E-Mail Storage Theme Hits Storage Network World (SNW) Conference

Written by Brian Sherman

(Phoenix)--- All of the executives I interviewed on the first day of the spring SNW conference seemed to be touting a new product or service for e-mail management. While this was only one aspect of what each of these products can do, it seems the storage industry is finally catching on to the growing needs of organizations' time and regulatory needs. VARs I talked with seemed content with the most recent product offerings that meet the Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC requirements for lengthy retention of e-mails and documents. The spring SNW event, April 12th-15th, brought out the largest reseller crowd in recent history to examine the latest storage creations and discuss industry opportunities.

Vendors rolling out these solutions included STORServer, along with partner NorthSeas, launching a new product to intercept spam and unwanted e-mail before it hits the server. STORServer E-mail Archiving Appliance, powered by NorthSeas, is a hardware and software collaboration targeted to SMBs (small to midsize business) for backup, recovery, and e-mail archiving. "This appliance stores a map of each message to make retrieval and archiving easier, providing end users another tool to meet today's regulatory compliance," said Stephen Spence, president and CEO of NorthSeas.
For additional information on STORServer's products and services, click here.

There were other hot storage industry topics at the conference as well. Open-standards based platforms continue to permeate the IT community, and the storage industry is no different. Many large corporations are dropping proprietary software infrastructures in favor of open-source operating-system deployments, such as Linux, to provide cost savings, increase computing power, and improve programming flexibility. Xiotech's new Magnitude 3D 3000 SAN (serial-attached network) is the company's first example of this platform change, as open standards will infuse its product line in the near future.
For additional information on Xiotech's products and services, click here.

Seagate demonstrated the new SAS (serial-attached SCSI [small computer system interface]) technology at the show. SAS combines serial performance and scalability within existing SCSI environments, consequently lowering the implementation cost by keeping a company's legacy software and drivers intact. This technology ensures a maximum bandwidth by providing dedicated signal path for each device while eliminating the daisy-chain slowdowns and address conflicts of parallel SCSI.

ADIC proudly displayed its Pathlight VX 450 midrange data center at the show. Offering 2 to 5 TB, it is targeted at e-mail and database key applications and requires a minimal backup staff. Bringing virtual library technology from the enterprise level down mid-level businesses was a goal of the VX 450, and the ability to use same server for applications and backup makes it a cost effective option for many companies.
For additional information on ADIC's products and services, click here.

CommVault executives spent time at SNW discussing the single platform feature of their QiNetix and Galaxy offerings. "The CTE (common technology engine) allows our software to work with other CommVault products, as well as competitors products," said Larry Cormier, VP of marketing and business development for CommVault. This provides a flexible product that customers can add to existing software and integrates well using a GUI interface. The company also promoted the recent marketing agreement with Hitachi, which will offer co-branded QiNetix software as the "Hitachi Data Protection Suite, powered by CommVault®," worldwide.

Computer Associates discussed several aspects of its BrightStor release 11.1 including SRM (storage resource management), SAN (storage area network) Manager, SAN Designer, and Process Automation Manager. "SRM is becoming a key area for future growth, as more companies take a proactive approach to their storage assets and how they are deployed," said Stephen Widen, Computer Associates director of product marketing for storage.
For additional information on Computer Associates' products and services, click here.

The DLT division of Quantum plugged the recent acquisition of Certance, a global provider of tape drives and data protection solutions. "With this purchase, DLT (Quantum) can simplify the supply chain for VARs and OEMs with the broadest portfolio of tape drive technologies, including LTO Ultrium and DDS/DAT," said Mark O'Malley, strategic marketing manager for Quantum. The company also showcased the DLT VS160 tape drive, an SMB (small to medium business) enterprise-sized backup devise with an 80 GB native capacity at 8MB per second (160 GB at 16MB per second with 2:1compression). This product will provide users with large capacity in a half-high form (5.25 inches).
For additional information on Quantum's products and services, click here.

Risk is not a word many companies like to promote, but Hewlett-Packard Company's StorageWorks executives hope to get a lot of traction from theirs. RISC (Reference Information Storage System) is a dedicated storage grid with e-mail archiving as a primary growth opportunity target. "In the storage arena, networking has been a large step forward and cluster storage is taking it to the next level," said Bob Schultz, Sr.VP and GM of network storage solutions for HP. RISC is a dedicated storage grid, scalable in size using smart cells. As performance and capacity technology of these cells grows, they can be replaced. HP's show focus was not limited to this technology, as they showcased their portfolio of NAS (network-attached storage), SAN, tape, and ILM products in their booth and interactive technology exhibits.
For additional information on HP's products and services, click here.

Intransa introduced industry's first native array 10 GbE IP-SAN at SNW. The display offered a multi-vendor interoperability demonstration using clustering inter-connect 10 GbE solutions from Chelsio Communications and Neterion, and WAN optimization and acceleration solutions from Swan Labs. "The advantages of this arrangement include standards compliant interoperability, scalability, and the dependability of our storage grid solutions," said David Lee, director of solutions and technical marketing at Intransa.
For additional information on Intransa's products and services, click here.

LeftHand Networks proudly announced at the show that it has reached a milestone 1,500 systems deployed in mid-tier enterprise environments. The iSCSI storage area network (SAN) provider is focusing resources on collaboration with other industry leaders, including Microsoft. "LeftHand and Microsoft are working together to simplify networked storage, especially important with the rapid growth of storage solutions and the need to streamline installations," said Tom Major, vice president of marketing at LeftHand.
For additional information on LeftHand's products and services, click here.

McDATA, which recently announced the acquisition of storage networking solutions provider Computer Network Technology Corporation (CNT), had many products to flaunt. The drive to simplify SAN products will be supported by the company, including the addition of the new Intrepid 10000 Director (i10K) enterprise fibre channel switch. The i10K has 256 ports, providing the ability to consolidate multiple SANs and transitioning from SAN islands to a central SAN architecture.

Another product showcased at SNW was the Eclipse 2640 SAN Router multi-protocol storage solution. It allows iSCSI, iFCP and E_Port connectivity within the data center and can be used for SAN island integration, business continuance preparation, storage consolidation, remote tape vaulting, content distribution and iSCSI access to Fibre Channel storage.

Nexsan Technologies executives discussed the recent acquisition of AESign Evertrust, a provider of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) software. The purchase will provide Nexsan with an integrated ILM appliance that includes scalable disk storage and is cost effective for customers to employ. "We have seen EMC Centera's activity in the ILM market, and we are increasing our presence with a solution with the ability to manage pedabytes of data," said Diamond Laufffin, senior executive vice president for Nexsan Technologies.
For additional information on Nexsan's products and services, click here.

QLogic launched a flurry of new enterprise products at SNW, including a suite of 4 GB SAN products. New products include the SANblade QLE2400 Series, 4Gb fibre channel host bus adapters (HBAs) for PCI Express and PCI-X 1.0/2.0 server busses, and SANbladeQLA2400 Series for PCI-X 1.0/2.0 4 Gb fibre channel switches. The newly offered SANbox 5602 includes five fibre stackable switches with sixteen 4Gb ports and four 10 Gb ports. The SANsurfer Management Suite (SMS) 4.1 software manages large SAN infrastructures from a single console, including iSCSI HBAs; fibre channel HBAs, and fibre channel switches.

Quantum spent time discussing the advantages of its new Optyon In-line Data Compression technology, available on its DX-Series Disk-based Backup Systems. "This hardware-based compression increases the capacity of the DX-Series without degrading performance, thereby lowering the cost per Gb of disk storage. While software compression can degrade performance, Optyon, being hardware driven, allows the full performance of the processors," said Shane Jackson, director of strategic alliances, storage systems for Quantum.

Quantum also announced their support of the public beta of Microsoft's System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) server software application at SNW. DPM was designed to simplify and improve backup and recovery efficiency for Windows Server customers. Quantum intends to include a DPM-based solution in the DX-Series product line as the next step in its tiered storage strategy.
For additional information on Quantum's products and services, click here.

Symantec representatives advocated resilient infrastructure technology: the convergence of security and availability. The release of LiveState Recovery Manager 3.0 (LRM) provides a central backup manager for servers, data centers, distributed computing locations, and remote sites. The benefit of central deployment is the elimination of physical visits to each site by IT administrators. LRM will leverage Symantec's pcAnywhere software to remotely restore folders, files, non-system volumes, and full system recoveries with minimal non-technical assistance.
For additional information on Symantec's products and services, click here.

The merger of Symantec Corp. and VERITAS Software Corp. should lead to even greater offerings of information security and accessibility solutions across all types of platforms, from desktop to enterprise systems.

Storage Networking World conference will hold its fall 2005 show October 24th –27th in Orlando, FL.

Brian Sherman is chief editor of ECM Connection and Data Storage Connection