Symantec's bumper bonus bells and whistles

For Hyper-V, VSF runs in the Hyper-V parent partition and helps provide storage resources for applications running in Hyper V virtual machines: child partitions in Hyper-V terminology. Storage volumes can be dynamically changed in size online. Snapshots can be taken of an entire child partition, including the system and boot areas as well as the application data. Veritas Dynamic Multipathing improves storage availability and Veritas Volume Replicator can replicate just one virtual machine or the entire set.

Cluster failover

Symantec has also added failover to its Cluster File System, saying: "near instantaneous recovery of applications is now possible with Veritas Cluster File System through tight integration with Oracle, Sybase and IBM DB2." The applications run in servers under Veritas Cluster Server and the active and stand-by servers are connected by Veritas Cluster File System. When a server fails, the application running it is restarted in the second server and users see near-continuous operation, despite the server failure.

Lastly, Symantec is offering a Storage Assessment Service, which it claims will help customers use existing storage better and get the best use out of new storage technology.

We might take the view that VMware and EMC are trying to squeeze Symantec's storage resource and cluster products out of their customer base. We could see from today's announcement that Symantec aims to help Hyper-V better compete with VMware in the storage resource management space.

With both virtualisation platforms, Symantec is improving its Storage Foundation product to work better across different suppliers' storage arrays, and the industry adoption of its Thin Reclaimation API, if it comes to pass, gives a good indication of Symantec's popularity in the SRM space. ®