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AppIQ Extends Industry-Leading Storage Area Management Capabilities

Posted on: Monday, 26 April 2004, 06:00 CDT

¶ New Release of AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite Highlighted by Storage Provisioning Enhancements and Sybase Support

¶ AppIQ(TM), Inc., a leading provider of storage area management solutions, today announced a new release of AppIQ StorageAuthority(TM) Suite that extends the award-winning product family with new capabilities for efficiently and securely managing enterprise storage networks. Highlighting the new version are advanced "path provisioning" capabilities that streamline and error-proof processes for allocating SAN capacity in support of business-critical applications; and StorageAuthority for Sybase, a new module that helps ensure the availability and performance of Sybase(R) Adaptive Server Enterprise in Storage Area Network (SAN) environments. Combined with deeper support for leading storage arrays and operating systems, as well as custom reporting enhancements, AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite R3.1 enables IT organizations to exceed storage service levels, reduce operational costs, and improve business performance. ¶"Storage administrators are being challenged to meet more aggressive service levels as enterprises keep looking for ways to improve productivity and respond faster to business opportunity," said Jamie Gruener, senior analyst, Yankee Group. "AppIQ continues to make advancements in its storage resource management product family that will help enterprises meet these challenges, even as data storage needs escalate. AppIQ's rules-based provisioning capabilities should be particularly interesting to IT organizations that need to speed up and secure their procedures for bringing new projects on-line and keeping existing applications running smoothly."

¶ Path Provisioning

¶ StorageAuthority Provisioning, an optional Business Module of AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite, now offers intelligent "path provisioning" capabilities that error-proof and streamline an IT organization's ability to allocate storage capacity for new projects or critical business applications: -0- *T

-- "All-in-one" window provides end-to-end provisioning of array

volumes, LUNs, and fabric zones, with individual panes guiding

each selection;

-- SmartGuide(TM) technology leverages the common knowledge base

of application-to-LUN connectivity and dependency information

to provide rules and filters that minimize mistakes, and

ensure provisioning operations adhere to unique business and

IT requirements. For example:

-- The multi-path SmartGuide forces administrators to select

at least two HBA ports on two separate servers to

eliminate single points of failure;

-- The host SmartGuide filters out servers that are not

physically cabled to and reachable by any array that was

selected;

-- The quality of service SmartGuide filters out all storage

arrays that do not satisfy the preferred storage tier.

-- Job queue enables storage administrators to quickly create

hundreds of provisioning jobs with one-click ease;

-- Job scheduler enables administrators to schedule provisioning

jobs to execute during off-hours to minimize impact on

business operations. *T ¶ StorageAuthority for Sybase

¶ AppIQ StorageAuthority for Sybase, a new Application Module, enables administrators to quickly perform root cause analysis of SAN-related performance problems that impact users of Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise. This module automatically discovers Sybase instances, databases, database files, and tables and leverages AppIQ's unique Application Explorer to graphically depict the dependencies of these Sybase elements on the supporting SAN infrastructure. The path that each Sybase element takes through host mount points; host servers; volume management software; HBAs and HBA ports; fabric switches and switch ports; and storage systems and LUNs is represented in a single, integrated view. Administrators can leverage these powerful dependency management capabilities in combination with the real-time performance monitoring features of AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite to predict the impact of planned and unplanned SAN downtime on Sybase applications, and determine where in the SAN "stack" performance is being impacted. StorageAuthority for Sybase also extends the suite's complete foundation of capacity management, role-based security, reporting, event management, and policy-based automation capabilities to this leading relational database platform: -0- *T

-- Role-based security prevents Sybase administrators from

monitoring or provisioning SAN elements that are not relevant

to Sybase;

-- Organizations prevent Sybase elements from even appearing in

the SAN topology views of administrators who are not

responsible for Sybase;

-- Policies and events monitor Sybase utilization and free space;

-- Reports on Sybase assets and utilization can be automatically

emailed on a scheduled basis in PDF, Excel, XML, or HTML

formats. *T ¶ More New Features

¶ StorageAuthority Suite R3.1 also becomes the first storage area management solution to provision Host Security Groups for Hitachi storage systems, enabling storage administrators to virtualize and logically group the physical storage ports on Hitachi arrays such that they can be shared by multiple hosts and different operating systems. This feature is representative of the first-mover advantage that AppIQ enjoys as a result of its strategic OEM partnerships. Also new in AppIQ StorageAuthority R3.1 are: -0- *T

-- Database views and an optional custom report writer, which

enables integrators, OEMs, and customers to develop any number

of asset, configuration, chargeback, capacity, and performance

reports tuned to end users' unique business requirements;

-- Organization filters and nested organizations, which give IT

architects more flexibility in grouping SAN elements for

specific departments, geographies, and administrative

responsibilities;

-- StorageAuthority for File Servers, AppIQ's optional file-level

storage resource management (SRM) module previously available

for Windows-based environments, now supports Sun's Solaris

Operating System with scalable file age, type, and size

analysis and user consumption reporting;

-- Integration with Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager(TM) (HDLM) load

balancing and failover software in Sun's Solaris Operating

System;

-- Integration with the most recent firmware versions of

supported storage arrays, fabric switches, and HBAs. *T ¶"Our strategic partners and rapidly expanding base of customers have been instrumental in guiding our product roadmap," said David Chang, vice president of product management, AppIQ. "Our new path provisioning capabilities will help satisfy the market need for on-demand storage, while our new application module for Sybase delivers much-needed SAN performance and availability management for Sybase applications. We will continue to leverage our standards-built platform to rapidly deliver innovative storage area management capabilities."

¶ Availability

¶ AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite R3.1 is available immediately through AppIQ, certified AppIQ Solution Partners, and strategic OEM partners Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Silicon Graphics (SGI).

¶ About AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite

¶ AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite is an award-winning family of open, integrated, heterogeneous Storage Area Network (SAN) management and Storage Resource Management (SRM) solutions. With AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite, IT organizations can discover, visualize, monitor, report on, chargeback on, and provision complex, multi-vendor storage area networks from a single, Web-based enterprise platform with unprecedented simplicity and speed. Once the suite's automated capabilities have replaced the error-prone, inefficient point tools, spreadsheets, and whiteboards currently used to manage storage operations, AppIQ's flexible development tools and customizable policy and reporting engines can be used to create an internal storage utility that aligns storage infrastructure with business objectives.

¶ About AppIQ

¶ AppIQ(TM), Inc. is a leading provider of Storage Area Network (SAN) management and Storage Resource Management (SRM) solutions. AppIQ StorageAuthority(TM) Suite is "Enabling the storage utility"(TM) for today's data-intensive enterprise by seamlessly integrating storage resource visualization, provisioning, monitoring, reporting, and policy-based automation, and by correlating the availability of business-critical applications with SAN configuration, capacity, and performance. AppIQ products are sold across all continents directly and through a network of strategic OEMs and resellers. Customers worldwide in almost every industry rely on AppIQ software to reduce operational costs and improve business performance. AppIQ is a privately held company based in Burlington, Mass. For more information, visit http://www.appiq.com.

¶ (C) 2004 AppIQ, Inc. AppIQ, StorageAuthority, SmartGuide, and "Enabling the storage utility" are trademarks of AppIQ, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

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