Storagenews
Storagenews
From STORAGE Magazine
Vol 7, Issue 8 - November/December 2007
industry
emc acquires voyence
EMC has acquired privately-held Voyence - a leading provider of network
configuration and change management solutions that automate critical change,
compliance and activation processes. Chris Gahagan, EMC's senior vice president,
resource management software, said:
"As we continue to build on the success of our Smarts model-based management
technology - as well as the technology leadership of EMC ControlCenter - we are
well positioned to take advantage of Voyence's cutting-edge capabilities."
Voyence's core software, VoyenceControl, helps companies to drive down their
operational costs, increase availability, improve security and demonstrate
regulatory compliance. The network configuration and change management solution
is based on a multi-tiered architecture that can effectively manage tens of
thousands of devices across multi-vendor network infrastructures.
netapp joins green storage initiative
Network Appliance has now added its weight to the recently created Storage
Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative, which is
dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and conservation in all networked
storage technologies, in an effort to minimise the environmental impact of data
storage operations.
The initiative’s scope of work will span all shared storage technologies,
including disk and tape systems, server connectivity, storage appliances,
fabrics and other storage network infrastructure, file services and storage
applications. Activities will initially include the development of tutorials and
educational material, white papers and best practices for energy-efficient data
centre storage operations. The initiative will also act as the SNIA liaison to
other allied organisations, such as the Green Grid Consortium and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to collaborate on the development of more
environmentally-friendly data centre solutions.
NetApp will contribute its knowledge, expertise and best practices for deploying
leading-edge data management techniques to reduce data centre power consumption.
David Dale, director, Industry Standards, NetApp, said: “Storage industry
collaboration and cooperation will be an important aspect of effectively
addressing the growing issue of data centre power consumption. NetApp has been
involved in helping our customers achieve greater energy efficiency in their
data centres. Continued dialogue across the industry, as well as with government
organisations such as the EPA, will play a vital role in developing best
practices for improving energy efficiency that customers can put into action.”
hp in the heat of the
action!
HP sponsored teams have taken first and second place in the Panasonic World
Solar Challenge - a biannual 3000 km solar car race from Darwin to Adelaide in
Australia. The challenge? To design and build a car capable of crossing the vast
and imposing continent of Australia, powered by nothing but the sun.
It is rightly called one of the great scientific adventures of our time,
inspiring bright young minds from universities around the planet to design and
build the world's fastest sun-powered vehicle. Since 1987, the event has drawn
attention to the promise of solar transportation. HP helped the two teams design
and race cars that met the energy efficiency challenge by equipping them with
workstations, notebook PCs and accessories.
The Dutch Nuon Solar Team won the race with its solar car, the Nuna 4. The team
members are students of Delft University of Technology. Previous teams from the
university had won the Panasonic World Solar Challenge in 2001, 2003 and 2005,
with record-breaking speeds. The Belgian team, which took second place, raced
the Umicar Infinity.
storage win lsi partner award
LSI Corporation today announced it was named Sun Microsystems' 2007 StorageTek
Ready Partner of the Year. The award recognises LSI for its commitment to
supporting Sun's systems and the development of industry-leading storage
solutions to meet market demand.
"LSI shares a common vision with Sun to deliver outstanding quality and
innovative storage systems to the market place," said Flavio Santoni, executive
vice president, server and storage sales. "Our long-term support of the Solaris
Operating System (OS) and Sun Fire systems has enabled customers to fully
benefit from the storage capabilities of their Sun solution."
seeing the bigger storage picture
The IBM System Storage Productivity Center, IBM's new storage console, offers a
single pane of glass view into an organisation's storage systems, thus easing
the storage administrator's workload by enabling a consolidated view for
management and configuration. Additionally, the enhancements to the DS8000 Turbo
series provide innovations that matter to customers, giving them new ways to
increase the speed of their data access and processing, as well as to simplify
management and reduce costs, while helping to protect their data.
"Today's enterprises require ever-increasing sophistication in their storage
systems, in order to keep pace with the deluge of corporate data and
increasingly complex regulations regarding data trails," said Barry Rudolph, IBM
system storage vice president. At the same time, IBM continues to build upon the
innovation of its flagship enterprise disk storage system, the IBM System
Storage DS8000 series. Enhancements include IBM FlashCopy SE - a new licensed
function that allows customers to make a space-efficient snapshot copy of their
data.
With FlashCopy SE, only the capacity that's needed to save data updates is used.
This can lower costs by greatly reducing the disk capacity required for the
copy, thus allowing customers to use fewer drives, consume less power and be
more energy efficient, while protecting their data.
data centres
data protection centre hits the north
North East business communications specialist Knowledge I.T has marked the
second-stage completion of a £5 million investment strategy with the opening of
its North Tyneside Data and Business Recovery Centre. The move signals a period
of further growth for the Washington-based firm, as it looks to improve quality
levels and provide customers with the latest data protection services. Opened by
the chairman of regional development agency One NorthEast (ONE) Margaret Fay,
the new Tier Three North Tyneside Data and Business Recovery Centre at
Silverlink has cost £1.3 million to develop.
It is the second of three data and business recovery centres that Knowledge is
bringing on stream at strategic regional locations under an ambitious three-year
growth plan. The 10,000 sq ft facility enables companies to store off-site
back-up copies of electronic documents, data and other important commercial
information safely and securely. Security is a top priority at the Silverlink
Centre, with physical, electronic and biometric systems conforming to the global
standard for information security management systems (ISO 27001) lying at the
heart of advanced protection measures. State-of-the-art fire detection,
suppression and environmental systems have been incorporated, while a dedicated
electricity sub-station and back-up generator will enable the site to continue
to function during a National Grid power failure.
Knowledge received a £150,000 Selective Finance for Investment grant from ONE
towards the development of the new centre.
bolstering data centre security
HP has launched a centralised, hardened security appliance to help data centre
managers improve privacy compliance and reduce the risk of costly data loss, due
to theft. The HP StorageWorks Secure Key Manager is said to consolidate key
management for encryption devices deployed in enterprise and mid-sized
businesses. Security is improved by providing a single control point across the
data centre.
"HP clearly understands all of the complexities in securing a corporate
infrastructure,” said Jon Oltsik, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group,”
and is one of the first vendors to deliver a comprehensive solution to address
security concerns for the enterprise and mid-size corporate data centre.”
nas
targeting the enterprise space
Exanet and Overland Storage have teamed up to target the enterprise market with
a NAS virtualisation bundle. NASensemble brings together two storage products in
one package: Exanet's ExaStore NAS software and Overland's ULTAMUS RAID Serial
Attached SCSI storage array. The NASensemble bundle is said to deliver high
performance, low total cost of ownership (TCO) and unlimited scalability, with
no end of life. It also represents the first ever NAS offering from Overland,
plugging a gap in its data storage line-up.
"NASensemble allows businesses to scale online file access, reduce TCO for file
storage and provide high availability and online protection without additional
cost," said Dell. "Users can easily add capacity, upgrade memory or add nodes as
storage requirements grow, offering unlimited scalability, improved performance,
best utilisation and simplified management."
san
'transplantable' iSCSI SAN
DataCore Software has announced a range of Virtual Infrastructure Foundation (VIF)
acceleration bundles, designed to enable small and midsize businesses and
enterprises to affordably implement iSCSI Virtual SANs and fault-tolerant shared
storage for virtual server systems.
"Our VIF and DR packages are value-rich offerings, aimed at solving the
real-world storage problems faced by smaller businesses. The bundles provide a
solid stepping stone for SMBs considering affordable shared storage for virtual
server deployments, iSCSI storage networking and/or disaster recovery solutions
for the first time and for the long term," states George Teixeira, CEO and
president, DataCore Software Corporation.
axstor supports sunderland city
Axstor has enabled Sunderland City Council to provide every child in the City of
Sunderland with a personal storage space, in what is believed to be the UK's
largest single deployment of an iSCSI Storage Area Network (SAN).
The 96TB of Axstor iSCSI storage was supplied to Sunderland's Ed.IT Department
via Infrasys, an Axstor premier partner specialising in SANs and VMware.
"Axstor's iSCSI SAN solution was chosen as the preferred storage system because,
having thoroughly researched and understood the council's key criteria, the
system we suggested provided a cost-effective, robust, high-performance and
field-proven platform, as well as being easy to install and manage," explained
Axstor CEO Alan Shepherd.
Claimed to be the world's fastest iSCSI SAN storage solution, the Axstor Ai-Pro
delivers speeds of up to 1,100MB/sec data throughput and can achieve more than
80,000 IOPS. The Axstor Ai-Pro can handle both file and block based data,
providing support for applications such as MS Exchange and SQL Server, and can
operate in both Windows and Unix/Linux environments, as well as virtualised
environments such as VMware.
fujitsu selects emulex processor
The Emulex IOP 502M has been selected by Fujitsu for integration into the
ETERNUS2000 Storage System to provide a single-chip solution for simultaneous
front-end Fibre Channel SAN connectivity and back-end SAS/SATA disk
connectivity. The Emulex IOP 502M is a single chip Fibre Channel and SAS I/O
processor, delivering what is claimed to be the lowest implem- entation cost
available, and is compatible with Emulex's Service Level Interface (SLI) for
driver compatibility. It also offers an Intel XScale processor to house
applications such as on-board RAID.
backup and recovery
bakbone supports storagetek 5800
BakBone now offers support for the Sun StorageTek 5800 System as an extension of
its global distribution agreement with Sun Microsystems. The combined solution
of NetVault: Backup, BakBone's flagship data protection software, with the Sun
StorageTek 5800 System provides disaster recovery and archival capabilities for
the types of large data repository applications used by healthcare, scientific
and educational communities to ensure that fixed content is protected around the
clock.
Additionally, BakBone's worldwide technology licensing and distribution
agreement with Sun provides customers with greater choice for advanced data
protection solutions.
asigra supports sharepoint server
Asigra's Televaulting technology supports Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Enterprises can now protect SharePoint
data across distributed sites, while managed service providers (MSPs) can offer
a backup service that covers a highly comprehensive array of platforms and
applications.
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is fast becoming a major platform for
sharing information within enterprises worldwide," said Eran Farajun, executive
vice president of Asigra. "Our support of SharePoint will allow IT
administrators to get more out of their backup and restore capabilities, while
giving them more time
to do value-added work."
security
sticky issue for storage security
5% of employees store work-related files such as emails, files and documents in
locations other than a shared computer network, according to a new survey by
enterprise content management company TOWER Software. Conducted by independent
research organisation, Dynamic Markets, the report, 'Document Mayhem in the UK
and Republic of Ireland' has revealed that 49% of PC users store these files in
multiple locations, with a fifth (21%) using a memory stick.
14% of employees questioned admit to storing corporate material on the hard
drives of their laptops, while 9% even store work-related material on non-work
owned personal devices. 8% use portable hard drives for work file storage and 7%
use mobile devices such as PDAs and smart phones for keeping hold of emails,
files and documents.
Paul Brenchley, vice president for TOWER Software in EMEA, explains,
"Worryingly, 1% are unsure which of these locations they've stored work-related
files in! Overall, employees at middle manager level seem to be worse at storing
computer files in such places (62%), compared to administration staff (43%). It
seems that warnings about corporate security, compliance and information control
simply aren't registering with many employees. The use of memory sticks, for
example, will leave many organisations in breach of their security contracts
that forbid them in corporate buildings - or any other location with a corporate
IP address."
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