Veritas and Cisco to offer San management

Veritas and Cisco have developed an integrated Storage Area Network (San) management system which they claim can cut costs by offering a common point for managing disk devices from multiple vendors, at the network layer.

The network-based volume management software, called Veritas Storage Foundation for Networks, running on the Cisco MDS 9000 series of multilayer directors and fabric switches, provides management and virtualisation of different storage environments which is closely integrated with the underlying hardware platform.

The companies said that by consolidating storage management services in the network, customers will be able to improve use, lower management overheads and reduce their overall operation and management costs.

Soni Jiandani, vice president of marketing for Cisco's storage technology group, said: "The storage networking industry as a whole has been driving to offer customers simpler ways to manage their disparate storage resources that are distributed throughout their enterprise."

And Arthur Amos, head of technology support at the Nationwide Building Society, added: "By providing a central point in the network to manage storage, a network-centric architecture promises to improve utilisation through consolidation of storage services and therefore allows us to efficiently manage our storage resources and reduce costs."