Computer Associates International Inc yesterday said its flagship Unicenter TNG systems management software can now be used to manage SAN environments, alongside its traditional mainstay of local and wide area networks. Cashing in on the storage area networking bandwagon, the company says that its new initiative, SANITI (Storage Area Network Integrated Technology Initiative) is designed to bring sanity and cohesion to the SAN space, where products are still relatively few in number and vendors are battling it out over standards. At the moment, there’s no way to monitor and manage the SAN, said Yogesh Gupta, CA’s SVP of product strategy during a press conference yesterday, that’s why we’re bringing SANITI to the market. Gupta said that CA had been working on SAN-enabling Unicenter over the past twelve to fourteen months, adding that the software didn’t include any technology from the company’s recent acquisition of Platinum Technology Inc.
Under SANITI, Gupta said that CA will deliver the benefits of single-console management for end-to-end SAN solutions including all Fibre Channel hubs, SAN switches and storage devices. The software supports both current SAN standards – SNIA (Storage Network Industry Association ) and Fibre Channel Alliance – which Gupta says will enable Unicenter to provide management for multi- vendor products from storage devices to servers and everything in between. CA will demonstrate SANITI, along with other key SAN technologies, at its CA World 1999 conference in New Orleans next week, he added.
At its most basic level, the Unicenter TNG Framework discovers and/or provides management and status information for any networked object on the SAN. Beyond that, CA has partnered with vendors such Ancor, Brocade, Crossroads, and Vixel to enable administrators to launch management applications for their specific hardware from within Unicenter. The SAN-enabled Unicenter TNG Framework is available at no cost, as are the integration tools that allow support for third-party SAN products. A downloadable upgrade module that adds SAN support to all existing Unicenter TNG Framework users is available from CA and third-party vendors.
CA said that the announcement marks the second phase of its strategic SAN management roadmap. In the first phase, CA delivered SAN technology for integration into existing ARCserveIT installations, deployable across Windows NT and NetWare environments. This included support for Fibre Channel connectivity and multiple vendors’ hardware, including Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, ADIC and Siemens Computer Systems. Future directions include the application of CA’s patented Neugents technology for predictive management of SAN environments.
