ADIC storage suite debuts

Storage supplier Advanced Digital Information Corp. (ADIC) recently announced general availability of its StorNext Management Suite, a software product that combines several storage management features into one turnkey system.

StorNext is intended to help information technology administrators manage data throughout its life cycle — starting with its storage on fast but expensive online disks, through to its long-term archival on cheaper but slower magnetic tape in a robotic library or at an off-site location.

Along the way, StorNext controls how the data is accessed, protected and moved around in complex storage-area network (SAN) environments, in which multiple servers share access to a common pool of storage devices.

"The goal is to treat disk and tape as 'storage' as far as the IT administrator is concerned and to blur the distinction of what goes on disk and what goes on tape," said Paul Rutherford, ADIC's vice president of software products.

To the general software applications that access data, StorNext storage systems appear as simple disk volumes. That is achieved in part through StorNext's CentraVision storage file system, which provides computers running Microsoft Corp. Windows, Linux and some Unix systems with simultaneous, block-level access to data stored in a Fibre Channel SAN.

StorNext's price depends on the storage capacity and number of servers in the SAN. For example, a license for a 10 terabyte SAN with four Windows-class servers is about $60,000.