AppIQ, Veritas Update High-End Storage Tools – 2

AppIQ inc. and Veritas Software Corp. are tightening their support of Windows environments and third-party storage products to help customers handle applications that are becoming more dependent on storage infrastructure management.

This week at the Gartner PlanetStorage Summit in Orlando, Fla., AppIQ will introduce new modules for its enhanced StorageAuthority Suite 4.0 platform. Available next month, the modules include StorageAuthority for NetApp, which manages Network Appliance Inc. filers, and StorageAuthority for Microsoft SQL Server, which follows data through the database, host, fabric switch, software and storage system, said officials of AppIQ, in Burlington, Mass.

StorageAuthority Protection Manager for Veritas NetBackup is the first in a set of data protection modules to be rolled out by AppIQ.

The backup reporting and resource management module will eventually be joined by modules for EMC Corp.s Legato and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, as well as third-party replication and snapshot functionality, by early next year.

Chris Pringle, assistant vice president of infrastructure engineering for the Boston Stock Exchange, said StorageAuthority Suite 4.0 fills NetBackup reporting gaps.

“Veritas [NetBackup] has some limited [reporting] capabilities within the existing product. … It doesnt give us a drill-down GUI,” said Pringle.

Veritas deepened its Microsoft commitment at TechEd last week by unveiling its Storage Foundation HA (High Availability) for Windows 4.3; Veritas i3 for .Net; and Veritas i3 for SQL Server, with support for SQL Server 2005 upon its release later this year.

Storage Foundation HA features improvements to GUI-driven snapshots, multipathing and managing multiple disaster recovery sites, said officials of Veritas, in Mountain View, Calif. Veritas i3 for SQL Server enables application performance analysis during testing.

Storage Foundation HA and i3 user Brad Wood, senior director of enterprise operations for Corrections Corporation of America, in Nashville, Tenn., is using Windows to run a key clinical application for inmates.

“Windows is an enterprise platform that is not going away any time soon,” said Wood. “I think its something [about which] organizations have to say, Weve got it, so how do we make it perform like the rest of my enterprise-class applications?”