Microsoft edges into storage plus all the other news this week

Can it really be on a week ago since you last learnt what had been happening in the storage world? Well, yes it was, and here's what's gone on in the meantime:

ADIC has said its Scalar family of tape libraries will offer greater capacity and performance from October because it's adding Quantum's SDLT 600 drive to it.

Arkeia has announced an upgrade to Arkeia Network Backup solution. Version 5.3 includes support for NDMP network-attached storage (NAS) devices and Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) technology embedded in MS-Windows 2003 servers.

Atempo announced the release of Time Navigator Reporter, software for tracking and analysing back-up and restore operations across a company. Its reports provide an auditable record to demonstrate compliance with the new regulatory requirements.

Atempo has also released its Mailbox Manager for Microsoft Exchange. It automates the management, archiving and retrieval of e-mail messages.

BakBone told all that its NetVault data protection solution product has been configured to run on the new IBM eServerT OpenPowerT 720 system.

With the release of its Suite 3.2, CreekPath has added the discovery, visualisation, monitoring and reporting of Sybase databases.

CBL Data Recovery has been proclaimed by Dell to be authorised to perform data recovery services on all Dell hardware worldwide. Dell users who suffer data loss anywhere in the world can contact any CBL facility or authorized partner for data recovery work.

EqualLogic announced the addition of automatic snapshot management for Windows Server 2003 to its PeerStorage Array 100E. The PeerStorage array will also now include multi-path input/output (MPIO) as a standard feature, delivering fault tolerance, higher availability and better performance.

FalconStor has released details of the next generation of IPStor Enterprise Edition. A new WORMLock Option for NAS means customers can use off-the-shelf, third-party disk arrays to emulate the behaviour of traditional WORM media. It can attach a hidden digital signature to each file and protect it from being changed for a specified period of time. A Capacity-on-Demand option makes the most of disk space, and supports WORMLock volumes for long-term data archiving.

Researchers at Imperial College, London have devised a new optical disk format that could store 1TB - ten times more than BluRay disks - by 2010-2015. The Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (MODS) disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a step sunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back. Funding is now being sought. Whether this technology has a realistic prayer of appearing, given that Toshiba, and the rest of Japan will probably have son of BluRay out within five years, is questionable. It's still an admirably neat piece of work though.

LSI Logic introduced version 2.0 of its MyStorage management software for use with its Fibre Channel host bus adapters. It means administrators can manage the adaptors locally or remotely. The software provides simple point-and-click for monitoring FC connections and devices, upgrading firmware, event logging and health and diagnostic summaries.

Microsoft is gradually playing a bigger and bigger role in storage - Engenio and CommVault are using Microsoft's Volume Shadow Services (VSS) as the interface between Engenio's SANtricity disk array management snapshot feature and CommVault's Galaxy back-up function. The Galaxy software initiates a back-up by calling for VSS to trigger a snapshot by the SANtricity management software. Galaxy doesn't have to use the proprietary SANtricity API. Microsoft gets to be the middleware player and enables more "open" software.

Conspiracy theorists will think that once Microsoft has captured an interface then it could add its own software either side of it. Shades of embrace and extend perhaps.

SanDisk has released a new file encryption system that provides owners of all SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drives with security measures to protect important documents. This upgrade to SanDisk’s existing CruzerLock software is available free for downloading from the company’s website - www.sandisk.com.

Taiwan-basedSystex announced its ES 700 and ES 7700 iSCSI Storage Gateways, based on Windows Storage Server 2003. The ES 700 offers up to 4TB and the ES 7700 32TB (10 IDE bays). What we are seeing here is a kind of "Ethernet economics" approach applying to storage as iSCSI technology rapidly cheapens with the possibility that iSCSI storage could spread rapidly.

Zetta, based in Seattle, has announced its Zetta Server 2.8 for instant disaster recovery and centralised network storage. It creates custom storage appliances that keep unlimited copies of a company’s data with negligible disk overhead. You can take snapshots every minute for the most advanced data protection in the marketplace (apart from Revivio which does it to the second). Additional security provides protection from Internet worms.