This is long but may be of some interest:
July 18, 2000 11:31
SNIA Integrates Network Data Management Protocol
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 18, 2000--The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today announced integration of the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) into its repertoire of industry backup solutions.
Legato Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:LGTO) and Network Appliance (Nasdaq:NTAP) have asked the SNIA to manage the co-developed protocol for future standards development. The SNIA has formed a new work group specifically tasked with NDMP development. This new work group will be responsible for the continued development of protocol standards, interoperability testing, and educational programs for NDMP. This group is organized as a subgroup of the SNIA Backup Working Group.
NDMP provides a protocol framework for data management in a multi-vendor data server environment. By defining a networked protocol that abstracts data management application functionality from data service providers, NDMP minimizes the administrative management logic that resides on data servers and allows interoperability with a variety of data management solutions.
"The SNIA continues setting the pace for the industry by providing an open forum for the development of important standards such as NDMP," said Larry Krantz, chairman of the board of directors of the SNIA. "Management standards like NDMP are the foundations upon which trusted, interoperable storage networks are built. We are pleased that industry leaders Legato and Network Appliance have entrusted the SNIA with theresponsibility and the future development of this key protocol. NDMP is another example of the SNIA working closely with member companies, striving to encourage wider adoption and to further the development of storage networking standards."
"Legato's commitment to open standards is underscored by the adoption of NDMP by the SNIA," said Roger Stager, senior technical strategist at Legato Systems and a co-inventor of NDMP. "Although already implemented by many NAS and storage software vendors, the SNIA's activity will serve to more quickly bring the benefits of this important standard to storage networking customers by hastening development and vendor adoption of the protocol."
"The formation of a working group within the SNIA dedicated to NDMP demonstrates the protocol's strength, evolution, and importance to storage networks," said Dave Hitz, co-founder of and vice president of engineering at Network Appliance, and one of the co-inventors of NDMP. "The level of commitment and enthusiasm we have seen from storage vendors to advance NDMP is encouraging and critical in aiding the evolution of storage networking."
Over the next few months, the NDMP working group within the SNIA will focus its efforts on refining the existing NDMP specification, finalizing the definition for NDMP version 4.0, fostering more vendor interoperability testing, encouraging broader NDMP adoption by storage networking vendors, and hosting educational sessions on the protocol's benefits and uses.
About NDMP
Created by Legato Systems and Network Appliance, NDMP enables vendors to create data management tools that reduce the cost and complexity of managing data. The protocol has gained considerable momentum over the last few years, and has been supported by backup vendors, NAS vendors, tape library manufacturers, academic institutions, and customers. More than 300 copies of the Software Developer Kit (SDK) have already been downloaded from the NDMP.org Web site. For more information, visit the NDMP Web site at ndmp.org.
About SNIA
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit organization, made up of 150 companies and individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA members share a common goal, to set the pace of the industry by ensuring that storage networks become efficient, complete, and trusted solutions across the IT community. To this end the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For information, contact the SNIA at 650/949-6720, or via email at executivedirector@snia.org, or visit the SNIA Web site at snia.org.
Additional comments from industry sources:
"With the growing acceptance of data-centric storage architectures, NDMP provides a solid foundation to manage this critical business information," said Larry Cormier, vice president marketing and business development, CommVault Systems. "Support for NDMP in our next generation data and storage management product. CommVault(c) Galaxy(TM) exemplifies our commitment to deliver an end-to-end storage management solution for our customers that provides advanced data management and better access to information in storage networks."
"We are pleased to support SNIA and its efforts to promote storage systems interoperability through the NDMP protocol," said Karl Schubert, Vice President, Storage Architecture & Subsystems Engineering, Dell Enterprise Systems Group. "Dell joins SNIA in its commitment to furthering industry standard storage technologies that enable enterprise customers to implement highly flexible storage solutions across heterogeneous environments."
"Mirapoint is committed to supporting open, industry standards with our messaging infrastructure products," said Todd Whitaker, Mirapoint's vice president of product marketing. "We are pleased to see SNIA leading the charge in evolving NDMP on behalf of the industry. The NDMP standard will provide our customers with greater flexibility for data backup and recovery."
"Quantum|ATL regards NDMP as an important standard for our industry, and we welcome the move of standards setting activities to SNIA," said Gene Nagle, Product Line Manager, Quantum|ATL. "ATL looks forward to playing an active role in enhancing the NDMP standard."
"Spectra Logic views NDMP as an important protocol that provides network attached backup capabilities with the added benefit of operating system and driver independence and remote facility options," said Hossein ZiaShakeri Director of Advanced Engineering at Spectra Logic. "NDMP technology is an instrumental piece of Spectra Logic's leading edge storage offerings, today and into the future."
"Tivoli is committed to working with SNIA to develop and drive storage industry standards. We are investing in NDMP and developing support that will be integrated into Tivoli Storage Manager. We're looking forward to industry-wide adoption of NDMP as well as the other standards that SNIA supports," stated Troy Pladson, director, strategy, marketing and business development, Tivoli Storage Management Solutions
"Traakan is very enthusiastic about NDMP becoming a SNIA working group. We are committed to the development and deployment of NDMP as an interoperable industry standard, and this is a logical step towards achieving that goal," said Al Lehman, Director of Engineering Services at Traakan. "We will continue to maintain NDMJOB, a public domain NDMP reference package to further that end, and look forward to working with this capable SNIA working group."
"As an innovator of storage solutions for SAN, VERITAS Software is committed to providing customers with interoperable standards-based storage networking applications," said Jan Jentz, senior director of SAN strategies, VERITAS Software. "By participating in SNIA's new NDMP work group, VERITAS Software is helping to define NDMP standards, simplifying the development of SANs and accelerating the adoption of storage networking standards."
"SNIA's embrace of NDMP signals that this protocol is emerging as a core technology for the storage industry," said Jim Ward, president of Workstation Solutions. "The working group's standardization efforts brings together an accomplished group of vendors whose customers will benefit from NDMP-enabled interoperability among storage, systems and solutions technologies." |
