Features - Storage Innovations:

StorageAuthority SUITE UNVEILED TO ENCOMPASS NEW CAPABILITIES

Continuing its lead in delivering standards-based, integrated and comprehensive software solutions that enable storage infrastructure to be managed as an application-focused utility, AppIQ announced the next major release of its solution suite, and unveiled StorageAuthority as the company's new product family brand. The AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite encompasses all of the capabilities of AppIQ's earlier solutions, and introduces broad new capabilities for file server storage resource management (SRM), heterogeneous device support, provisioning, and backup and recovery management.

"We selected AppIQ on the merits of its comprehensive SAN management capabilities, and on the strength of its pure SMI-S-based architecture, which we felt would give us business flexibility in the future," said Mike Curran, chief operating officer at the Boston Stock Exchange. "We have been pleased by the continued development of the StorageAuthority product line, which supports the importance of storage performance at the Boston Stock Exchange."

StorageAuthority answers the market's demand for completely integrated, comprehensive management solutions that reduce the costs of operating large-scale, heterogeneous storage networks. The new release also advances AppIQ's founding vision of managing storage as an application-focused utility, becoming the first solution to deliver application-to-spindle capacity and performance management for the most common messaging, database and file server platforms. StorageAuthority's broad set of application-focused SAN management, storage resource management and storage operations management capabilities fit well with Gartner Inc's definition of storage area management.

"The emergence of storage networks and high storage growth rates are forcing users to look at storage area management software," said Nick Allen, vice president and research director at Gartner. "Without solutions that automate the tasks that storage administrators perform on a daily basis, storage growth and business opportunity will stall. Solutions that manage the complex relationships between applications, their storage and everything in between should be considered by users with medium to high levels of storage complexity or growth as a way to reduce costs and improve efficiency."

A Quantum Leap Forward In File-Level SRM

Highlighting the new release is StorageAuthority for File Servers, a new SRM module that delivers the industry's first active "file server-to-spindle" capacity and performance management solution. In addition to sending alerts when share points and file systems are about to run out of space, StorageAuthority for File Servers automatically pinpoints what file types (e.g. MP3s, JPGs, logfiles, etc.), aged files and large files can be deleted or archived to free up capacity; identifies which users are exceeding disk space quotas; generates topology that shows what physical disk subsystems can be "seen" from each file server based on SAN zones; and provisions new capacity at the host, switch and disk subsystem levels. StorageAuthority for File Servers also enables administrators to efficiently plan scheduled downtime and respond to unplanned downtime by showing the dependencies of file servers, users and files on HBAs, switches and disk subsystems.

StorageAuthority for File Servers leverages advanced SRM technology AppIQ gained from its recently announced acquisition of XStormTech to provide three major improvements over first-generation SRM solutions:

• Scalability -- StorageAuthority for File Servers uses a highly scalable staging repository capable of tracking the millions of files that populate large volumes in enterprise storage infrastructures, resulting in complete, accurate reports and policies. First-generation SRM solutions typically rely on low-end databases or text files as host-based staging repositories for file server scans. These technologies have size and speed limitations that are exposed when large volumes with millions of files are scanned.
• Network Performance -- StorageAuthority for File Servers features a highly efficient, patent-pending algorithm that returns metadata containing file scan results to the StorageAuthority application server. The efficient design of the metadata objects enables round-trip scans to complete in a fraction of the time required by first-generation SRM solutions, and significantly reduces network traffic. First-generation SRM solutions, lacking this efficient design, significantly impact network performance, application performance and backup windows when attempting to send scan results back to their application servers.
• SAN Dependency Management -- StorageAuthority for File Servers is tightly integrated with the SAN management capabilities of the AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite, enabling topology charts displaying the dependencies of users, files, file systems and logical volumes on underlying hosts, HBAs, SAN switches and disk subsystems to be automatically generated. First-generation SRM solutions are not integrated with physical storage network topology, cannot detect resource dependencies, and cannot identify which files and users are impacted by physical device configuration, performance and capacity changes.

Extending The Lead In Heterogeneous Storage Device Support

AppIQ has the most extensive device support in the industry by virtue of its CIMIQ program, which has helped storage industry leaders such as Brocade, Hitachi Data Systems, Hewlett Packard, LSI Logic Storage Systems, McDATA, Network Appliance, SGI and Sun Microsystems Inc comply with the Storage Management Initiative (SMI) specification. Unlike other solutions that require proprietary agents, the AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite is architected from the ground up on SMI-S, and leverages the extensibility of the SMI-S model to expose unique features of individual storage elements. Leveraging this standards-based approach, StorageAuthority adds support for the following storage arrays, SAN devices and host operating systems:

• Sun Solaris
• IBM AIX
• HDS Dynamic Link Manager
• EMC Symmetrix DMX family of storage systems
• EMC Connectrix family of switches and directors
• EMC CLARiiON disk arrays with PowerPath
• Raw volumes
• Additional Brocade and LSI Logic firmware revisions

StorageAuthority is also the first and only solution that manages SGI's recently introduced InfiniteStorage line of storage solutions. As a result of AppIQ's joint development and OEM alliance with SGI, the AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite now provides application-to-spindle management of the full SGI storage "stack":

• CXFS high performance filesystem
• SGI IRIX operating system
• SGI Altix family of Linux-based servers
• SAN Server SAN environment
• Total Performance storage systems

Backup And Recovery Application Management

Furthering AppIQ's vision of managing storage as an application-focused utility are new capabilities for managing backup and recovery applications. StorageAuthority for VERITAS NetBackup helps ensure complete data protection and recoverability by providing an enterprise-wide view of backup and recovery infrastructure. The new module delivers auto-discovery and visualization of backup resources, success and failure metrics for full and incremental backups, comprehensive warning and error reports and individual file-level drill down features that enable administrators to identify unprotected data and improve operational efficiency.

Rules-Based, End-to-End Provisioning

The new StorageAuthority Provisioning module enhances AppIQ's end-to-end provisioning capabilities with a rules engine that simplifies, secures and error-proofs the process of allocating new storage capacity. With StorageAuthority Provisioning, SAN architects can create rules such as require multi-path, require dual path, require use of existing zones and disable meta-volume support. An intuitive Web form is then automatically generated with these rules built-in, enabling administrators to perform fast, "one-touch" provisioning. Provisioning can also be automatically triggered by the StorageAuthority policy engine in response to thresholds at the application, host, switch or subsystem level.

The Fully Integrated StorageAuthority Suite

The AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite consists of the following tightly integrated modules:

• StorageAuthority Manager -- AppIQ's comprehensive platform for multi-vendor storage infrastructure management architected entirely on the SMI-S storage industry standard. Offers auto-discovery of hosts, HBAs, SAN switches and disk subsystems; graphical topology mapping; dependency and path management; capacity and performance reports; event management; trending; policy-based automation; and role-based security. Built-in Advisors and Automators simplify complex tasks such as replacing HBAs; upgrading firmware; understanding what users and data are impacted by planned or unplanned downtime; and identifying new capacity that can be reached by individual applications.
• StorageAuthority for Oracle -- Auto-discovers Oracle database servers; charts the dependencies of Oracle tablespaces on HBAs, SAN switches and disk subsystems; and correlates Oracle performance, capacity and availability with the supporting storage infrastructure.
• StorageAuthority for Microsoft Exchange -- Auto-discovers Microsoft Exchange servers; charts the dependencies of Microsoft Exchange storage groups and databases on HBAs, SAN switches and disk subsystems; and correlates Microsoft Exchange performance, capacity and availability with the supporting storage infrastructure.
• StorageAuthority for File Servers -- Auto-discovers file servers, mapped drives, and user shares; charts the dependencies of file servers on HBAs, SAN switches and disk subsystems; and collects a wide range of file-level demographics, including file age, file type, file size and file ownership for fast response to out-of-space conditions and closed-loop capacity management.
• StorageAuthority for VERITAS NetBackup -- Provides backup and recovery management capabilities that help ensure complete data protection and recoverability. Auto-discovers and charts dependencies between backup resources; collects and reports success and failure metrics for full and incremental backups, and provides comprehensive warning and error reports with file-level drill down.
• StorageAuthority Chargeback -- Auto-discovers and registers all physical and logical storage assets and asset attributes, and provides two methods of chargeback that enable IT organizations to deliver storage to business units in a utility model.
• StorageAuthority Provisioning -- Offers end-to-end, rules-based provisioning of storage capacity to support new projects and applications. Automates heterogeneous LUN mapping, zone creation and host provisioning via a "one-touch" Web interface or automated policies.

"As this release proves, our decision to build our management platform on the SMI-S and CIM industry standards is starting to pay huge dividends in our ability to rapidly deliver new features on top of this strong foundation," said Ash Ashutosh, AppIQ CTO. "The AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite is now the most comprehensive, standards-built storage management solution family available. Our major breakthroughs in the areas of scalable file server management, multi-vendor device coverage, backup and recovery management and rules-based provisioning will help customers dramatically reduce the costs of managing large-scale, highly complex storage networks."

The AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite will be available in November 2003 through AppIQ and AppIQ Solution Partners.