Veritas Re-Lays 'Foundation'

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) is pushing a new version of its storage management and virtualization series, one that puts Veritas in closer competition with at least one big SAN vendor (see Veritas Intros Storage Foundation).

Dubbed Veritas Storage Foundation 4.0, Veritas's new release is a rebranded version of the vendor's Foundation Suite storage networking application software. Included are several new features, such as simplified ways to move storage applications and data from one operating system to another; the ability to set up automatic transfers of files from expensive to inexpensive arrays as they age or meet other conditions; and so-called provisioning templates for speeding up the assignment of storage volumes in big networks.

Veritas is also polishing up some existing features. One of these is called Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP), which lets customers use the extra I/O paths on storage controllers that are typically used only for failover to load-balance SAN traffic.

Customers get a choice of algorithms to achieve the load balancing: For instance, according to Jose Iglesias, VP of product management at Veritas, ADMP effectively "fools" storage controllers from the likes of EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) into using their alternate or second I/O paths to servers on a regular basis instead of just during failover. Iglesias says Veritas has achieved a 30 percent performance improvement in lab tests with the new DMP.

This isn't a new capability; Veritas has offered DMP for a while and appears to be taking this chance to tout it again. Meantime, EMC also offers a product called PowerPath that performs load-balancing on Clariion and Symmetrix gear.