Storage Web Digest: Brocade Bolsters SAN Management Software

Brocade Bolsters SAN Management Software ... IBM Details Storage Virtualization Appliance ... SanDisk Rolls Out New miniSD Flash Memory Cards ... SARS Slump Hits Taiwan PC Shipments in Q2

Enterprise Storage

Brocade Bolsters SAN Management Software

Brocade Communications Systems this week announced the release to resellers of its fourth-generation Fabric Manager software, which now provides policy-based management, a dashboard-type topology view of a SAN and better security through encryption and authentication. Fabric Manager 4.0 also allows storage administrators to use the Fabric Device Management Interface standard to discover, display and upgrade firmware on host bus adapters through a single keystroke. When combined with Brocades Secure Fabric operating system, Fabric Manager allows for the implementation of network-based security policies, according to Steve Daheb, director of product marketing at Brocade.

Read the full story on:Computerworld

IBM Details Storage Virtualization Appliance

IBM this week spilled more details on forthcoming products aimed at virtualizing storage. The IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller is an in-line virtualization appliance that allows pooling of storage across non-like storage arrays, said Bruce Hillsberg, director of storage software strategy and technology at IBM. The appliance consists of virtualization software developed by IBM running on one or more pairs of storage nodes, which are 1U-high, two-way IBM xSeries servers, each of which has 4GB of cache and four 2-Gbits-per-second Fibre Channel connectors. The second virtualization tool is the TotalStorage SAN Integration Server, a "SAN-in-a-can" bundle aimed at easing customer and solution provider transition to virtualized storage, Hillsberg said.

Read the full story on:CRN

Personal Storage

SanDisk Rolls Out New miniSD Flash Memory Cards

SanDisk last week announced that it started selling miniSD flash memory cards through retail stores in Japan. SanDisk is the first company to sell the new small-size cards to retail consumers, the company said. The new retail miniSD cards will start at 32MB capacity with higher capacities ranging up to 256MB, which is due to be introduced later this year and in early 2004.

Read the full press release on:SanDisk

Storage Business

SARS Slump Hits Taiwan PC Shipments in Q2

The traditional slow season and the impact of SARS may cause Taiwanese optical storage drive makers to suffer falling shipments and production values through the second quarter of 2003, said Taiwan-based Market Intelligence Center. Since mid-April, sales of PCs with built-in optical drives fell short of earlier forecasts by 16.7 percent, while sales of PCs with add-on optical drives fell short of earlier estimates by as much as 30 percent. The declines are mainly due to slumping sales in China, where Taiwanese optical storage drive makers claim about half of the market.

Read the full story on:DigiTimes