Microsoft Corp. on Thursday will announce storage multipathing software for Windows 2000 and Windows .Net.
Multipath input/output technology lets servers talk to storage devices across simultaneous access paths. An access path is a combination of a host-bus adapter and a logical unit number, but multipathing requires unique device identifiers besides bus addresses.
Partners who will initially use the software are EMC Corp., Emulex, Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Co., LSI Logic Corp., Network Appliance Inc., QLogic Corp. and Veritas Software Corp., confirmed a spokeswoman for Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash. Other partners include Agilent Technologies Inc., Maranti Networks Inc., NEC Corp., PolyServe Inc., Rhapsody Networks Inc. and 3PARdata Inc., she said.
“I think its great. If youre going to have an enterprise-class server, you have to be able to have redundancy,” said Nancy Marone, an industry analyst with Enterprise Storage Group Inc., in Milford, Mass.
The technology is similar to PowerPath, from Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, Marone said.
Microsoft has been trying to build its data center portfolio for storage for some time. The company launched its storage division in April and is revamping its file system for future versions of Windows.
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