INDUSTRY

Standardizes Storage Management, Clustering and Disaster Recovery for Windows Data Centers: Symantec Corp. has announced Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 High Availability (HA) for Windows, a comprehensive solution that delivers data and application availability for Microsoft Windows environments. It combines two industry-leading solutions—Storage Foundation for Windows and Veritas Cluster Server—together with enhanced usability tools to simplify storage management, high availability and disaster recovery for mission-critical Windows applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint Portal Server. “Customers are placing more of their mission critical applications on the Windows platform. They need storage management solutions that provide higher availability and better disaster recovery than ever before,” said Laura DuBois, research director, Storage Software at IDC. “Storage Foundation HA for Windows offers enterprises unique capabilities in non-disruptive storage operations, scalable high availability, and disaster recovery solutions—along with centralized storage visibility and control that are must-have requirements for Windows environments.” Software Infrastructure Standardization for the Data Center Veritas Storage Foundation helps manage explosive data growth, optimize storage hardware investments, provide unparalleled application availability and drive down operational costs via a set of standard tools for Windows, Linux, and UNIX environments. Storage Foundation for Windows introduces new capabilities to help users standardize their storage and high availability software infrastructure. New to this release is Veritas Storage Foundation Basic for Windows, a free version of Storage Foundation for Windows, designed for edge-tier and infrastructure workloads, enabling customers to leverage Storage Foundation for Windows and capitalize on the benefits of a standard infrastructure solution across every server in their data center. Storage Foundation Basic for Windows includes Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP) and runs on physical and virtual servers with system configurations that do not exceed 4 volumes or 2 physical processors in a single physical system. Storage Foundation Basic for Windows is available for download at www.symantec.com/sfbasic. Customers standardizing on Storage Foundation for Windows and DMP can leverage the broadest storage array support of any multi-pathing solution—including support for leading array families from EMC, HP, HDS, IBM, Network Appliance, and Sun—to achieve the most agility and highest return on their storage hardware investments. Customers also have the flexibility to choose the storage network infrastructure that best fits their needs. Symantec is the only vendor fully certified with Microsoft’s MPIO framework for both Fibre Channel HBA StorPort and Microsoft iSCSI software. Additionally, Storage Foundation for Windows introduces advanced iSCSI SAN management capabilities including automated discovery, management, and configuration of IP-based SANs. “Standardization on Storage Foundation HA for Windows allows customers to have more flexibility in their storage hardware decisions and drives down operational costs by enabling them to use a single tool,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Symantec’s Storage Foundation Group. “This release has furthered the ROI of standardization by reducing the cost of deploying Storage Foundation on every server and enabling customers to have visibility and centralized control of storage management, high availability, and disaster recovery capabilities across their entire data center”