Symantec Upgrades Its Storage Foundation Line
Storage Foundation 5.0 includes major upgrades to dynamic multipathing, a volume management technology that improves performance and availability by creating between two and eight hardware paths to a single storage drive, according to Matt Fairbanks, director of product marketing at the Cupertino, Calif.-based vendor.
There’s a growing need for efficient data backup technologies, and the efforts that Symantec is putting forth to develop technologies like dynamic multipathing will continue to make it easier to manage data, said Pat Edwards, vice president of sales at Alliance Technology Group, a Hanover, Md.-based solution provider.
A new feature called dynamic-storage tiering allows companies that have a mix of high- and low-end storage hardware to prioritize valuable information and have it stored on the highest quality equipment. This feature also gives storage administrators the ability to virtualize and move the file system without affecting the application or backup policy, said Nick Cellentani, vice president of storage consulting at Adexis, a solution provider in Columbus, Ohio.
Symantec also unveiled Storage Foundation Basic, a free version designed for edge and infrastructure workloads, with system configurations of up to four volumes, four file systems and/or two processors.
Both versions of Storage Foundation are controlled through the Storage Foundation Management Server, a new feature that provides Web browser-based management for servers, applications and storage devices, Fairbanks said.
Overall, the new Storage Foundation products simplify Symantec’s messaging to its customer base and also show a concerted direction, Cellentani said. “When you look at the free version, it allows the customer to understand how it would be to manage their entire environment that way,” he said.
Storage Foundation 5.0 is slated for release in July starting at $695 per processor. Storage Foundation Basic is available now from Symantec’s Web site.