Symantec Announces Veritas Virtual Infrastructure; Updates to Veritas NetBackup Platform
Symantec Corp. announced Veritas Virtual Infrastructure (VxVI) last week at its Symantec Vision conference; technology intended to enable users to carry over storage management best practices from physical to virtual environments. Expected to be available in the fall of 2008, VxVI combines storage management capabilities from Veritas Storage Foundation with Citrix XenServer virtualization technology from Citrix Systems to manage storage in large-scale, x86 production environments.
VxVI is "the first unified server virtualization and storage management solution for production deployments within the enterprise," Sean Derrington, director of storage management and high availability for Symantec, told 5 Minute Briefing. "Veritas Virtual Infrastructure gives the customers all the elements they need - the server virtualization, the storage management and the integrated management and control to effectively manage both the server and the storage environment - so they can leverage all those best practices that they have been enjoying and developing over the last 15 years with Veritas Storage Foundation in the physical world and bring that over to the virtual server environment for production deployments," said Derrington.
According to Symantec, VxVI enables reduced storage costs by using common, shared boot images across multiple virtual servers; increased storage utilization by simplifying the provisioning of additional storage, thereby reducing over-provisioning; and increased control by enabling administrators to manage both virtual servers and storage with one tool.
In a separate announcement last week, Symantec also announced updates to the Veritas NetBackup platform, as part of the evolution of its data protection strategy. All of the enhancements fall into two key areas - reducing backup and recovery time or reducing bandwidth and storage consumption, Marty Ward, director of product marketing for Symantec Data Protection, explained.
Updates include data deduplication and continuous data protection. In addition, the NetBackup platform now offers granular recovery capabilities for Windows and VMware environments. The granular recovery technology had been in Backup Exec for about a year and a half, said Ward. The enhancement to the NetBackup platform enables quick recovery of an entire system or individual files, emails, documents and virtual machines from single-pass image backups of Microsoft Windows, Exchange, SharePoint and VMware servers. The technology eliminates duplicate brick-level backups, saving time and storage space for IT administrators.
Symantec also announced improvements to its data protection portfolio through technology synergies between NetBackup and Backup Exec in the areas of disk-based backup, virtual machine support, Windows protection, OpenStorage and recovery capabilities.
NetBackup 6.5.2 is available now and NetBackup 6.5.3 will be available in Summer 2008. Go here for more information about the NetBackup platform. For more on VxVI, go here.
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FalconStor Integrates Virtual Tape Library with Veritas NetBackup
Also at the Symantec Vision conference, FalconStor Software, provider of TOTALLY Open network storage solutions, announced availability of the FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) OpenStorage Option for integration with the Veritas NetBackup OpenStorage API from Symantec. The FalconStor VTL OpenStorage Option, qualified by Symantec, ensures business continuity by speeding up and simplifying backup and recovery through integration of intelligent disk devices to NetBackup using high-speed fibre channel connections.
The FalconStor OpenStorage Option, according to the vendor, enables seamless integration between the FalconStor VTL and Veritas NetBackup. Native connectivity also enables NetBackup to handle disk-to-disk transactions, enabling high-speed backup and recovery to intelligent disk devices over Fibre Channel or IP.
"The FalconStor VTL OpenStorage Option is one of many options available to our VTL customers," said Bernie Wu, vice president of business development at FalconStor. "In addition to the backup and retrieval advantages intrinsic to native connectivity with NetBackup, customers can leverage FalconStor software's fibre channel connections for higher speed. We also have the advantage of deduplication outside the backup window, and support for large single instance repository clusters." For more information about FalconStor, go here.
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SDS Upgrades Support for Real-Time Monitoring of z/OS Networks
Software Diversified Services (SDS) has announced a new version of the Vital Signs IP Monitor for z/OS mainframe networks, providing z/OS network administrators with real-time and historical monitoring of TCP/IP Sysplex Distributors and SNA-HPR network traffic, as well as accurate route information for Enterprise Extender connections.
The new release includes improvements in a number of areas in response to customers' changing needs, Tim Full, manager of technical services at SDS, told 5 Minute Briefing. "As TCP/IP has been growing in the z/OS environment, a lot of people have been migrating data off their old SNA platforms using Enterprise Extender. It has been around for quite awhile, but in the last couple of years, we have seen it really taking off," he noted. Enterprise Extender (EE) is an IBM solution that enables computer nodes on HPR (High Performance Routing) platforms to establish connections and sessions using an IP, rather than SNA, network.
SDS’s goal in this new release was to better take advantage of EE, Full explained. In addition, SDS is leveraging IBM’s Sysplex Distributor, which help provide fast, redundant, fault-tolerant service for massive networks. "The whole concept of Sysplex Distributor has been around for a little while - but it is really starting to pick up some steam - so we added some features in that area to help them manage that," he said. Other changes in the product include enhancements improving performance as well as making tools more usable.
The VIP 7.0 from SDS provides network administrators with complete detail regarding configuration of DDVIPAs (Distributed Dynamic Virtual IP Addressing), workloads at individual servers, the availability of backup servers, and the health of the primary hosts that distribute the workload among them.
VIP 7.0 presents easy-to-navigate Web-browser displays regarding the quantity and speed of data transport through SNA-VTAM networks via IBM's high-performance routing (HPR). Reports include congestion and error alerts, message queue lengths, and notification of route changes.
SNA-VTAM systems now rely heavily on Enterprise Extender (EE) connections to pass mainframe data through IP networks, according to SDS, but the hard part of using EE can be defining the routes between systems. Neither VTAM nor the TCP/IP stack can report where traffic goes, or fails to go, through the IP portion of a connection, the vendor states. VIP 7.0 seeks to address this need, providing an accurate tool for tracing and testing real EE routes.
"Trace route is something that has been available in IP network tools for a long time, but we have taken the trace route concept and put a twist on it that is specific to Enterprise Extender so that when you are creating your Enterprise Extender network, this trace route tool will allow you to determine the connectivity between point A and point B are - to find out where the bottlenecks are, where the failures might be occurring between not just at an IP level but at an Enterprise Extender level," said Full. Early beta test customers have been extremely interested in the new trace route feature, added Jim Lampi, SDS vice president. "We are the only ones in the market that offer something like this and are taking advantage of the latest IBM technologies."
For more details on version 7.0, go here. For a free white paper, or a live demonstration by Webcast, go here.
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IBM Announces Next-Generation Storage Virtualization Software
As part of its "Project Big Green" offerings, IBM announced new storage virtualization software that helps clients more efficiently manage and consolidate volumes of business data. IBM’s System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software is intended to help improve the flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructures by creating consolidated, virtual pools of information across the enterprise. This enables IT departments to respond more quickly to client needs and centrally manage resources, the vendor said. The "green" aspect in storage virtualization technology, IBM added, is that it can reduce requirements for additional physical storage hardware systems, which can ultimately reduce overall energy usage in the data center.
"IBM is dedicated to helping its clients improve their information infrastructures through powerful virtualization technology," said Barry Rudolph, vice president of storage stack solutions for IBM. "We have been the leader in storage virtualization since SVC was introduced five years ago, and this latest version from IBM further showcases our innovation and represents our commitment to clients to incorporate green, efficient technologies into our storage portfolio to help clients manage the data center crisis of today."
Virtualization is one of the five pillars of IBM's Project Big Green offerings, and a key component of IBM's new enterprise data center model, the vendor said. IBM claimed that since the introduction of SVC engines in 2003, it has shipped more than 12,000 SVC engines running in more than 4,000 SVC systems.
With the volume of data that clients have to store growing exponentially, keeping control of storage costs and improving storage utilization is taking on increasing importance in the data center. The improvements in SVC 4.3 can help improve storage utilization, which helps reduce energy consumption for a greener data center, IBM said.
The IBM SVC 4.3 software includes enhancements such as space-efficient virtual disks that use disk space only when data is written instead of reserving disk space for the entire capacity of a virtual disk. Another feature, space-efficient FlashCopy, uses disk space only for changes between source and target data and not for the entire capacity of a virtual disk copy. Although the impact of SVC's specific features and functions is highly workload-dependent and based on each client's individual data center specifications, features such as SVC's new Space-Efficient FlashCopy could help reduce space required for copies by as much as 75 percent or more, the vendor said.
In addition, IBM announced that SVC incorporates virtual disk mirroring, which helps improve availability for critical applications by storing two copies of a virtual disk on different disk systems.
IBM also announced a new release of the its System Storage Productivity Center (SSPC), the management console for SVC systems. SSPC is designed to provide clients with a management platform that integrates virtual and physical infrastructure management.
SSPC includes TotalStorage Productivity Center for Replication 3.4 preinstalled, providing simplified management of advanced copy services offered by SVC FlashCopy, and Metro and Global Mirror. IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center software is designed to increase energy efficiency by offering a solution that helps customers reduce wasted disk space by identifying duplicate data, orphan data, temporary data, and non-business data; TotalStorage Productivity Center can also identify less frequently accessed data files that could be migrated to even more energy-efficient storage systems such as tape.
The new offerings also incorporate simplified tiered-storage implementation, designed to help simplify implementation of a tiered storage infrastructure, improve performance of lower tier storage, and help move data between tiers without disruption. This helps make it easier to match data types with the right storage, and to move data when requirements change, IBM said.
The new products also enable companies to pool storage volumes from IBM and non-IBM storage systems into a single reservoir of capacity for centralized management. With IBM SVC, clients can choose any combination of storage devices from EMC, IBM, HP, Hitachi or other vendors.
New IBM SAN Volume Controller 4.3 functions are available at no additional charge and existing SVC customers will be able to take advantage of these improvements when they upgrade to SVC 4.3. FlashCopy requires a license for the FlashCopy function. The new SVC 4.3 software will be available for download on June 27th, IBM also said. For more information, go here.
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NetManage and HiT Software Partner to Help Legacy Users
NetManage, a legacy-to-SOA provider, and HiT Software, a vendor in the data integration and access (DIA) market, have announced a joint partnership to help legacy users create structure from unstructured legacy data. This global partnership will open up joint revenue opportunities across North America, Europe and Asia.
NetManage solutions transform legacy applications into new Web-based solutions by exposing critical business functions as Web sites, Web services, or standard XML. HiT Software's Allora solution enables these XML files to be mapped, manually or automatically, into structured relational database systems. "Legacy systems still power the majority of worldwide business transactions. Our customers use OnWeb to drive more business from those legacy systems," said Zvi Alon, chairman, president and CEO at NetManage. "This partnership with HiT Software allows us to capture even more of the legacy integration market while providing our customers with another way to create new business solutions."
To support the new partnership the companies have announced a joint white paper created by both NetManage and HiT Software, which demonstrates how NetManage's OnWeb, working in conjunction with HiT Software's Allora, takes unstructured legacy data and makes it accessible through any relational database. The white paper explains how a user, with no SQL coding, can migrate real time, unstructured legacy data into a database in 10 minutes. The white paper is available for download here.
For more on HiT Software, go here.
For more on NetManage, go here.
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IRI Joins Mainframe Migration Alliance
Innovative Routines International (IRI), provider of data sorting and conversion tools, announced it has joined the Mainframe Migration Alliance (MMA), a group of companies promoting migration from the mainframe to Microsoft platform. IRI said its software products delivers mainframe functionality and performance on the Microsoft platform, including high-volume data sorting and conversion, test data generation, field-level security, database extraction, and batch reporting.
IRI's participation in the MMA is a natural step for the company, David Friedland, vice president of business development, IRI, told 5 Minute Briefing. "We have been migrating mainframe sort users, and to some extent, mainframe data users, over to Windows and other types of open systems - platforms like Unix and Linux - for many years."
When migrating z/OS and z/VSE processes, it is critical to implement a seamless replacement for JCL steps and parameters for sorting, selection, and summing, according to the company. Additionally, runtimes must be at least equivalent and output results must be identical to the legacy platform.
When people move off the mainframe they need to replicate or rehost their processing on their target platform, "and they want to do it in a way the produces the same kind of results using very often the same exact jobs steps," noted Friedland. IRI's CoSort software includes drop-in sort replacement engines and JCL sort card conversion tools that seamlessly replace third-party sort functions and translate legacy sort parameters to CoSort programs on Windows.
CoSort also performs high-speed file and data type conversions, and reads COBOL copybooks, CSV, CLF and ELF web logs, and translates ISAM, MFVL, Vision, LDIF, XML and sequential files. CoSort data type conversions include EBCDIC to ASCII, integer to currency, packed or zoned decimal to binary integers, European to ISO timestamps, floating point to numeric, and multi-byte Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) sets.
In joining the alliance, Friedland said, IRI hopes to leverage the relationship with Microsoft as well as network with other partners in the alliance, particularly the services providers, enabling each to learn what the other offers. "Ideally they would get some expertise in our tools as well, so they would become essentially authorized experts in the technology and even wrap services around it." For more on IRI, go here and for more on the Mainframe Migration Alliance, go here.
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