LAS VEGAS - Some technology companies see user conferences as perfect forums for generating feelings of goodwill and love among their customers. At its Vision 2000 conference in Las Vegas, Veritas almost took that idea to a new extreme by giving attendees promotional CDs complete with the FreeLove virus.
When John Maxwell, senior director, data protection group, product management, stood up in a general session to introduce Vertex, Veritas' newest technology initiative, he told the audience he had good news and bad news. The good news was that Vertex is "the biggest single engineering initiative in the company's history," and the bad news was that the Vertex promotional CD, handed out with the registration materials, was contaminated with the virus.
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That potential PR nightmare generated a good laugh from the audience of over 2,000, but it didn't stop Maxwell from continuing with his presentation and outlining the Vertex roadmap.
Vertex is the company's banner name for a set of technologies that utilize a frozen image or "snapshot" approach to backing up data. Since snapshotting takes point-in-time pictures of the data, Maxwell said that the ultimate goal of this product set is to make back-up windows irrelevant and to significantly reduce the time needed for recovery windows. He added that shrinking back-up windows are a growing problem for global companies since international workers are now accessing applications during what was formerly down time - the down time that was used to conduct data back-ups.
Maxwell also explained that 80% of database recoveries occur not because of hardware failure, but because of operational failure or application errors, and that in order to properly restore the database administrators need to return to point-in-time pictures of the data.
According to Carolyn DiCenzo, chief analyst, storage management software worldwide for Dataquest, snapshotting is the future of data backup.
"There is no way to do backups with traditional methods. We don't have the windows to do copy and backup. You're going to see everybody using snapshots."
Vertex, which is to be rolled out in two phases, is built on the company's 2-year-old NetBackup Flash Backup product, which allows snapshots to be taken of live Unix File System, online Journaled File System or Veritas File System file systems. Phase one will see existing products, such as NetBackup for Oracle Advanced BLI Agent, NetBackup for EMC Symmetrix and NetBackup for HP XP 256 joined by a new offering: NetBackup Server Free Agent Version 4.0.
In beta now, Server Free Agent will create a data snapshot, map the data by drilling down through the I/O stack and linking the logical file names to the physical blocks of data, and then offload the data to be moved from the application or database server onto a third party.
Server Free Agent also will provide users with a common interface for all their snapshotting technology, a feature which DiCenzo said other vendors will be challenged to include.
The second phase will see support added for SQL Server and Exchange on the software side, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Compaq, HDS, and IBM on the hardware side, and third-party copy on the SAN side.
A number of partners also announced their support for and participation with the Vertex initiative, including ADIC, Brocade, Crossroads, EMC, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, Gadzoox, QLogic, Quantum/ATL, Sony, Spectra Logic, StorageTek, Sun and Vixel.
Even though Vertex is the biggest news of the conference, a few other announcements were sprinkled throughout the opening day. The VOS Initiative - a three-way alliance by Veritas, Oracle and Sun to give common customers a one-stop point of contact - is being expanded into Europe. The second VOS Joint Escalation Center is being built in the U.K. The only other one is in Pleasanton, Calif.
During another general session, Veritas Chairman and CEO Mark Leslie told the audience that the company's 5-year plan includes spending $3.9 billion on research and development money in the area of data availability. As well, he is looking to grow Veritas from a $1 billion business into one worth $10 billion, and that a large portion of that growth will come from expanding support for various operating system.
Michael Karp, director of storage management for the Hurwitz Group, in Framingham, Mass., said that is definitely the right direction for the company to take.
"They have to spread their expertise beyond Sun to general Unix and NT. They have to be vigorous in that," he said.
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