StorageTek has announced the availability of its 9393 Shared Virtual Array (SVA) enterprise disk storage product supporting both mainframe and Unix servers in enterprise environments.
Available directly from StorageTek, the SVA virtual architecture dynamically allocates storage to provide substantial efficiencies over competing (non-virtual) legacy disk products. Virtual disk can reduce required storage capacities compared to legacy disk when performing identical workloads. SVA will also deliver these and other software capabilities to enterprise open systems via direct connections as well as connections to the previously available OS/390 mainframe.
The SVA is a key product in the expansion of StorageTek`s virtual disk offerings through a direct sales strategy that complements its successful OEM agreement with IBM.
StorageTek`s development of SVA is a response to customer requests for a single storage platform that supports consolidating mainframe and open systems data that are co-located in an enterprise data center. IDC numbers suggest that the market opportunity for co-located storage will approach $12bn by 2002.
As the inventor of virtual disk products, StorageTek will enable customers in this emerging market to accomplish more work while conserving resources, such as disk space and storage management staff, across multiple server platforms. Additionally, SVA shortens the backup windows of global operations, and builds instantaneous and complete copies for data-intensive activities such as application testing, data mining and reducing disaster recovery exposure.
"StorageTek is committed to the promise of making information more powerful for its customers," says David E Weiss, StorageTek chairman, president and CEO. "We give our customers the power to gain extra hours every day. Our disk storage and software solutions make it simpler and easier for companies to get more from their data, while saving time and money in the process."
StorageTek intends to deliver capabilities that will enable single-point storage management control of open systems and mainframe storage assets. By implementing this capability, customers will be able to manage both OS/390 and UNIX storage environments from a common graphical user interface, further easing the strain on IT resources. This capability will extend the power of StorageTek`s virtual architecture to open systems environments.
"As the inventor of virtual disk, StorageTek successfully became the industry`s leading OEM disk supplier. Our SVA and its complementary software enables businesses to instantaneously back up, copy or recover their data with almost zero additional I/O, processor or storage resources," said Roger Archibald, StorageTek VP and GM, Enterprise Disk Business Group. "Now with SVA and its complementary software, we will expand this capability and value to open systems."
From a performance perspective, SVA delivers up to 50% throughput improvement over StorageTek`s previous 9393 virtual disk product. When used in conjunction with 1024 Virtual Addressing, SVA provides nearly three Terabytes (TB) of dynamic virtual capacity per subsystem.
StorageTek is also introducing Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) software, a multiple-use facility. PPRC facility promotes continuous availability, reduces disaster recovery exposure and enables fast data movement.
StorageTek is represented in South Africa by CMS, a company in the MGX Holdings group.
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