VERITAS Software delivers non-disruptive on-line SAN software

VERITAS Software Corporation has announced its VERITAS Volume Manager 3.0 now maximises application uptime for SAN-based storage configurations. VERITAS Volume Manager, an on-line disk management product, has provided on-line management of traditional SCSI storage in UNIX environments for more than six years and is operating in many Global 2 000 sites around the world. Now supporting SAN-based storage configurations, VERITAS Volume Manager`s intrinsic features allow companies to maximise application uptime by permitting all storage management functions to be performed on-line without interrupting applications. Use of these capabilities within large and more complex networked storage environments immediately reduces administrative overhead and provides a foundation designed to scale with the growth of storage configurations for eBusiness services.

"IDC predicts that SAN-attached storage devices will grow at a rate of over 81 percent from 1998 to 2002," says Paul Mason, vice president of Infrastructure Software Research at International Data Corporation (IDC). "Online storage networking will be deployed for 40 percent of high-performance storage by 2002. Storage software like VERITAS Volume Manager, will help manage the inevitable growth and complexities associated within the new eBusiness environment."

"The combination of VERITAS Volume Manager and scalable Fibre Channel fabric solutions from BROCADE provides a scalable, highly manageable SAN environment for companies in today`s eBusiness economy," says Peter Tarrant, vice president of marketing and business development for BROCADE. "BROCADE features VERITAS Volume Manager in BROCADE SOLUTIONware, which simplifies the configuration and implementation of heterogeneous SANs and the components required to deliver them, including storage management software from VERITAS Software and scalable fabric switches from BROCADE."

On-line Storage Management

The VERITAS Volume Manager allows all storage management tasks to be performed without application downtime. For example, new storage can be added to the SAN to keep up with capacity demands or storage configurations can be changed to optimise, performance or improve availability. VERITAS Volume Manager offers applications a virtual disk interface for accessing data. Virtual disks (also called logical volumes) are mapped onto physical storage devices in a manner that enables customers to manage and change the storage configuration, while keeping the logical volumes accessible for applications. This is the key to minimising application disruptions as storage configurations change and allow SANs to scale to a large number of devices.

Key features of VERITAS Volume Manager that can be used while an application remains online for both JBOD and Hardware Storage Subsystems include: 1) on-line volume creation and re-configuration, allowing non-disruptive addition or deletion of SAN storage, and on-line performance; 2) the capability to assign ownership of disk groups to a single server, preventing unwanted storage access from another server on the SAN, and 3), dynamic multi-pathing for non-disruptive path-level fail-over and load balancing over multiple Fibre Channel links between a server and storage peripheral.

"VERITAS Software customers are beginning to use the enormous potential of SANs for eBusiness to keep data and applications available in an ever-changing environment," says Nick van Noordwyk, regional manager, Middle East and Africa for VERITAS Software SA. "With SANs now efficiently supporting high-availability and bandwidth intensive applications by providing access to large amounts of storage, VERITAS Volume Manager`s on-line storage management capabilities become critical to simplifying the management of physical storage resources and ensuring that applications remain on-line as storage configurations change."