September 25, 2000

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HighGround Helps Users Manage And Control Storage

SRM 4.0 is for storage-area networks on fibre-channel switches, network-attached storage

By Martin J. Garvey

More on Storage Management:

Novell To Upgrade NetWare's Storage Management (8/28/00) Internet Week: DELL DEVICE FOSTERS 'SERVERLESS BACKUP' (9/4/00) Internet Week: STORAGE AREA NETWORKS (8/28/00)

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ata multiplies so fast these days that many technology managers throw more storage at the problem. Even though it only costs 10 cents to 60 cents per megabyte, most managers have no idea if they're spending their money wisely.

HighGround Systems Inc., a leading storage resource management vendor in the open-systems market, this week will unveil Global Storage Resource Manager 4.0. The system is designed to help storage users better manage, plan, and control storage-area networks based on fibre-channel switches from Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and network-attached storage appliances from Network Appliance Inc., including the central management of multiple ap-pliances simultaneously.

SRM version 4.0 will be available by the end of the month at $1,000 per managed element. It resides on a Windows NT or 2000 server, but it has agents that reside on AIX, HP-UX, Linux, NetWare, and Solaris for coverage of those systems.

The new product is designed to help customers in several areas. First, it determines the proper levels of SAN file system capacities so users don't get caught short or get overloaded. Next, it balances requests from Windows and Unix machines for data on an appliance. Third, it identifies where a company is most at risk of losing data across the network during backup. Fourth, it identifies servers with the highest capacity growth rates. Finally, it identifies application servers that need more processing power.

Richard Wolfe, a senior research development engineer at Digex Inc., a Beltsville, Md., company that provides managed Web-and application-hosting services, is working with HighGround on an automated pro-visioning system that will get required storage capacity to users on the fly. For now, he's happy with the way SRM is working in Digex's testing lab.

"SRM tells me about duplicate files, how much space I have, and if something's been backed up," says Wolfe. "SRM alerts me if the drive is getting full, who owns the files, what files are duplicate, and how old files are."

Digex will consider SRM to manage 4,500 Sun Solaris and Windows NT servers and back up 7 terabytes of data nightly.

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