SNW - Storage products unveiled at SNW show

26.10.2004
Von Bob Francis

At Storage Networking World (SNW) in Orlando this week, several storage vendors are adding to their arsenal of products and technologies aimed at IT managers dealing with the explosion of data storage.

McData Corp. announced a new version of its Enterprise Operating System (E/OS) and SANavigator at the show. E/OS 7.0, will include support for 10Gbps XPM, installation wizards, and fabric diagnostics. McData has also updated SANavigator, its management software for heterogeneous storage networks. SANavigator now includes a group configuration tool for multiple storage arrays. The company announced an agreement with Network Appliance Inc. that will allow SANavigator to manage Network Appliance products. Network Appliance will sell the product under its own name. SANavigator has also added support for new devices, such as switches from vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc. and Brocade Communications Systems Inc.

Brocade, for its part, is showing off its new SilkWorm 4100, a 4Gbps Fibre Channel switch. The switch is compatible with Brocade"s entry-level and enterprise-level switches and is designed for core SANs and large edge SAN applications. Brocade also released Version 4.4 of its Brocade Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS), the operating system for the company"s SilkWorm SAN switches. The new OS now transfers data at faster speeds over longer distances, has increased port density for improved scalability, and has new security features.

IBM Corp. announced several new editions of its TotalStorage Open Software series at the show. IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller v1.2.1, virtual machine software added support for EMC Corp."s Symmetrix DMX Series to go along with support for Hewlett-Packard Co. arrays and IBM"s own TotalStorage systems. SAN Volume Controller now also doubles the maximum cluster size to eight nodes and quadruples the number of supported virtual disks.

IBM also updated TotalStorage SAN File System to Version 2.2 and introduced a major upgrade of Tivoli Storage Manager. Storage Manager received a new graphical interface and administration center.

HP unveiled new SAN and NAS products at the show. The HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) 1000 Small Business SAN Kit consists of entry-level products designed for first-time SAN customers. The kit helps to reduce the cost, complexity, and risk of SAN deployments, according to HP officials.

HP also unveiled a new family of NAS offerings under the umbrella brand of HP ProLiant Storage Servers.

New business arrangements were also announced at the show. Engenio Information Technologies Inc., a storage system provider, announced a new agreement with Sun Microsystems Inc. Under terms of the agreement, Engenio will provide Sun with new modular storage technology and codevelop future Sun storage products. The first product of the partnership, a mid-range controller, was also announced at the show.