Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced a number of new tools to make better use of data storage resources, including new thin provisioning features and solid state drive (SSD) management.
The new features, delivered through the company’s Veritas Storage Foundation, Veritas Cluster File System and Veritas Cluster Server storage management and high availability products for Unix, Linux and Windows, also include integration with Microsoft Hyper-V and new database recovery features.
The Storage Foundation Solid State Drive Visibility feature offers SSD management in heterogeneous storage environments. It’s a capability that storage vendors like Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and EMC (NYSE: EMC) are working on because it sends only the most critical data to pricey SSDs.
Symantec’s Dynamic Storage Tiering technology can assign data to a storage tier based on policies such as age, type and usage, said Sean Derrington, the company’s director of storage management and availability. The namespace doesn’t change, so the data movement is invisible to end users and applications. Managing SSDs as a “tier 0” can speed performance by four to 12 times, said Derrington.
Symantec claims that Storage Foundation “is the only storage management solution that can automatically discover SSD devices from leading array and server vendors and optimize data placement on SSD devices transparently.”
Symantec’s Veritas Thin Reclamation API allows for automated storage reclamation for thin provisioned storage arrays and is supported by IBM and 3PAR, with other storage hardware vendors to follow, including EMC, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and Fujitsu. Storage Foundation’s SmartMove technology and Veritas Volume Replicator let enterprises migrate from thick to thin storage over distance. Only the storage that is being used by the application is moved for greater speed and efficiency, and the new features are extended to Hyper-V Virtualizationenvironments with Storage Foundation for Windows.
Pricing for Storage Foundation and Storage Foundation for Windows starts at $695 per server.
Symantec is also promising “near instantaneous recovery of applications” with Veritas Cluster File System, thanks to tight integration with Oracle, Sybase and IBM DB2, which allows for “fast failover” of structured data and greater scalability.
Traditional failover approaches require both application and storage to move to an alternate server, according to Symantec. Cluster File System and Cluster Server offer concurrent access to data and require that only the application be moved. The result is that customers can failover applications running single-instance Oracle or IBM DB2 “in seconds,” the company said.
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