The software allows virtualized pools of storage being managed by the USP V to migrate between storage systems without having to bring down applications or host servers.

Claus Mikkelsen, CTO of HDS' Storage Architectures, had attempted to build hype around the announcement by offering a clue as to what the product was a week ago in an on his blog page. The anagram -- REGRADES OUR CLASSY TREAT -- stood for "clustered storage arrays."

The Hitachi High Availability Manager will be available in the fourth quarter of this year and pricing will be based on each USP V on which it is deployed, not by the amount of storage capacity it is managing. HDS did not immediately offer pricing details.

Christopher Crowhurst, vice president of strategic technology for the professional division of Thomson Reuters, has been an early evaluator of the Hitachi High Availability Manager and likes its potential for "operational resilience and efficiency."

"This robust solution combines continuous high-availability and disaster recovery protection in virtualized SAN environments and the ability to seamlessly migrate data between arrays, and to refresh the SAN non-disruptively," he said in a statement. "This design helps remove the impact of potential failures, reduce management costs and simplify business operations."