A recent alliance between Sun Microsystems and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has resulted in Sun being the only systems vendor to deliver comprehensive storage management solutions to high-end data centre customers.
Sun customers can now view the entire storage stack by employing SUN StorEdge SRM 5.0 resource management software and HDS' recently released HiCommand software framework.
Kobus Landsberg, senior systems engineer at Sun Microsystems SA, says this announcement is especially welcome locally due to potential cost savings in the areas of resource utilisation and administrative overheads.
"Companies have realised that their existing storage systems are one of the most under-utilised resources, largely due to the high costs associated with this technology. This has now been reduced significantly.
"Another important factor is the Application Program Interfaces (API) level integration with existing infrastructure management tools. Currently users have to use a number of different tools to manage their various environments, and have invested substantially to do this, but with API level integration, it will in time be possible to manage these environments with a single tool," says Landsberg.
When combined with the HiCommand software framework, Sun StorEdge 9900 array customers will be able to dramatically increase the amount of storage managed per storage administrator by simplifying and automating storage management functions.
The solution's predictive trending, analysis and reporting allows customers to respond quicker and effectively to changing conditions. This significantly improved resource utilisation saves money and promotes storage best practices so that customers will find it easier to meet and exceed SLAs (service level agreements), reduce administrative overhead and improve storage total cost of ownership.
"As the leading UNIX O/S and systems vendor, Sun continues to offer comprehensive, end-to-end solutions when compared to other storage vendors," says Landsberg.
"With this recent announcement customers have a comprehensive set of leading products in device management (HiCommand), storage resource management (SRM), and high-performance file management (QFS). We continue to build on the value of the HDS relationship by delivering high-value solutions to customers who need to better understand, manage and optimise their storage environments," he adds.
The solution incorporates two leading-edge storage management frameworks:
* Sun's enhanced SRM 5.0 software, which provides central management, reporting and analysis of enterprise-wide storage resources including automated discovery, monitoring, alerting, collecting and reporting of hundreds of key storage capacity, utilisation and availability statistics.
* Hitachi HiCommand, which provides a Web-based management system for the SE9900.
Also integrated into the HiCommand suite is a set of APIs that can be used by independent software vendors (ISVs) to simply integrate their storage management products into the storage stack.
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