VERITAS Software announces Volume Manager and File System Support for Solaris 7

VERITAS Software Corporation has announced the availability of version 3.0.1 of Volume Manager and version 3.3.2 File System for Solaris, which now includes support for Solaris 7, as well as Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 2.5.1.

These products together comprise the VERITAS Foundation Suite and demonstrate the company`s commitment to the Sun market. They are focused on application availability and performance, return on investment, and total cost of ownership through integration with mission-critical applications, intelligent storage devices and other storage management applications, such as VERITAS NetBackup.

"Our customers demand that databases and storage resources be available 24x7 and that disk storage and file systems can be configured while mission critical applications are in service," says Chris Boorman, marketing director for EMEA at VERITAS Software.

"To address these needs, several enhancements have been added to VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File System to improve data availability, manageability and performance, while significantly simplifying the management of business-critical data and disk resources within enterprise computing environments."

VERITAS Volume Manager for Solaris provides on-line disk and storage subsystems management for enterprise customers, as well as for those customers deploying Storage Area Networks (SANs), including disk usage analysis, RAID techniques and the dynamic reconfiguration of disk storage while the system is online.

The Online Relay out feature allows users to incrementally grow volumes online or even reconfigure RAID layouts online while maintaining application access to data. These tools ensure continuous data availability and data protection, eliminating the need for servers to be taken off line for backup and maintenance.

The SmartSync feature included in version 3.0.1 of VERITAS Volume Manager for Solaris offers increased availability of Oracle volumes by re-synchronising only changed data within a mirrored configuration. SmartSync reduces the time required to restore consistency, freeing more I/O bandwidth for business-critical applications. Version 3.0.1 of VERITAS Volume Manager also adds the Snapshot feature for RAID-5 configurations, allowing a point-in-time image of a volume to be made for later backup using an application such as VERITAS NetBackup.

VERITAS File System for Solaris features an extent-based file system. Version 3.3.2 of VERITAS File System offers transaction-based journaling for quick recovery in the case of a system crash, as well as on-line backup capabilities and on-line resizing to help ensure business without interruption. Fast file recovery helps to reduce downtime.

VERITAS Volume Manager on-line Relayout and VERITAS File System on-line resizing and defragmentation greatly improve application availability by eliminating time lost to planned system maintenance.

Version 3.0.1 of VERITAS Volume Manager for Solaris features the VERITAS Volume Manager Storage Administrator (VMSA) GUI, designed to simplify configuration and administration. Enabling platform-independent administration of VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File System, the Java-based GUI increases the manageability of storage systems. Version 3.0.1 of VERITAS Volume Manager now offers the ability to migrate data among different versions of VERITAS Volume Manager during a product upgrade, minimising downtime. Striping (RAID 0) and selective disk mirroring further increase the product`s scalability to provide application load balancing.

VERITAS File System`s Automated Performance Tuning Interface enhances performance by automatically tuning I/O policy to match VERITAS Volume Manager`s data layout. The product`s on-line directory optimisation further increases performance via an improved file system layout.