NEWS BRIEFS

Chatsworth, CALIF. — Responding to the need for more capable Storage Area Networking management and administration, DataDirect Networks announced the “SAN Appliance Resource Management Suite” for the company’s SAN appliance family of products. The SAN Appliance Resource Management Suite, available immediately on all SAN DataDirector and SAN directION SAN appliances, greatly reduces the challenge of managing complex, multi-vendor Storage Area Networks.

The SAN Appliance Resource Management Suite enables administrators to centrally manage storage and network resources, helping organizations reduce the overall costs of ownership and increase the efficiency of their Storage Area Networks. According to Ted Lingard, vice president of operations for Sonic Foundry a leading developer and marketer of digital media and Internet software tools, services, and systems, “DataDirect delivered the scalability and performance we were looking for as well as the comprehensive set of management tools we needed to make SAN technology work. They exceeded our expectations.”

“Data centers installing SAN’s continue to live without comprehensive SAN-aware management and administrative tools,” says Alex Bouzari, chief executive officer of DataDirect Networks. “With the SAN Appliance Resource Management Suite, administrators can harnass the power of storage area networks – just as they harness the power of local area networks. The ability to manage storage virtualization, performance, configuration, security and firmware upgrades is an essential ingredient in tapping the potential of SAN technology.”

The SAN Appliance Resource Management Suite is a centralized, secure and powerful management capability that works with SAN infrastructure devices to provide five distinct functions:

The vLUN (virtual LUN) Manager controls SAN-attached storage resources and assigns them when and where they are needed. Using the vLUN Manager, storage can be assigned when and where it is needed in a matter of seconds through an intuitive user interface. The vLUN Manager enables storage to be added, removed and assigned at any time by the systems administrator. No host reboots are required. Storage is available for immediate use after being assigned. No storage is wasted using vLUN Manager assignments. Only the storage that is immediately needed must be assigned, simplifying data consolidation.

The vLUN Manager caps the rising cost of storage administration by consolidating storage into pools that can be assigned to hosts as desired – regardless of computing platform. Logical units and hosts can be managed as a single SAN using vLUN Manager. The ability to view and manage large Storage Area Networks enables fewer systems administrators to manage more storage than ever before.

Among the highlights of the vLUN Manager component of the SAN DataDirector SAN Appliance Resource Management Suite are:

— Used to add, delete, format and rebuild LUNs

— Provides LUN level storage assignments

— Supplies uniform management across heterogeneous SAN

— Manages individual LUNs or groups of LUNs

— Scalable up to the number of supported LUNs

— Add/remove/assign LUNs without host reboot

— No single point of failure

— Administers share groups for cluster configurations

— LUN geometry is stored in NVRAM and within each LUN for high availability

The Appliance Performance supplies the systems administrator with an extensive array of performance-related information that can be used to optimize the data delivery and response characteristics of the Storage Area Network. The capabilities delivered by the Appliance Performance Manager have previously been available only through the use of an array of software tools supplemented by an expensive and complex Fibre Channel analyzer.

Among the highlights of the Performance Manager component of the Appliance Resource Management Suite are:

— Extensive monitoring and reporting capability by host port, SAN DataDirector SAN Appliance port, disk channels and cache

— Centralized management capability accessible anywhere

— Uniform management across heterogeneous SAN

— Manages and monitors pre-fetch and cache efficiency, request distribution, transaction and transfer rates by port

— Enables I/O request response to be optimized based on data access patterns

The Appliance Configuration Manager is a highly effective resource for configuring and managing large, distributed, and continually increasing data volumes in which availability, scalability, and data integrity are critical factors. The Configuration Manager puts the systems administrator in control of the SAN DataDirector SAN Appliance and its connected devices.

Among the highlights of the Appliance Configuration Manager are the abilities to:

— Configure and monitor status of host ports

— Configure, add, remove and monitor status of connected storage assets

— Uniform management across heterogeneous SAN

— Display and alter storage array tier mapping

The Firmware Update Manager enables firmware updates to be applied to the High Speed Traffic Directors (HSTD) of a dual HSTD configuration without loss of data access. A single HSTD is taken off line during the period in which the firmware updates are being applied. The remaining HSTD remains on line during the firmware update supplying data to the SAN.

The Firmware Update Manager additionally enables on-line firmware updates to be applied non-disruptively to individual disk drives or groups of disk drives without affecting system operation.

The Security Administrator provides SAN storage access control, allowing systems administrators to build and manage complex SANs with heterogeneous servers and storage devices. Systems administrators can confidently assign storage to hosts, being assured that only authorized hosts can have access to data.

Among the highlights of the Security Administrator are:

— Creates correspondence between users (WorldWide Name), storage LUNs and access permissions

— Provides audit trail of SAN appliance logins

— Provides alerts in the event of unauthorized login attempts

— Maps internal LUN identification to external LUN identification

— Highly scalable – up to 128 users per port

— All security actions are securely logged

The SAN DataDirector SAN appliance gives IT professionals the ability to quickly deploy a high bandwidth, virtualized, fault tolerant, scalable SAN using a plug and play appliance. The SAN DataDirector SAN appliance brings a wide range of next generation features to companies preparing to deploy SAN technology including data virtualization and storage pooling, massive scalability, centralized management, integrated security, high availability through extensive fault tolerance and multi-vendor heterogeneous operation.

The SAN directION SAN appliance offers the full capabilities of the SAN DataDirector SAN appliance in a convenient and versatile “pay-as-you-go” model that grows with customer storage networking needs.

Complete information on the SAN DataDirector and SAN directION SAN appliances can be found at the company’s web site http://www.datadirectnet.com .

Founded in 1991, Sonic Foundry is a leading developer and marketer of digital media and Internet software tools, services, and systems. Sonic Foundry’s award-winning products and services are used worldwide for multimedia and Internet applications, music, video, and broadcast solutions, and digital content creation.

Sonic Foundry’s digital audio and video tools include the award-winning ACID, Sound Forge, Vegas Audio, Vegas Video, VideoFactory, Stream Anywhere, SIREN Jukebox, Viscosity, and a variety of compatible music loop libraries and DirectX Audio Plug-Ins. For specific product descriptions, please reference the products section of the Sonic Foundry Web site. Additional information about Sonic Foundry is available at: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/news/presscenter .

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