Storage Vendors Roll Out New Hardware, Management Wares

Cisco Systems Inc., Hitachi Data Systems Corp. and EMC Corp. each have new offerings to help customers squeeze more from their storage infrastructure by strengthening virtualization, improving multivendor device replication and simplifying midtier management.

At the CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany, last week, the companies unveiled hardware, software and services to address the need for greater flexibility in areas such as application deployment in SANs (storage area networks) and helping SMBs (small and midsize businesses) manage storage.

Cisco upgraded its Cisco MDS 9000 switch platform to power multiple partner applications such as network-based volume management, data migration and remote replication via its new Cisco MDS 9000 SSM (Storage Services Module) and Cisco MDS 9000 SAN-OS 2.1 software.

The 32-port Fibre Channel SSM, which is available now, fits into any Cisco MDS 9000 model or chassis. The SAN OS-2.1 software features an open, standards-based API, allowing storage ISVs to write to the module using FAIS (Fabric Application Interface Standard).

Veritas Software Corp. and EMC, through its EMC Storage Router, will roll out applications to enable network-hosted storage virtualization thats in tune with SSM by June, said Rajiv Bhardwaj, senior manager of product management for Ciscos Storage Networking Business Unit, in San Jose, Calif.

Currently running two Cisco MDS 9000s for his primary storage applications, Michael Passe, storage architect for Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, said he hopes Cisco does not start a tug of war among vendors for virtualization resources being supported on the same Cisco hardware. "We have Veritas Volume Manager from a software perspective, and we are a big EMC shop," said Passe. "It will be interesting to see how that all plays together."

To push large-scale virtualization and asynchronous copy deeper into heterogeneous environments, HDS, the Santa Clara, Calif., subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., announced the availability of Hitachi TrueCopy Remote Replication Software for IBM, EMC and Hitachi storage systems attached to the Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform.

EMC, of Hopkinton, Mass., announced its Making Storage Simple program, which promises to ease complexity for SMBs. Available through resellers and starting at $5,995, the offering includes EMC Express Solutions for Networked Storage, EMC Express Solutions for Backup and Recovery, EMC Express Solutions for Archiving, and EMC Express Solutions for Business Protection, said EMC officials.

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