VERITAS Software Corporation and Brocade Communications Systems (BROCADE), a supplier of Fibre Channel fabric solutions for Storage Area Networking (SAN), have announced a strategic relationship to jointly develop technology for centralised management of SANs. The joint technology relationship is a major step toward cost-effective, centralised SAN management of small- to large-scale SANs, which reduces the total cost of operations in 24x7 e-business environments.
VERITAS Software and BROCADE are working together to bring SAN management solutions to market that enable new types of management services, such as the discovery of SAN components and services in fabric environments. These new solutions will be based on the VERITAS V3 SAN technology, which interoperates with the BROCADE Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS). In addition, VERITAS V3 SAN Management Tools will build on the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer to further simplify the administration of enterprise storage.
The VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer is a new host-based SAN virtualisation technology that communicates with Fibre Channel networking products and storage devices to enable new management capabilities, such as the dynamic discovery of SAN components. The VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer presents discovered components to the host applications with a common client API. The VERITAS V3 SAN technology works in conjunction with the BROCADE Fabric OS, which is a set of management and fabric services offered in the BROCADE SilkWorm Fibre Channel fabric switches to simplify the implementation of enterprise-class SANs.
The first phase of the integration is to be a SAN management application that provides a single administrative console for zone administration. This application uses the discovery services of the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer, which works in conjunction with the capabilities of the BROCADE Fabric OS. As part of this technology alliance, VERITAS Software will also develop BROCADE-specific additions to the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer to support the advanced feature set of the BROCADE SilkWorm Fabric Switches. The Companies have agreed to jointly promote and market the VERITAS V3 SAN technology.
"Our customers will be able to evolve first generation SANs into true enterprise SAN installations in support of today`s dynamic e-business environment," says Nick van Noordwyk, regional manager, Middle East and Africa at VERITAS Software SA.
"As SANs continue to increase in size and complexity, meeting the administration requirements of enterprise multi-switch fabric environments will be essential. The relationship between VERITAS Software and BROCADE will bring new technologies to market to help SAN customers manage SAN resources more efficiently," says Peter Tarrant, BROCADE vice president of marketing and business development.
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