A busy two weeks in storage

By Deni Connor, NetworkWorld.com, 03/01/04

A lot is happening in storage this week and last with the introductions of products from Maxxan, Avail Solutions, Hitachi, Rainfinity, Stonefly and Rainfinity.

Maxxan announced two virtual tape systems that use disk to emulate tape libraries. The SVT200 virtual tape system is a blade that fits in Maxxan's MXV320 Intelligent Application Switch. The SVT100 is a standalone appliance for mid-range storage environments. Both use FalconStor's IPStor Virtual Tape Library software. They also use the Fibre Channel to back up and recover data more quickly. The SVT200 and SVT100 work with a variety of backup applications from CA, Legato, HP and Veritas, among others. The appliance and blade are available now starting at $39,000 and $34,000, respectively.

Avail Solutions last week announced the next version of its data protection software for small and midsize businesses. Integrity 2.0 lets users back up to tape as well as disk-based media. It supports VXA, LTO, SDLT, AIT tape drives and works on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. Integrity starts at $1,200.

Hitachi unveiled a 300 G-byte drive last week that will start popping up in storage manufacturers' arrays this summer. The Ultrastar 10K300 is the first 300G-byte drive. Seagate and the other drive manufacturers are also expected to introduce 300 G-byte drives. The Ultrastar 10K300 spins at 10,000 rpm and is suited to storing data generated by business-critical applications.

Rainfinity announced GridSwitch software last week, which runs on its RainStorage appliance and introduces information lifecycle management capabilities into the storage network. It integrates with existing management consoles, storage resource management software and grid computing. Rainfinity's RainStorage attaches to the IP network and works with network-attached storage, Windows and Unix servers. GridSwitch does not cost anything additional and is available now.

Stonefly Networks is announcing the Stonefly Backup Advantage. The suite of products includes a Stonefly Storage Concentrator i3000, Commvault's Galaxy Express backup, an iSCSI driver, one terabyte of ATA storage and remote data replication capability. The Stonefly Backup Advantage starts at $29,800.

On the acquisition front, Storage systems vendor Dot Hill announced last week that it has acquired Chaparrel Network Storage for $62 million. Chaparrel makes storage appliances, RAID controllers and data routers. Dot Hill makes mid-range storage subsystems, which it markets and OEMs to Sun.

Also Veritas received an Attractive rating from Goldman Sachs last week. The advisory says that with the acquisitions Veritas has made in the last year that it brings the company into more direct competition with larger software and systems vendors. This ability to extend beyond storage software will be key to Veritas' long-term performance, says Goldman Sachs. "Veritas' hardware-agnostic approach will continue to resonate with a large number of buyers and its dominance in storage software and the value of its massive installed base should not be underestimated," the report says.

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