StorageTek delivers promise with SVA software additions

StorageTek announced enhancements to additional software for the StorageTek V960 Shared Virtual Array. The V960 is the virtual disk storage system offered by Storage Technology for use in IBM mainframe and open system environments. Companion software for the V960 SVA provides exploitation of storage system functionality for specific operating systems and for management control of the SVA. The overall name for this software is the Virtual Power Suite. This announcement covers the software and platforms supported by the Virtual Power Suite.

Announcement highlights

The StorageTek announcement of enhancements to the Virtual Power Suite software provide for more usability of the V960 SVA in additional open systems environments. The new enhancements are:

SVA Path support for AIX 4.3.3 environments

SVA Path software provides failover and load balancing for a V960 SVA that is attached to a server with more than one physical attachment. The SVA Path software has been extended to work on servers running the IBM AIX operating system at the 4.3.3 level.

SVAA 3.1 for Linux

Part of the Virtual Power Suite is the Shared Virtual Array Administrator software or SVAA. The SVAA has been enhanced to work on Linux. In this case, the RedHat version of Linux is supported. Included with the administrative function of the SVAA software is the support for control of the SnapShot function of the storage system. With this announcement, users of the RedHat version of Linux can configure, manage and control the SnapShot point-in-time copy function of the V960 SVA.

SVAA SnapShot enhancements for Windows

The SnapShot point-in-time copy function for the SVAA software of the V960 in Windows environments has been enhanced to allow a snapshot to be done for data managed by VERITAS Volume Manager (NT and 2000), Dynamic Disks (2000), and Striped and Spanned Disks (NT). This allows SnapShot to be used for additional Windows drives that previously could take advantage of point-in-time copy on the V960 SVA. In addition to the SnapShot enhancement, SVAA for Windows also supports the Windows capability of growing a LUN through volume management.

Evaluator Group comments:

StorageTek has promised to continue enhancements for use of the V960 SVA in open systems environments. These enhancements are the delivery on that promise and will broaden the systems environments that can exploit the subsystem based functions of the SVAA.

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