Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas Software Corp. released the latest version of its disaster recovery software, Global Cluster Manager 3.5.1, on Monday.
The Web-based software allows administrators to centralize control of their data recovery environment for application availability and data replication. New additions to the software include the management of clustered Linux servers, support for IBM Corp.’s AIX operating system and Hitachi Data Systems Ltd.’s data replication suite, and increased disaster recovery for Microsoft Corp.’s Exchange 2000 servers, the company said.
This version extends the capabilities of Veritas’ Cluster Server and its Global Cluster Manager to manage its platform-independent software environments. The software also automates site-to-site disaster recovery and is now able to manage clustered Exchange servers from a single point while facilitating wide area application recovery for corporate e-mails and Exchange servers from a potential site failure, the company said.
According to the most recent figures available from International Data Corp. (IDC), Veritas was the leading vendor in the clustered disaster recovery space in 2001 with over 18 per cent of the North American market share, followed closely by Microsoft. From 2001 to 2002, companies worldwide spent US$850 million and the global market grew by seven per cent, said Dan Kusnetzky, vice-president, system software research for IDC in Framingham, Mass.
Not surprisingly, he said that post 9/11, disaster recovery software has grown in importance to organizations, and that the idea of clustering serves a very specific purpose in the recovery process.
“[Clustering] is a major architectural foundation for disaster recovery and prevention. If every major function that makes up an application system is replicated in one or more places and software connects those replicas, scalability can be increased,” Kusnetzky said.
Veritas will compete against rival vendors Legato Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM.
Kusnetzky noted that one advantage to using Veritas’ software is that it is platform and vendor independent, a claim not all vendors in the space can make.
“Making a Veritas choice for its clustering and availability software does not also imply making a Veritas choice for the operating system, database, development tools, or the middleware,” he said.
Veritas Software Corp. Canada is online at www.veritas.com/en/CA.