Virtualisation demand grows

Virtualising spinning-disk storage systems is no longer a trend. It is now vital, especially for backing up, archiving and protecting the data of a growing number of businesses large and small, reports eWeek.

The days of adding storage hardware to an IT system and simply pouring in e-mail, Word documents, spreadsheets, photos and everything else, are essentially gone. However, as the use of virtualisation in storage environments increases, so does the need for tools to manage these virtualised systems.

An increasing number of vendors from large organisations such as Hewlett-Packard and VMware to smaller companies such as Scalent Systems are readying products for release later this year, designed to ease the management crunch created by storage virtualisation.

Based on findings from the latest study released by TheInfoPro, the use of outside service providers for business continuity and disaster recovery, and for remote replication and data mirroring, is not expected to change significantly during 2007.

"The use of outside services is a significant factor in the use and management of a disaster recovery facility, yet not for remote replication and mirroring," said Myron Kerstetter, MD of TheInfoPro.

"Nearly half (48%) of the respondents in the study said they use an outside organisation to provide the remote physical facility for some disaster recovery needs, but only 13% make use of a third-party facility for remote replication and data mirroring."

NEC's S-Series line of storage systems has completed qualification-testing by another supplier of storage networking solutions, QLogic. According to the requirements of the QLogic SANtrack Partner Programme, NEC's S1500 and S2500 storage systems are verified as compatible with QLogic storage area networking (SAN) infrastructure, reports Yahoo Finance

This partner programme ensures the highest degree of product integration and parallel technology development, benefiting end-users by enabling powerful, tested solutions that protect current infrastructure investments.

The QLogic SANtrack partner programme provides building blocks to certify components, so collaborative enterprising companies can provide a complete interoperable SAN solution in order to succeed in a multi-vendor storage environment.