Windows IT Pro Storage UPDATE--HP Upgrades Its ILM Storage Line--May 01, 2006

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1. Commentary
- HP Upgrades Its ILM Storage Line

2. From the Community
- Experience Wanted: Symantec Backup Exec and Cascading Tape Drives

3. New and Improved
- SonicWALL Upgrades Its CDP Suite
- Hitachi Data Systems Debuts TagmaStore AMS1000
- Tell Us About a Hot Product and Get a T-Shirt!

4. Windows IT Pro Resources

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==== 1. Commentary: HP Upgrades Its ILM Storage Line ====
by David Chernicoff, [email protected]

Last week, HP continued its attempts to win the hearts and minds of enterprise storage buyers by releasing a slew of products designed to beef up its Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) portfolio. The announcement included five new products and three major product enhancements. With these releases, HP appears to be directly targeting last year's product releases from other major storage players (particularly IBM and EMC). Those releases led to increased sales in 2005 as compared with HP's storage slump during fourth quarter 2004.

It's a safe bet that the regulatory environment has been a big help to storage vendors, as requirements for record keeping, maintenance, and security are imposed on businesses' data. ILM providers have seen growth in their business, and HP has been very aggressive about staying on the cutting edge of ILM, as the new releases show. Let's look at their highlights.

The latest version of HP OpenView Storage Data Protector provides enhancements to disk and tape-backup protection, such improved backup-speed performance, a topic that's always an issue for backup administrators. HP also announced a new tool, HP StorageWorks Reference Information Manager for Databases (RIM for DB), which migrates seldom-used data to archived storage and is based on technology that HP purchased in early February 2006, from OEM OuterBay Technologies. (For more information, see "HP Moves into Database Archiving," February 2006, InstantDoc ID 49378). And the new version of HP StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System (RISS) is a real-time archiving solution that lets customers more easily store, access, and retrieve reference data. The most compelling claim is that by offering higher-capacity "smart-cell" technology and three to five times the data compression previously available through single-block instancing, RISS can lower per-terabyte storage costs by as much as 75 percent--a claim, which, if verifiable, should draw a lot of business HP's way.

RISS also has a connection to the desktop world via the new HP StorageWorks Reference Information Manager for Files, software that continuously acquires files stored on Windows XP desktop computers and file servers, which clients can later retrieve. By reducing repetitive storage of the same data, RISS decreases the necessary storage requirements for data accessed by multiple users.

Information acquisition isn't relegated only to RIM for DB and RISS. HP's new HP StorageWorks Continuous Information Capture application, as its name implies, continuously captures file and application data and lets you recover data to any point in time. The product performs without interfering with database or application operations and can significantly speed up database recovery as compared with traditional database-rollback techniques.

To provide data and information protection for Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange Server, HP released HP StorageWorks Application Recovery Manager. This product provides instant recovery of Exchange and SQL Server databases and easily integrates with existing storage-protection environments.

These recent ILM additions indicate that HP is well positioned to establish a dominant place in the Windows Server storage market. I'm sure we'll be hearing shortly from other top-tier storage players as they return the volley to HP. Although the storage market has gotten a shot in the arm from the regulatory requirements driving application and storage acquisition, the tough competition in this market segment is proving beneficial to consumers of the technology as well.

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==== 2. From the Community ====

Experience Wanted: Symantec Backup Exec and Cascading Tape Drives

Storage/Backup/Recovery member "EdB" has about 600GB of data on a server that needs to be backed up. He's considering purchasing an autoloader with a native tape drive and would like to hear from forum participants who have experience with Symantec Backup Exec or cascading tape drives. If you can help, please join the discussion at http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=46&threadid=47232&enterthread=y .

==== 3. New and Improved ====
by Anne Grubb, [email protected]

Hitachi Data Systems Debuts TagmaStore AMS1000

Hitachi Data Systems announced the Hitachi TagmaStore Adaptable Modular Storage model AMS1000, a new entry in the company's midrange storage line. The AMS1000 can serve as either a standalone storage system that can support multiple storage tiers in a single rack or as externally attached tiered or archive storage in a virtualized environment. The AMS1000 supports both Serial ATA (SATA) and Fibre Channel drives and includes features such as logical cache partitioning software, which lets customers dedicate cache to specific applications and volumes; nearly 13Gbps of cached bandwidth; and embedded iSCSI functionality. For more information, contact Hitachi Data Systems on the Web:
http://www.hds.com

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Learn to differentiate alternative solutions to disaster recovery for your Windows-based applications to determine what works for you and ensure seamless recovery of your key systems--whether a disaster strikes just one server or the whole site. Live event: Thursday, May 11.
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Increase administration efficiency, build flexible yet inexpensive file-server environments, and maximize potential through consolidation of your SQL Server environment. Make the most of your resources today!
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