June 1, 2000--Advanced Digital Information Corporation(R)(Nasdaq:ADIC) today announced a new release of its CentraVision(TM) SAN file sharing system (CVFS), one designed to provide high data availability through use of automated server failover technology.
By providing continuous availability of shared, centralized files to network workstations and servers, CentraVision 1.4 will help extend the use of SANs to enterprise and web-hosting applications that demand 7x24 data access.
"Adding enhanced resiliency and automated failover to SANs is an important step in the evolution of Fibre Channel networks," explained Bill Britts, ADIC executive vice president of sales and marketing. "Today, SAN file sharing is used most often in post-production and graphics environments, ones that boost productivity by sharing very large files among multiple users. The ability of SANs to let multiple clients with different operating systems share data down to the file level offers huge potential benefits for enterprise data sharing, e-commerce, and web hosting, but these applications demand the kind of system resiliency that can guarantee continuous access to data. With its new automated failover option, CentraVision takes a major step toward making SAN file sharing a central and highly leveraged element in those applications."
The CVFS file sharing system allows UNIX, Windows, and Linux hosts to transparently share centralized Fibre Channel disk resources over a high bandwidth SAN. By letting different users share storage volumes and even individual files, it enables collaborative workflow and dramatically reduces the need for IT departments to duplicate, move, store and manage files. In the new CVFS 1.4 release, the indexing data required to allow hosts to access the centralized files can be automatically replicated and distributed among different SAN servers. In the event that any server becomes disabled or is powered down, the central indexing function is automatically transferred to another server and all the remaining hosts retain uninterrupted access to the centralized files.
"Current SAN implementation are only the beginning," Britts continued. "Today, users are rolling out SANs to centralize backup, get block data transfers off the network, and share large files. The next stage -- one that high availability file sharing will help make possible -- will centralize live, mission-critical data and enable single-point management strategies for file sets that need to be simultaneously available to large banks of servers. With this release we are helping to make an information-centric network topology a practical reality."
CentraVision has been recognized by the industry for its leadership in bringing innovative, high performance SAN file sharing to the market. Independent lab tests on a CVFS SAN reported consistent file read performance of 94MB/second, and a mixed UNIX-Windows NT SAN solution based on CVFS was selected as a finalist for Network Computing's Well-Connected award in the SAN category. "Since the maximum per-channel SAN bandwidth is 100MB/second, consistent 94MB/second performance is extremely high -- for people familiar with backup performance, it's equivalent to the combined maximum native throughput of more than 15 DLT 8000 tape drives," commented Dave Uvelli, ADIC executive director of marketing for software.
ADIC's CentraVision 1.4 is available now for UNIX, Windows, and Linux systems. Suggested list price begins at $5,000 per server.
About ADIC
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