I thought this might be of interest to some of you:
TIVOLI STORAGE MANAGEMENT LETS AS/400 USERS PICK AND CHOOSE
http://www.news400.com/nwn/StoryBuild.cfm?ID=666
Tivoli Systems has taken IBM's former ADSTAR Distributed Storage
Manager (ADSM) and built a new and improved multiplatform storage
management solution, repackaged for customers of all sizes. Tivoli
Storage Management -- a revamped, renamed version of ADSM, which
IBM transferred to Tivoli's domain in January -- features several
storage area network (SAN) enhancements and new module-based
packaging that lets companies pick and choose the functions they
need.
The storage management solution can provide more -- or less -
functionality, depending on individual customer needs, explains
Troy Pladson, director of strategy and business development for
Tivoli Storage Management Solutions Group. "Before, in order to
have storage management, you had to buy this model as one
product," he notes. "Now we're breaking it down into pieces." If
companies want only data protection or records retention, that's
all they need to buy. And if customers want more, any or all of
the modules can be put together to provide a more complete
solution.
In addition to a data protection component (the backup/restore
component of ADSM) and a records-retention component (archival and
retrieval), Tivoli Storage Management sports several SAN-related
improvements along with disaster recovery and application-centric
storage management functions. The product also offers data
protection and records retention for specific applications, such
as J.D. Edwards and Oracle.
The new Tivoli Storage Management can align storage policies with
business policies and, when integrated with Tivoli Enterprise, can
provide a centralized storage management solution across what
Tivoli calls the "Enterprise Information Grid" -- including
servers, storage systems and SANs, communications networks, data,
and applications.
Pladson says customers can expect a host of other SAN functions
from Tivoli over the next 12 months. The first SAN enhancements
are targeted at heterogeneous tape pooling, he notes. Other SAN
initiatives include a patented block- and byte-level backup of
mobile systems. "With this technology, a company's mobile workers
can work on their files, and only changed bytes will be backed up,
dramatically reducing the amount of network bandwidth required,"
Pladson explains. Although the changed bytes can be backed up to
any platform, including the AS/400, initially Tivoli will be
delivering this feature only for 32-bit Windows clients. Byte-
level backup for the AS/400 is slated for mid-2000.
Tivoli expects to deliver complete SAN management in the first
quarter of 2000, based on the company's Netview management product
for IP networks. With Tivoli moving Netview into the SAN world,
companies will be able to manage both IP and SAN networks from a
single console, Pladson says.
Disk pooling -- another piece of the SAN initiative -- is also due
in the first or second quarter of 2000. This feature will let
users look at their physical disk farm, not only within one
subsystem but within multiple subsystems attached to a SAN
environment, Pladson says. "You'll be able to divide disks up
logically and then drag and drop them to different systems to
allocate disks as the systems need them," he adds. If a system
runs out of disk space, the product's Adaptive Mapping technology
will take the physical devices, map them logically, and then
dynamically allocate them to devices or to servers as they're
required.
Other upcoming SAN initiatives include "LAN-free backup," which,
Pladson says, is a bit of a misnomer. In fact, "there will be some
traffic across the LAN, the metadata, which keeps track of what's
being backed up and where," he explains. But the data itself will
travel across the SAN, directly from disk to tape or disk to disk.
Also in the works is "server-free" backup -- also called "upward
data movement" or "third-party copy" -- which involves moving data
directly from disk to tape. Again, says Pladson, the term "server-
free" is used loosely. "The server here is really the client," he
says. You copy from the client's disk, which is on the SAN,
directly to tape -- so the data never travels through the client.
One reason Tivoli decided to divide its new storage management
product into modules was to broaden its audience. "Our focus is to
not focus on a single platform but to focus on all of them and be
able to support all the platforms -- PC, mainframe, or AS/400 --
and be able to manage them all from a single interface," Pladson
says. However, the AS/400 market is critical to the company,
representing Tivoli's second largest product set. "We sell more in
AS/400 servers than basically any other of our products other than
the Unix platform," Pladson reports.
In response, the company will bring some AS/400-specific
enhancements to Tivoli Storage Management in September. "As well
as adding the support for the mobile workplace and policy
management, we'll be coming out with enhancements in performance,
serviceability, and usability specifically for the AS/400,"
Pladson says.
Tivoli Storage Management is available now for the AS/400 and 39
other platforms. For more information about the product, see
http://www.tivoli.com . Tivoli has also announced the latest
version of its IT Director systems management product for small
businesses; read about it at
http://www.news400.com/nwn/StoryBuild.cfm?ID=656 .
-- Jeanne Huff, NEWS/400 Industry Reporter
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