Storage vendor Veritas beefs up server provisioning

Storage vendor Veritas last week rolled out a new version of server provisioning software as part of its strategy to branch out of the storage software market.

The company introduced OpForce 3.0, software it obtained with the acquisition of Jareva Technologies earlier this year. OpForce is server provisioning software intended to automate the mundane and often error-prone manual tasks involved in deploying servers and utilizing their resources fully across the enterprise.

It lets administrators allocate more powerful servers to handle peak loads during busy times and re-use these servers for other network activities during off-peak times.

Analyst firm Forrester Research says that average server utilization rarely exceeds 20%. 

This version of OpForce has been combined with Veritas’ Volume Manager and File System software to allow servers and storage to be managed together. Volume Manager works with Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Windows and Linux servers and allows management of storage resources across these platforms. It allows storage to be virtualized into a common pool so it can be managed from a single point, and it provides performance-monitoring tools to allow administrators to identify performance bottlenecks and hot spots.

Veritas File System is a journaled file system that allows data to be recovered quickly after system reboots or crashes.

OpForce has been enhanced to work on Windows, AIX, Linux and Solaris, and to back up and restore the configuration of network switches, load balancers and other network devices. It can view the utilization of a network and the status of a server and deploy virtual LANs without rewiring. The new version also has a Web-based GUI, scripting and job scheduling capability, as well as role-based administration and Secure Shell support for remote management.

OpForce lets administrators automatically discover devices in a network, including servers, load balancers from F5, non-VLAN switches and Cisco switches. Once discovered, devices can be remotely managed via a Web browser. Role-based administration lets individual administrators manage different parts of the network and policies let them automatically create and schedule jobs. In addition, OpForce keeps an inventory of software and hardware, manages licenses and sets up user and administrative access to applications.

OpForce 3.0 is expected to ship this summer. It starts at $7,500 per OpForce management server and $500 per server processor managed.