An area that is often overlooked in an IT infrastructure, at least until it's needed, is the backup and recovery environment. Then when the realization hits the company that it needs backup software, it's typically complex to install, configure and maintain, even in small environments, because of the fact that backup consists of so many moving parts (backup servers, tape robots, disk-based arrays, SAN networks, etc.). The good news is that more hardware and software vendors are stepping up to the plate and partnering to take some of the complexity out of installing and configuring backup software in these size environments. The most recent announcement between Dell and Symantec is the latest in the growing number of symbiotic relationships between hardware and software vendors in the backup space. (read more)

One can hardly visit any storage system vendor's website without running into a reference to "Thin Provisioning" that is available either in their current product or on their product roadmap. However, how many operating system or volume managers/filesystems producers do you find using those words? Until recently, there were none. But now that Symantec has jumped with both feet into the Thin Provisioning arena, how companies use and manage thin provisioning in the coming years should change significantly. (read more)

Breaking new ground or turf wars? That's the question that crossed my mind when I heard that Symantec combined its Backup Exec and NetBackup product groups into one new Data Protection Group earlier this year. One of two things can happen in a scenario when you merge the engineering teams of the two data protection product market leaders, NetBackup and Backup Exec, into one. You either get outright war where nothing gets done and everything devolves into turf wars; or the two teams put aside their egos so they can take advantage of the new synergies that come from working together and sharing common code. So far, it strikes me more as the latter. (read more)

Traditional clustering methodologies are severely limited in respect to scale, heterogeneous support, and distributed application support. Because of these limitations, clustering has primarily been the domain of shops with high-end applications with equally high-end budgets for the hardware and software needed to implement clustering. Symantec's announcement last week of Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) One begins to change this scenario for any organization interested in extending the benefits of clustering to a greater number of their applications. And based upon what we saw in this first release of VCS One, we are now wondering who wouldn't be interested in clustering more of their environment, whether virtual or physical. (read more)

Since the inception of VCS (Veritas Cluster Server), end-users have had access to significant higher levels of reliability and availability on heterogeneous platforms such as AIX, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris and Windows for their critical, tier-1 applications. Now with a decade of clustering critical business applications under its belt, Symantec has the experience and understanding of what customers expect from high availability (HA) software and what they need to make it successful in their shops. (read more)