Data General Corp’s Clariion storage division will take its storage area network (SAN) offering a stage further at the beginning of next year, launching a server-free backup facility in its Navisphere management software. The business unit, which is currently being endowed with a direct sales force to beef up its standing within DG (CI No 3,664), launched LAN-free backup in May, when its parent unveiled the strategy for its fast-growing offspring. That facility takes the actual backup operation off the network, but the software to carry it out still resides on the LAN server.
The next step, therefore, is to make backup fully independent from the local area network, placing the intelligence to execute it on the storage area network. Also launching in the first quarter of next year, said Sarah Wong, European solutions manager for Clariion, will be what the company terms cascading SANs, making it possible for LAN servers to access data, over switches, on storage devices at great physical distances away.
