STORAGE TECHNOLOGY Veritas' Products Aim To Streamline Storage.(INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY)

Byline: Brian Deagon

Veritas Software Corp. on Monday will unveil new products that should help companies lower the cost of storage ownership, in part by making it easier to manage.

The software can prevent Web servers from crashing by efficiently routing some data flow to other servers.

It also aims to help managers get a better grip on managing storage infrastructures that are growing in size and complexity. Database files now include sound and video as well as images and text. The mix becomes even more complex with the addition of e-mail and other forms of multimedia. Trouble withjust one of these elements can bring down the entire information network.

Inefficient Process

One of the problems is that data are not always routed in the most efficientmanner. When a large number of people request the same information at once -- on a Web server for example -- the storage server can get clogged and crash. The shutdown of a single server can bring down other storage servers on the network along with it.

One of the new products by Veritas, called Cluster Server Traffic Director, aims to prevent crashes by re-directing some traffic to other servers to lighten the workload. It does this by monitoring the flow of data traffic closer to where it's being distributed.