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For Symantec storage software, thin is in, and that's a green thing

Symantec's new storage management software can save close to $55,000 in electricity costs for every 200-terabyte enterprise storage deployment it diverts.
Written by Heather Clancy, Contributor

Yoo-hoo! Those of you who use Symantec's Veritas storage management software, bet you didn't know just how green your investment could be or at least will be.

That's because the company has now updated its cross-platform solutions -- Veritas Storage Foundation, Veritas Cluster File System and Veritas Cluster Server -- to support solid state drives and thin provisioning. The software is integrated tightly with applications residing in Oracle, Sybase and IBM DB2 databases AND it can work across Unix, Linux and Windows environments.

What this means, in a nutshell, is that your storage management software can now find and provision solid state storage devices across your storage infrastructure. It can optimize where data is placed across that entire infrastructure, pulling certain information off tier-one storage and helping you extend the life of your existing hardware before you have to go out and buy new stuff. Which means that you use your storage at higher utilization.

The feature that does this is made possible by the Veritas Thin Reclamation API, which lets organizations create automated schemes to "reclaim" storage space that isn't being used to its full potential. Symantec has worked closely with IBM, 3PAR and Hitachi Data Systems to ensure that this feature works across their hardware. Storage Foundation works in conjunction with Veritas Volume Replicator to move data from "thick" to "thin" devices as desired as part of formal migrations.

Symantec figures that Storage Foundation can explicitly help organizations avoid adding new storage before it is necessary, in effect saving on electricity. It has calculated that for every 200 terabytes of tier-on storage that can be reclaimed, reduced or avoided in an effort to control storage sprawl, an organization can save $54,200 in annual electricity costs. (That equates to about 960,000 pounds of diverted carbon dioxide emissions.)

Symantec Storage Foundation is priced starting at $695 per server. All three of the products referenced above are shipping.

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