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Veritas Software Corp. this week announced OpForce 3.0, enhancing the platform support and simplifying administration of the former Jareva Technologies Inc. OpForce 2.1 server automation software, officials said.
The new version is the first since Veritas acquired Jareva for $62 million in December 2002, but full technical integration wont come until Version 4.0 in the second calendar quarter of next year, said Jagadish Bandhole, vice president of datacenter automation products, and former Jareva CEO.
“There is a natural link between servers and applications and storage in the real world,” said Bandhole, in Sunnyvale, Calif. To help, OpForce now can run Windows 2003, several revisions of Linux and AIX, he said. There is also now a JXML-based programming interface, as well as integration with the popular Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System.
Users can also now manage blade servers with OpForce. Models from Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. are all now supported. Models from RLX Technologies Inc. will be added soon, Bandhole said.
Regardless of the operating systems or server form factor, users of 3.0 now have scripting and scheduling, policy-based administration, and management of both Active Directory and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), he said.
OpForce 3.0 will ship July 7 and cost $7,500 for Windows servers, $15,000 for Unix-based servers, $500 for Windows clients and $750 for Unix-based clients.
“I think theres definitely a benefit in terms of ease of administration. Theres a level of stability or reliability that can be achieved,” said Dan Sorenson, senior network analyst at Smead Manufacturing Co., in Hastings, Minn., which makes software and paper-based organization tools. “We have approximately 20 [servers]. Were using out-of-the-box Windows 2000 clustering,” he said. Multivendor management is an issue: Sorensons servers link to redundant EMC Corp. Clariion storage area networks, the Veritas NetBackup application, Brocade Communications Systems Inc. switches and Storage Technology (StorageTek) Corp. tape libraries. Automation of disaster recovery processes should be a focus of future Veritas-Jareva-Precise products, he said.
OpForce 4.0 will link with Veritas Cluster Server, and with application failover products from Veritas $599 million acquisition of Westwood, Mass.-based Precise Software Solutions Ltd., also made in December 2002 and expected to close soon, Bandhole said.