STORAGE

LUMBERTON, NJ -- Storage networking leaders Hitachi Data Systems, IBM Corporation, Inrange Technologies Corporation, StorageTek, and VERITAS Software Corporation today announced the completion of interoperability testing on two jointly-developed Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions designed to streamline storage management and offer multiple options for protecting and enhancing data availability. The open SAN solutions, the second major interoperability initiative registered under the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Supported Solutions Forum (SSF) since inception of its new submission and registration guidelines, consist of multivendor disk storage, multivendor tape storage and multivendor backup/restore software, all connected through a highly scalable networking fabric. Design highlights of this SAN solution include: -- A 192-port fabric, comprised of cascaded 64-port and 128-port INRANGE FC/9000 directors; -- IBM Enterprise Storage Server and Hitachi Data Systems Freedom Storage Systems servers, configured in the same data zone; -- IBM 3494 Tape Library with 3590E tape drives, and StorageTek L700 Tape Library with 9840 and 9940 tape drives, configured in the same data zone; -- VERITAS NetBackup(TM) and Tivoli Storage Manager software applications, tested as separate solutions, to perform LAN-Free backup/restore of disk storage to/from tape libraries; -- Complete path failover, dynamic multi-pathing and load balancing for all disk accesses using VERITAS Volume Manager(TM) with Dynamic Multipathing (DMP) disk storage volume-management software; -- Sun and Windows-based servers configured with access to all storage targets, operating across both disk and tape data zones; Cooperatively supported by each company, the new solutions also formally satisfy the Supported Solutions Forum's (SSF) criteria of being a `Competitive Solution Set', as they contain competing disk storage and competing tape storage. The solutions also represent a `Companion Solution Set', as the two solutions offer the choice of vendor tape backup/restore software as differentiators. "This is the type of interaction that has been sorely lacking in the industry -- players getting together to solve real customer problems," said Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst of The Enterprise Storage Group. "This is what will accelerate overall market demand." Reduced Complexity and Management Costs By enabling customers to implement SANs that have been tested for concurrent interoperability of disk, tape, and backup solutions from multiple vendors and that support resource configuration within the same data zones, the new solutions can be expected to help reduce complexity and lower storage costs. Users will be able to consolidate storage islands and manage them with less effort, while also protecting previous technology investments. "As data volumes explode and storage networks continue to increase in size and functionality, customers are demanding storage solutions that enable interoperability of heterogeneous storage systems, with the ability to provide application servers with storage capacity as needed," said Marc Oswald, Chairman of the SSF. "Today's announcement is evidence of storage vendors working together at both a business and technology level, for the good of the customer to provide interoperable multi-vendor storage networking options that have high value and solve real world business problems." "Our success is measured in part on how well we can support and recreate computing environments," said John Lindeman, Director of Operations at SunGard, a leading developer of high availability infrastructures for business continuity. "When storage industry vendors cooperate at this level to drive interoperability among their respective systems and establish standard implementations, it enhances our business by creating much more flexibility to meet customer needs." Customers expected to adopt these new solutions include those who require scalable, highly available, cascaded INRANGE directors for their networking fabric; those that want to aggregate enterprise disk storage from both IBM and HDS while using VERITAS Volume Manager(TM) with Dynamic Multipathing (DMP) software for failover and load balancing; those that want to aggregate tape storage from both IBM and StorageTek; and those that want solid LAN-free backup solutions from either IBM Tivoli or VERITAS Software. For more information about the open SAN solutions announced please refer to www.snia.org/ssf