Major storage software developers are gearing up for a spring launch of second-generation storage resource management products, finally delivering on much of the functionality that was promised for the technology a year ago.
New SRM suites, which offer management based on application and user priorities, will be announced this week from Fujitsu Software Technology Corp., or Softek, and next week from IBMs Tivoli division, said officials of both companies.
In current versions, “everyone was guilty of hyping the vision and did not anticipate the degree of sophistication the customer was expecting,” said Steven Murphy, Softek CEO and president.
As a remedy, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company will launch Storage Manager 2.1 and Storage Provisioner 2.1, updates from 1.1 releases and due to ship in the second quarter. New in Storage Manager 2.1 is a chargeback feature, support for Linux and Solaris, and integration with Tivoli and Veritas Software Corp. backup applications. Storage Provisioner 2.1 requires fewer steps to set automated policies. It can also map data and network paths from applications to volumes and has high-availability features for long-distance data replication (see screen).
Storage Manager costs $39,000. Modules for file systems, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. SQL Server databases, and performance tuning start at $795 each. Storage Provisioner starts at $50,000 for dual servers, called Storage Policy Engines. Additional engines cost $35,000 each, with $10,000 more for snapshots and $5,000 more per volume. New replication and networking features will come by June, officials said.
But thats not all. The company is considering expansion through acquisition. “Were looking at expanding through acquisitions in the areas of physical array management [and] replication, especially around long-distance disaster recovery,” Murphy said. Other acquisition targets are companies in workflow automation and chargeback, he said.
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Softek offers less expensive, straightforward data reporting and management policies, according to user Scott Hopkins, vice president of technology planning at Harte-Hanks Inc. Hopkins data center in Billerica, Mass., has 32 terabytes of storage from EMC Corp., Fujitsu Technology Solutions Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., among others, connected to servers running AIX, Solaris, Windows and VMS. “We are going on seven months; it works very well,” Hopkins said.
Tivoli is aiming for this kind of customer as well. “An important direction for us is that storage really needs to be part of an enterprise management system, from just managing storage to managing in the context of business,” said Michael McCarthy, director of Tivoli software, in Austin, Texas. At the IBM DeveloperWorks conference in New Orleans next week, Tivoli will announce integration among Storage Resource Manager, Storage Manager (backup) and SAN Manager, all with Tivoli Data Warehouse and with Tivoli Enterprise Console.
Storage Resource Manager is getting integration with archived data and service-level agreement monitoring, while SAN Manager enables simpler and speedier installation, McCarthy said.
Another product, SRM Express, was announced earlier this year and will also ship in April. This product will give administrators and end users control of storage on AIX, Linux, Solaris and Windows desktops but without the server-class chargeback, database and SAN (storage area network) features.
SRM Express will cost about $100 per desktop. Pricing for the updated storage tools is not yet available.
Tivolis plans into next year include more console integration and a master agent that has SRM, backup, SAN management and other tools all in one, with its parts enabled by license keys so administrators can spend less time installing software.
Other SRM tools coming this spring and summer include an upgrade to SANPoint Control 3.5, from Veritas, also in Sunnyvale, and Solutions Suite 1.7, from AppIQ Inc., of Burlington, Mass.
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