Symantec Building With Storage Blocks

By David Rubinstein

June 10, 2008 —  Symantec last month announced a new solution that allows for block storage functionality and single-console management in x86 virtual server environments.

Called Veritas Virtual Infrastructure, the solution integrates Veritas Storage Foundation with Citrix’s XenServer to enable the sharing of boot images across servers. The ability to share these images provides enhanced management and control capabilities, according to Symantec’s Sean Derrington, director of storage and availability management at the company. “You can install XenServer, provision a VM [virtual machine] and gain visibility into a server pool from a single console,” he said.

This capability gets away from the traditional file system approach to storage, which Derrington said forces system administrators to fundamentally alter the best practices for storage that they’ve learned over the years. “You can’t leverage block-based storage management into a file-based system,” he said.

“Storage management problems have inhibited organizations from deploying virtualization beyond test,” said Derrington. “The file system adds a layer of abstraction and complexity that inhibits the ability to do dynamic storage layouts.”

Veritas Virtual Infrastructure consists of a management server for managing the server pool and a volume server that the company claims creates a direct link between each virtual server and the storage.

Symantec also announced what is says are next-generation disk-based data protection solutions.

Veritas NetBackup Pure Disk is a de-duplication tool that Marty Ward, product marketing director for Symantec’s data protection group, said is now integrated with the NetBackup Open Storage solution to provide scalable grid de-duplication capability and multisite disaster recovery.

A new product, NetBackup RealTime, gives block-level recording capability to provide unlimited recover points that are crash-consistent, Ward said, explaining that the tool can let users know what data was on the disk at the time of a crash.

The solutions are expected to be available in the fall.

FalconStor Integration
At Symantec’s Vision 08 event in Las Vegas, network storage provider FalconStor announced that its Virtual Tape Library has been integrated with Symantec’s Veritas NetBackup OpenStorage API, bringing the advantages of tape archiving and disk-based backup together in a high-performance solution.

FalconStor’s VTL OpenStorage Option enables simple backup, recovery and de-duplication over Fibre Channel. The integration further enables administrators to move backup images from disk to tape and to replicate the images to remote sites for recovery or archiving. Further, NetBackup users can control backup and recovery by creating a single policy and catalog, according to the company.



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