Fujitsu Siemens Computers goes a siginificant step towards
Information Lifecyle Management with CentricStor
New version of the Virtual Tape Appliance offers Disaster
protection with support of service levels
Munich/Germany, October 06, 2004 —Under the umbrella of TRIOLE – the company’s
strategy for an optimized IT - Fujitsu Siemens Computers today
announces far reaching enhancements of its unique CentricStor
Virtual Tape Appliance. Through the additional support of Service
Level Agreements (SLA), CentricStor addresses comprehensive
capabilities towards Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). ILM
means the integration of a variety of activities designed to manage
information and information resources throughout their life
cycle.With the introduction of CentricStor Version 3.0, the
industry’s most-powerful Virtual Tape Appliance offers now
improved levels of scalability in both performance and capacity as
well as in price. Increased performance frees from the burden of
critical backup windows and reduces recovery times. Additional
automatic failover increase high availability and fast disaster
recovery from the entry level up to high end configurations.
As a highly scalable data protection solution, CentricStor
allows enterprises to consolidate their entire range of magnetic
tape systems across Storage Area Networks, in both –
mainframe and open system environments. Already offering the
broadest platform support, the array of connectivity and supported
platforms is further widened. With a wide range of IBM systems and
other predominant mainframes as well as widespread Open Systems
plus Network Attached Storage environments, CentricStor supports
all major tape automation systems. CentricStor now embrace also
commonly-used entry level backup and recovery solutions by behaving
vis-à-vis the servers like a large number of autoloaders. In
addition the newly introduced FICON interface offers more choice of
connectivity for IBM systems.
According to a Gartner Research Note from August 2004, usage
of virtual tape begins to find Open Systems market acceptance.
Already supporting market leading backup applications for open
systems, CentricStor supports now in addition BrightStor ARCserve
Backup developed by Computer Associates and the family of Legato
Xtender-products. The introduction of Serial ATA disks meets the
requirements in this market by eliminating shrinking backup windows
and providing fast-restore for a large amount of data. The option
for fast data throughput with the appliance is further ensured with
high performance fibre channel disks.
With Version 3.0, CentricStor introduces support for SLA at
the disk cache level, allowing different priorities to be allocated
to strictly differentiated customer data or various types of
departmental specific requirements. Fast recovery can be guaranteed
through the new disk cache residency, by permanently storing
selected information in the cache. Another service level is offered
with the import and export of individual tape cartridges, which can
be transferred to a vault location.
“Our customers are deploying CentricStor as a central
automation component for data protection in heterogeneous
environments. Customers worldwide, such as SAP in Europe, Orange
County Public Schools in the US and Fujitsu customers in Asia
already use CentricStor as the central platform to consolidate
their entire business-critical data backup,” said Dr. Helmut
Beck, Vice President Storage at Fujitsu Siemens Computers.
“The latest improvements in particular the refinement of
Policy-based automation are a milestone towards the goal of
complete ILM.”
„The connectivity of CentricStor is unique and enables
seamless integration into existing heterogeneous
environments”, confirms Norbert Deuschle, a storage expert
and independent market analyst and Senior Consultant with the META
Group. “A sophisticated policy-based automation of the entire
storage, especially for backup and restore will be an indispensable
part of a comprehensive ILM“.
CentricStor - Backgrounder
CentricStor is the name given to Fujitsu Siemens
Computers’ “Virtual Tape Appliance”, which is
used to consolidate the magnetic tape processing in open systems
and mainframes environments. CentricStor as a disk-to-disk-to-tape
solution (D2D2T) offers the speed of disk and the reliability of
tape. A huge number of virtual tape drives provide all linked
systems with a multitude of high-performance and permanently
available backup and archiving resources over the storage area
network. The universal connectivity enables different servers and
applications to access the virtual archive simultaneously, without
the need for a real tape drive for each individual system.
CentricStor integrates transparently into existing IT environments,
making it unnecessary to modify existing application and backup
scenarios. Information about CentricStor in Europe can be found at
www.centricstor.com
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About Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Fujitsu Siemens Computers is the leading European IT provider
with a responsible strategic focus on next-generation Mobility and
Business Critical Computing products, services and solutions. With
a portfolio of exceptional depth, our offering extends from
handhelds through desktops to enterprise-class IT infrastructure
solutions. Fujitsu Siemens Computers has a strong presence in all
key markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Leveraging
the strengths, innovation and global reach of our joint
shareholders, Fujitsu Limited and Siemens AG, we make sure we meet
the needs of customers: large corporations, small and medium
enterprises and private users. For further please visit::
www.fujitsu-siemens.com
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