The new features of Storage Essentials 5.1 that HP is emphasizing involve integration with other HP products, namely the company’s self-titled Backup Manager, Operations for Windows monitoring and fault management tool, Service Desk software, and NAS boxes.
HP also said that it has integrated the SRM software with its XP high-end disk arrays, and the diskless version of the same device called the Storage Virtualization System 200. The XP is an OEM version of Hitachi’s TagmaStore disk array, which has been shipping for almost two years, so it is not clear why it has only just been integrated with the SRM software. By press time last night, HP had not been able to provide any clarification on this point.
The new firmware for HP’s entry-level MSA1500cs array allows active-active controller for the HP-UX11i operating system. HP said it already offers this feature for Windows and Linux platforms, and that at some future date it will do the same for OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, NetWare and SCO operating systems.
A new snapshot function for the EVA creates a pre-normalized clone copy of an EVA Vdisk (LUN). The EVA’s asynchronous remote replication software is also improved with bigger buffers for outstanding writes, so allowing longer recovery point objectives and improved application performance.
On the SMB front, HP said that it will update its Proliant-powered entry level disk arrays that are based on Windows Storage Server, Release 2. The new NAS and iSCSI block level boxes will feature a reworked, HP-written management interface. HP gave no further details of these boxes.
HP also announced that French IT supplier Bull SA has become the latest company to OEM the AppIQ-developed SRM software, renaming it as Bull StoreWay Maestro Management. Other suppliers already OEM’ing this software include Sun Microsystems Inc, Hitachi Ltd, and Engenio Information Technologies Inc.
