Building on a promise made earlier this year, Veritas and Network Appliance have forged closer ties, linking their respective software and hardware products with ease of use in mind.

The two companies have announced their first set of product bundles aimed at specific storage tasks such as data lifecycle management and back-ups. The alliance between the two companies will see some Veritas software packages released first and tuned for NetApp filers. In addition, NetApp will now resell various Veritas products.

As is often the case with such integrated solution exercises, the actual product does not arrive for some time. The Veritas Data Lifecycle Manager/NetApp SnapLock combination will not appear until the first quarter of next year, and the NetBackup/NetApp SnapVault pairing will not arrive until the second half on next year.

Patience is required.

The data lifecycle management package is aimed at helping administrators pull off policy-based data migration and archiving between NetApp NearStor systems and servers running Windows, Unix and Linux. As one might expect, the NetApp hardware will run Veritas' Data Lifecycle Manager software.

One particular feature the two companies have worked on here is the ability to trigger NetApp's SnapLock software via the Veritas DLM product.

The second package from the vendors includes Veritas' popular NetBackup software with NetApp's NearStor ATA-based storage systems. Administrators can use the Veritas GUI to perform disk-to-disk-to-tape and filer-to-filer backups.

Over the long haul, the two companies are convinced that their shared engineering efforts will result in better performance for end users. They plan to add to these two offerings in the coming months. ®