trouble with backup is that it hasn't kept pace with other growth and expansion trends in information technology. * Backup has gotten faster, but the growth of data to be protected has outstripped it. The result is that backup jobs take...

Internetworking for FC SAN extension: as storage networking demands increase. IT organizations may need to connect geographically distributed networks. "Internetworking" is one option.
June 1, 2003... The maturity of the Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) market is in part affirmed by the growing requirement of enterprises to connect their existing SAN islands together. Be it for disaster recovery; campus storage connectivity,...

A model for storage management life cycle: the goal is to standardize, centralize, and simplify the management of increasingly complex storage environments.
June 1, 2003... A methodical approach to ensuring that storage solutions continuously support business requirements has become essential at many IT organizations. This article presents a storage management life-cycle model that encompasses the various phases...

Making the case for software-based replication: an ROI analysis of tape backup/restore, hardware-based mirroring, and software-based replication reveals cost/benefit tradeoffs. (Opinion).
June 1, 2003... "What is your data worth, and how much will it cost to be without it?" That's the fundamental question behind choosing the most appropriate data-protection solution. This article describes two metrics (recovery point objective and recovery...

DataCore Software has entered into an OEM agreement with NEC Soft Ltd., whereby NEC Soft will incorporate. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... DataCore Software has entered into an OEM agreement with NEC Soft Ltd., whereby NEC Soft will incorporate DataCore's SANsymphony technology into NEC Soft's software portfolio to address large-scale storage consolidation, auto-provisioning, and...

TidalWire and ServGate Technologies. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... TidalWire and ServGate Technologies have a new distribution partnership, adding ServGate's network security gateways to Tidal Wire's line of security and storage networking products.

McData's storage networking solutions. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... McData's storage networking solutions have been tested and jointly approved for use in conjunction with 3PAR InServ Storage Servers. The combined 3PAR and McData solution has been tested and approved within the McData OPENready Interoperability...

IQ Biometrix has tendered a letter of intent for the acquisition of Network Storage Solutions (NSS), based in Chantilly, VA. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... IQ Biometrix has tendered a letter of intent for the acquisition of Network Storage Solutions (NSS), based in Chantilly, VA. The transaction, which is expected to close this quarter, is subject to approval by regulatory agencies, IQ Biometrix...

International Data Corp. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... International Data Corp. recently released a report on the ROI of disk defragmentation that calls attention to the problems that fragmentation can cause in file systems, such as reliability issues and slow (or aborted) boot times. A copy of the...

IBM will offer Exabyte's next-generation. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... IBM will offer Exabyte's next-generation VXA-2 tape drive as an optional internal storage component for its IBM eServer xSeries line of Intel processor-based servers.

CNT has acquired all outstanding shares of Inrange Technologies in an all-cash transaction. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... CNT has acquired all outstanding shares of Inrange Technologies in an all-cash transaction, valued at approximately $190 million, or $2.31 per Inrange share. The company will record a onetime charge associated with the acquisition in the second...

Brocade has a joint development agreement. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... Brocade has a joint development agreement with Veritas Software in which Veritas will develop volume management and storage resource management software technology for the Brocade SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform. Veritas will use the...

3PAR announced Microsoft qualification for Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) with 3PAR's InServ storage servers. (Business Briefs).
June 1, 2003... 3PAR announced Microsoft qualification for Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) with 3PAR's InServ storage servers. This capability eliminates a single point-of-failure in Windows-based SANs and ensures data availability, even in the event of a Fibre...

Midrange NAS options expand. (Disk/Connectivity).
June 1, 2003... Several network-attached storage (NAS) vendors introduced new appliances over the last month. For example, Dell recently announced that its Windows-based PowerVault 725N now supports up to 1TB (via 250GB drives), with a starting price of $4,400...

Chaparral extends RAID options. (Disk/Connectivity).
June 1, 2003... With capacities ranging from 144GB to 35TB, Chaparral Network Storage's RIVA RAID subsystem is a full Fibre Channel (host connections and disk drives) array with fully redundant, hot-swappable components and up to four 2Gbps Fibre Channel host...

LSI adapter supports Serial ATA. (Disk/Connectivity).
June 1, 2003... LSI Logic has added to its line of Serial ATA (SATA) products with a RAID adapter that includes battery backup support. The PCI-compatible card is part of LSI's MegaRAID family of products, which includes the MegaRAID SATA 150-2, MegaRAID SATA...

Punch delivers encrypted storage. (Disk/Connectivity).
June 1, 2003... Punch Networks is moving beyond its secure Web-based file storage with a family of stand-alone encrypted hardware and software storage appliances. The Punch Paris LM5 Server Package is a pre-configured system in an 8U form factor with 4GB of...

iQstor bundles software with FC arrays. (Disk/Connectivity).
June 1, 2003... iQstor's Fibre Channel RAID arrays are available with a wide range of software applications, including storage virtualization, snapshots, mirroring, remote replication, and policy-based storage provisioning. The iQ1000 arrays include 15 drives...

BERT tester supports 10Gbps rates. (Disk/Connectivity).
June 1, 2003... Finisar's Xgig bit-error rate tester (BERT) supports 10Gbps Ethernet or Fibre Channel rates and verifies data integrity and performance in networks, DWDM MAN rings, and transport channels. The unit combines bit-error rate testing, eye pattern...

Dantz upgrades backup/recovery software. (Software).
June 1, 2003... Last month, Dantz Development Corp. announced the availability of its Retrospect 6.5 for Microsoft Windows. The new release features backup-and-recovery support for large, multi-drive libraries, improved performance, and support for Exchange...

Atempo enhances backup software. (Software).
June 1, 2003... The 3.7 release of Atempo's Time Navigator software includes expanded NAS and storage area network (SAN) functions, advanced backup-to-disk capabilities, and new applications support. Specific features include a centralized SAN...

Northern adds to SRM suite. (Software).
June 1, 2003... Northern's latest storage resource management (SRM) suite includes its Quota Server 2003 and a storage reporter tool. With Quota Server, storage quotas can be set on objects such as directories, files, and individual users/accounts....

1Vision aggregates NAS devices. (Software).
June 1, 2003... 1Vision recently introduced its vNAS storage management software, which aggregates NAS devices at the file level. Unlike block virtualization, which aggregates block storage over a SAN, vNAS is based on file aggregation. It merges file...

ADIC scales tape libraries. (Tape).
June 1, 2003... ADIC last month unveiled a "dual-aisle" version of its Scalar 10K tape library. The library boasts a 45% increase in native capacity (up to 2,294TB) over previous Scalar 10K models, and continual access to data during service operations or...

Sony debuts AIT autoloaders. (Tape).
June 1, 2003... Sony is shipping a new line of AIT-based tape autoloaders designed for small businesses. The StorStation LIB-D81 autoloaders can be equipped with a single AIT-1 AIT-2, or AIT-3 drive, and up to eight cartridges for native capacities up to 800GB...

Kano intros 200-disc DVD+RW library. (Optical).
June 1, 2003... Kano Technologies' X-Finiti Model RW200 is a 200-disc, rack-mountable DVD+RW library that features two to four Kano DVD+RW drives mounted in a BA-200 library system from Kubota. The 200-disc configuration provides 940GB of capacity, and its...

Calendar.
June 1, 2003... July 13-17 CA World 2003--Las Vegas, NV Sponsored by Computer Associates, the conference has sessions and demonstrations on the latest CA technology that interprets, secures, and stores data solutions for multiple platforms, including...