Storage Vendors Hone In On Backup, NAS, Security

Storage Networking World in Phoenix was rife with backup and recovery options, making Exchange server a bigger part of networked storage, and even some storage security thrown in for good measure.

Ciena Corp. debuted its CN 2000 Storage Extension Platform, which makes data center applications more affordable with its Dynamic Bandwidth Assignment capabilities, the vendor said Monday at SNW.

CN 2000 Storage Extension Platform is effectively a WAN multiplexer for storage applications like backup, recovery, mirroring and clustering. The CN 2000 enables multiple applications to be multiplexed onto separate physical channels within the same Sonet/SDH or DWDM circuit, eliminating the need for an entire circuit to be allocated for a single application, a savings potential of thousands per month.

The Ciena platform will help enterprises contend with growing pressure and new regulations for rapid business recovery, said Richard Villars, vice president of storage systems at consultancy IDC. The CN 2000 "will allow IT managers to extend advanced data protection capabilities to a broader range of applications while reducing WAN costs," Villars added, in a statement.

The Dynamic Bandwidth Assignment feature allows multiple enterprise applications or data center protocols to dynamically share the same WAN bandwidth by consolidating traffic and assigning various priorities. The feature maintains Quality of Service for individual applications while avoiding the performance drag associated with some IP-based solutions, Ciena said.In addition, the CN 2000 includes a new eight-port ESCON client module, which allows up to 16 Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, ESCON and FICON services to share a single WAN connection. Microsoft announced Monday a new service pack for Windows Storage Server 2003 that will allow customers to consolidate Exchange servers as part of their Windows-based NAS installations.

The software vendor just issued the service pack to its OEMs, which means the capability will be available in approximately 90 days, said Marcus Schmidt, senior product manager for Windows Storage Server, at Storage Networking World.

The service pack enables the consolidation of files and Exchange Server 2003 data, permitting small and midsized businesses and branch offices to reduce storage costs and ensure business continuity, Microsoft said. The service pack also makes maximum use of networked storage resources and simplifies messaging management, the vendor added.

Storactive Inc. debuted LiveServ for Exchange, a continuous backup and zero-data loss software, ensuring availability and business continuance on Monday at SNW.

Unlike traditional tape-based backup, LiveServ recovers data up to the moment of loss. Its disk-to-disk backup enables fast, transparent protection and captures every version of every brick, for example an e-mail message, schedule update, contact or specific note, so that any version can be recovered. LiveServ requires no storage architecture overhaul and complements existing backup applications, the vendor said in a statement.LiveServ captures changes in real-time, regardless of the number of users or data volume, and since LiveServ restores data from disk, it provides quick restoration.

LiveServ will be available in May starting at $2,995 for the LiveServ Exchange server, with $1,395 per standard Exchange agent and $7,995 per enterprise Exchange agent, Storactive said.

Storage encryption vendor Decru Inc. introduced its DataFort 2.0 platform that includes storage VPN features for secure Web-based file access, transparent re-keying for network attached storage, and hardware accelerated compression for tape encryption.

DataFort 2.0 is available for network attached storage (NAS) and direct attached storage (DAS); for SAN/tape environments; and for tape-only environments. The new release deals with stored data behind firewalls or stored offsite where unauthorized internal access is the biggest threat. The software runs on the vendor's encryption appliances for the three storage environments.

"Many corporate security officers are focused on protecting the megabytes in flight, when they should really be worrying about the terabytes at rest," said senior analyst Jon Oltsik of Enterprise Storage Group, in a statement. Companies that deal with credit card and Social Security numbers, healthcare or other personal information could simplify and strengthen their security, he added.DataFort 2.0 for NAS will be available next month; the Fibre Channel and tape-only versions will be available later this summer.