ADIC, Bull, TrueSAN serve up storage wares
By John S. Mccright and Sonia R. Lelii" >, PC Week Online
September 27, 1999 9:00 AM ET
zdnet.com
Advanced Digital Information Corp., Bull Worldwide Information Systems and TrueSAN Networks Inc. promise to give IT organizations greater control over storage resources with new SAN products and integration services.
The new offerings from the three small vendors will provide hardware and software that will make storage area networks a reality.
ADIC will introduce next month a tape library appliance that plugs directly into a storage network, officials said.
The as-yet-unnamed appliance, due next quarter, will support a range of tape media and be able to size itself to the storage needs of the servers on the network, said Kevin Honeycutt, ADIC's director of product management, in Redmond, Wash. The appliance will connect into the SAN via SCSI, Fibre Channel or other networking technologies.
The tape library will complement ADIC's Open SAN Solution package, a set of products and services that the company announced earlier this month. The packages combine third-party tape libraries, routers, switches and other storage hardware with storage management software. In addition to the integration, ADIC offers help desk and on-site support.
ADIC opened four labs?two in the United States, one in Germany and one in France?to test the software solutions.
Separately, Bull plans this week to introduce StoreWay SAN bundles, packages of SAN hardware, software, services and support. The Paris-based company will use in the five bundles some of its own technology coupled with technology from its numerous hardware and software vendors.
The first bundle, StoreWay SRM (Storage Resource Manager), promises to enable IT managers to monitor and analyze such storage subsystem functions as RAID levels and available disk capacities. Bull developed the software agents that extend HighGround Systems Inc.'s Windows-based SRM to Unix platforms and will sell the software itself under the name StoreWay SRM.
Bull's SAN-ready Storage package assembles a SAN infrastructure consisting of a series of Fibre Channel switches and gateways that connect servers and disk arrays. The package leansheavily on technology from Crossroads Communications Inc., Gadzoox Networks Inc. and Brocade Communications Systems Inc.
A third package, called SAN Backup and Restore, integrates backup software and tape recording devices from Exabyte Corp., Overland Data Inc. and Storage Technology Corp. Bull's Storage Consolidation package provides disk subsystems through the company's alliances with EMC Corp. and Data General Corp.'s Clariion business unit.
StoreWay Disaster Recovery integrates software from Legato Systems Inc. and Veritas Software Corp.
To support StoreWay, Bull is opening its Storage Server Business Unit in Phoenix and Les Clayes, France, to test the configurations before implementing them on customer sites.
Pricing for the StoreWay packages depends on configuration.
Although all the big storage vendors have been talking about SANs for years, StoreWay will bring some much-needed reality to the SAN market, said Michael Peterson, an analyst at Strategic Research Corp.
"Most of what's been out there has been jockeying and positioning. It's been no more than statements of direction," said Peterson, in Santa Barbara, Calif. "Bull has done the right thing by selecting a group of 10 to 15 partners and putting in an interoperability lab."
For its part, TrueSAN Networks this month unveiled its SANengage technol ogy, which lets multiple servers share disk space on a single storage device.
The technology enables storage administrators to logically partition the company's TrueSAN 6000FC disk array, where the technology resides. Once partitioned, the space can be allocated to specific servers based on their Fibre Channel worldwide names, according to officials at TrueSAN, in Mountain View, Calif.
As a result, organizations can consolidate data across Windows NT, Linux, Unix and NetWare platforms.
SANengage is based on Qlogic Corp.'s ISP2100 Fibre Channel processor, which is embedded in the 6000FC.
The TrueSAN 6000FC with SANengage is available now. Pricing was not available.
ADIC can be reached at (800) 336-1233 or www.adic.com. Bull can be contacted in the United States at (602) 862-8000 or www.storeway.com. TrueSAN is at (888) 886-8551 or www.truesan.com. |
