Tools Treat Storage as a Utility

Veritas Software Corp., Softek and Sun Microsystems Inc. are each aiming to help customers turn data centers into operational storage utilities through several new storage utilization features and products.

The result, according to the companies, should be better management of resources, improved performance and lower costs.

Veritas this week will announce the availability of Veritas Storage Foundation 4.0. The rebranded storage management and virtualization software, formerly called Foundation Suite, features a host of enhancements built around Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System to simplify control of mixed storage environments, officials said.

Veritas user Aaron Huslage said Storage Foundation 4.0 will provide a steppingstone that advances utility computing projects at his company, CNF Service Co.

One new feature of Storage Foundation 4.0, Quality of Storage Service, automatically transfers rarely accessed or unimportant files to inexpensive storage arrays. Huslage, senior system administrator at CNF, said the feature will be crucial for moving data from large Hitachi Ltd. storage systems to Network Appliance Inc.’s NearStor systems.

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