 "Symantec Announces Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 HA for Windows")
Symantec has announced Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 High Availability (HA) for Windows, a solution that delivers data and application availability for Microsoft Windows environments.
It combines two solutions, Storage Foundation for Windows and Veritas Cluster Server, together with usability tools to simplify storage management, high availability and disaster recovery for Windows applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint Portal Server.
“Customers are placing more of their mission critical applications on the Windows platform. They need storage management solutions that provide higher availability and better disaster recovery than ever before,” said Laura DuBois, research director, Storage Software at IDC. “Storage Foundation HA for Windows offers enterprises capabilities in non-disruptive storage operations, scalable high availability, and disaster recovery solutions, along with centralized storage visibility and control that are must-have requirements for Windows environments.”
Veritas claims that its Storage Foundation helps manage explosive data growth, optimize storage hardware investments, provide unparalleled application availability and drive down operational costs via a set of standard tools for Windows, Linux, and UNIX environments.
New to this release is Veritas Storage Foundation Basic for Windows, a free version of Storage Foundation for Windows, designed for edge-tier and infrastructure workloads, enabling customers to leverage Storage Foundation for Windows and capitalize on the benefits of a standard infrastructure solution across every server in their data centre.
Storage Foundation Basic for Windows includes Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP) and runs on physical and virtual servers with system configurations that do not exceed 4 volumes or 2 physical processors in a single physical system.
Customers standardizing on Storage Foundation for Windows and DMP can leverage the broadest storage array support of any multi-pathing solution to achieve the most agility and highest return on their storage hardware investments. Customers also have the flexibility to choose the storage network infrastructure that best fits their needs. Symantec is fully certified with Microsoft’s MPIO framework for both Fibre Channel HBA StorPort and Microsoft iSCSI software. Additionally, Storage Foundation for Windows introduces advanced iSCSI SAN management capabilities including automated discovery, management, and configuration of IP-based SANs.
Veritas also released its Cluster Server, a high availability and disaster recovery solution for Windows environments, which also introduces new features designed to improve manageability and reduce administration burden of providing high availability. Cluster Server’s secure, Web-based Cluster Management Console simplifies the task of managing, monitoring, and configuring multiple clusters for Windows, Linux, and UNIX, running in multiple data centres.
Cluster Server also includes Fire Drill, which enables organizations to regularly test disaster recovery scenarios without exposing production applications to risk and downtime. It also reduces risk to the business by pre-emptively and proactively identifying potential configuration issues before they occur by monitoring any configuration drift among cluster nodes.