COMMERCIAL NEWS
Mountain View, CA — The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced integration of the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) into its repertoire of industry backup solutions.
Legato Systems, Inc. and Network Appliance have asked the SNIA to manage the co-developed protocol for future standards development. The SNIA has formed a new work group specifically tasked with NDMP development. This new work group will be responsible for the continued development of protocol standards, interoperability testing, and educational programs for NDMP. This group is organized as a subgroup of the SNIA Backup Working Group.
NDMP provides a protocol framework for data management in a multi-vendor data server environment. By defining a networked protocol that abstracts data management application functionality from data service providers, NDMP minimizes the administrative management logic that resides on data servers and allows interoperability with a variety of data management solutions.
“The SNIA continues setting the pace for the industry by providing an open forum for the development of important standards such as NDMP,” said Larry Krantz, chairman of the board of directors of the SNIA. “Management standards like NDMP are the foundations upon which trusted, interoperable storage networks are built. We are pleased that industry leaders Legato and Network Appliance have entrusted the SNIA with the responsibility and the future development of this key protocol. NDMP is another example of the SNIA working closely with member companies, striving to encourage wider adoption and to further the development of storage networking standards.”
“Legato’s commitment to open standards is underscored by the adoption of NDMP by the SNIA,” said Roger Stager, senior technical strategist at Legato Systems and a co-inventor of NDMP. “Although already implemented by many NAS and storage software vendors, the SNIA’s activity will serve to more quickly bring the benefits of this important standard to storage networking customers by hastening development and vendor adoption of the protocol.”
“The formation of a working group within the SNIA dedicated to NDMP demonstrates the protocol’s strength, evolution, and importance to storage networks,” said Dave Hitz, co-founder of and vice president of engineering at Network Appliance, and one of the co-inventors of NDMP. “The level of commitment and enthusiasm we have seen from storage vendors to advance NDMP is encouraging and critical in aiding the evolution of storage networking.”
Over the next few months, the NDMP working group within the SNIA will focus its efforts on refining the existing NDMP specification, finalizing the definition for NDMP version 4.0, fostering more vendor interoperability testing, encouraging broader NDMP adoption by storage networking vendors, and hosting educational sessions on the protocol’s benefits and uses.
Created by Legato Systems and Network Appliance, NDMP enables vendors to create data management tools that reduce the cost and complexity of managing data. The protocol has gained considerable momentum over the last few years, and has been supported by backup vendors, NAS vendors, tape library manufacturers, academic institutions, and customers. More than 300 copies of the Software Developer Kit (SDK) have already been downloaded from the NDMP.org Web site. For more information, visit the NDMP Web site at http://www.ndmp.org .
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit organization, made up of 150 companies and individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA members share a common goal, to set the pace of the industry by ensuring that storage networks become efficient, complete, and trusted solutions across the IT community. To this end the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For information, visit the SNIA Web site at http://www.snia.org .
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