Veritas Plugs SRM Gaps

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) said today it has upgraded its storage software management product, SANPoint Control, to support IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) arrays, and Inrange Technologies Corp. (Nasdaq: INRG) switches (see Veritas Upgrades SANPoint).

The new storage resource management (SRM) software, SANPoint Control 3.5.1, allows users to visualize and discover both IBM Shark ESS and EMC Clariion disk storage arrays, and performs in-band zoning for Inrange FC/9000 SAN switches. Additionally, the software product expands its support to IBM eServer p-Series servers and IBM AIX operating environments.

"This announcement rounds out the full interoperability of the product," says Danny Milrad, senior product manager at Veritas. "Enterprises that choose to have fully heterogeneous storage environments will certainly see the benefits."

EMC, however, isn't impressed with Veritas's enhancements. EMC spokesman Mike O'Malley points out that Veritas's new support for the IBM Shark and Clariion only includes visualization and discovery, without the ability to actively provision the platforms. He claims EMC has been offering discovery and visualization functions baked into its management software for the same products since the winter of 2001.

Milrad acknowledges that Veritas currently only offers advanced visualization and discovery for EMC's Clariion FC 4700 and CX series, but he says its support for the EMC Symmetrix line includes LUN masking, binding, and zoning.Veritas claims that its interoperability efforts will go further soon. It's pushing hard for standardization of storage management interfaces, through the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and has committed to delivering Common Information Model (CIM)-based products by the end of this year (see The Common Code and Four Vendors Back CIM).

But its announcement today doesn't indicate the industry is any closer to reaching standardization. In fact, some observers say, vendor-specific developments -- like those Veritas announced today and the application programming interface (API) swap it announced with EMC last month -- could be a sign that standards in the space are still a long way off.

"I think Veritas has some work to do in this area," says Giga Information Group Inc. analyst Anders Lofgren. "I think they'd like to be doing better in the management space than they are doing... This is a highly competitive area, especially the SRM part of it."

One of Veritas's customers, though, says SANPoint Control offers significant benefits today. Archipelago LLC, an electronic stock exchange, says it has dramatically improved its storage utilization since installing the product last fall.

"We were being very inefficient in the way we were utilizing our storage," says Archipelago CTO Steve Rubinow, saying the company discovered it was previously only using about 30 percent of its storage array. "We realized that we kept on ordering more and more disks... now, we're sharing applications across vendors." The company's storage utilization is now around 80 percent.Eugénie Larson, Reporter, Byte and Switch