Onaro Reveals Closer View of Storage Management

Data storage management software provider Onaro introduced on Dec. 4 a new version of its flagship product, SANscreen Foundation version 3.5, which offers a more detailed view of the storage systems role in an enterprise system.

The new release provides infrastructure teams with the ability to align their storage infrastructure with an applications requirements at a relatively low cost, a spokesperson for the Boston-based company said.

Key new features include an improved application-to-storage service view, better service quality tracking, a capacity planning feature, and a ready-to-use IT storage portal, the spokesperson said.

"SANscreen Foundations new ability to link applications to the infrastructure is essential for organizations to align storage resources with business requirements," said Bob Laliberte, a senior storage analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass.

"With this release, Onaro continues to differentiate itself and provide more valuable, actionable information to the infrastructure team so they can deliver higher levels of service to the business."

Highlights of SANscreen Foundation version 3.5, which the company said will become available by the end of December, include:

• Application-to-storage service view: Enables storage managers to view the services delivered by the storage environment not just to a host, but also to the underlying applications. This completes a key requirement for storage service management by enabling IT managers to have application-level control of storage resources.
• Improved service quality tracking: Most infrastructure teams use the measure of SAN uptime as their only quality measurement, leaving no way to drive incremental improvements that contribute to availability. With SANscreen, more gradual measures of SAN quality are possible, enabling infrastructure teams to reduce outages.
• New capacity planning capability: SANscreen Foundations change repository contains all device and service changes to the storage infrastructure, including the allocation of new volumes and ports.

  SANscreen Foundation 3.5 uses this information to report on allocation trending for both arrays and ports in the storage infrastructure. Understanding cost allocations and trending is a key component of delivering the right level of service at the lowest possible cost.

• Preconfigured IT storage portal: Getting the storage service information into the hands of application owners, system administrators and other IT managers is a key component of delivering IT as a service. Foundation 3.5 includes a ready-to-use IT Storage Portal that contains all the key storage service information for an application.

Onaro offers new view into Oracle apps. Click here to read more.

In addition to these new features, SANscreen Foundation version 3.5 includes architectural improvements including:

• Support for Cisco's SAN routing technology
• Improved agentless technology for rapid host identification
• Numerous usability and GUI improvements

Availability and pricing

Onaro SANscreen Foundation version 3.5 will be generally available at the end of 2006. Pricing for SANscreen Foundation starts at $185 per port.

Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis on enterprise and small business storage hardware and software.