To create the next stage in the evolution of SAN, VERITAS is creating new technologies to improve the ability of SANs to virtualise storage resources, increase automation, and adapt to change. Building on storage management standards as they evolve, VERITAS will focus on a number of key areas.
Creating a standard services and API layer that will make existing storage management applications SAN-aware will, for example, allow VERITAS Volume Manager to discover performance and availability attributes of SAN-attached storage to determine the best software RAID configuration. Providing a common service layer will allow all VERITAS applications to exploit SANs over multiple operating systems.
New types of SAN devices will feature embedded intelligent storage management functions. With the many-to-many connectivity of Fibre Channel networks and the increases in processing power, new types of devices can implement storage management functions such as storage migration, virtualisation, or replication.
For example, VERITAS Volume Manager can be used to provide virtualisation functionality in a RAID controller. Creating central, SAN-wide management applications can improve visualisation of SAN resources and enhance automation of storage management. Optimising performance and availability across multiple servers and storage peripherals in a SAN requires a centralised management application to co-ordinate functions such as capacity management and automatic capacity allocation.
Creating clustered versions of VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File Server products realises multi-server shared data access in a SAN. Some high performance applications will benefit from distributing applications over multiple servers and operating on shared read/write data. Another area of focus will be to create extensions to VERITAS data protection products that maximise application availability in a SAN.
Using secondary hosts to backup snapshots of a production application server`s data, or using embedded SAN fabric copy agents to move data directly between online and offline storage, will minimise the disruption to application clients during a backup operation, increasing the overall information availability of the data centre.
Share
