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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Systems/Enterprise:
VERITAS ANNOUNCES KEY BUILDING
BLOCK FOR UTILITY COMPUTING
VERITAS Software Corp, a leading storage software provider,announced the
availability of VERITAS OpForce 3.2 software, the latest version of its
automated server provisioning software that helps significantly reduce the
time, cost and resources traditionally required to deploy servers in
heterogeneous environments, including the rapidly growing Linux platform. With
the new software, customers can now automatically provision bare metal and
blade servers running on both major Linux platforms, SUSE LINUX Enterprise
Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server, including support for
Intel 64-bit Itanium processor-based servers.
According to a November IDC study, sales of servers running the Linux
operating system increased 49.8 percent in the third quarter of 2003 over the
year-earlier period marking the sixth consecutive quarter of growth.
"With expanding Linux support from major vendors like VERITAS, the benefits
of
deploying Linux in the enterprise are becoming clearer by the day," said Chris
DiBona, co-founder of San Francisco-based Linux consultancy Konstrux
Technologies. "More and more organizations are finding out that Linux can be
an integral part of a scalable, heterogeneous, cost-effective enterprise
clustering and transaction solution. No matter your application, unique tools
such as VERITAS OpForce that can save administration costs -- and more
importantly IT staff time -- in these mixed IT environments will be essential
to unlocking the full value of these deployments."
VERITAS OpForce 3.2 software dramatically increases the utilization of
existing IT environments by intelligently provisioning resources such as
servers across computer networks. By deploying VERITAS OpForce 3.2, customers
can reduce the standard server deployment in a common scenario of preparing
and provisioning 30 servers from more than 200 hours down to less than 15
hours. Automated server provisioning is a key pillar of utility computing and
VERITAS is committed to helping customers streamline their IT operations,
provide higher levels of IT services and increase the flexibility of their
server infrastructures through OpForce 3.2's innovative new features
including:
- Expanded OS support that includes SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8, Red
Hat
Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3.0 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Enterprise Edition
- Improved performance and scalability with provisioning support for
Intel
64-bit Itanium processor-based servers
- Increased service levels for enterprise customers with automated bare
metal
discovery that includes in-context provisioning, resource pooling and
on-the-fly personalization
- New pre-deployment feature that allows IT staff to associate a server
profile with specific slots on a blade server chassis so that when a blade
server is inserted into a slot it is automatically provisioned with the
appropriate operating system and applications
- Increased capability to automate provisioning for both 32 and 64-bit
servers to run SUSE LINUX or Red Hat. Automated provisioning reduces IT
administrative costs while increasing administrative efficiency in order to
create an IT environment that is aligned with changing business needs
VERITAS OpForce integrates with the industry's leading virtualization
technology, VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File System, and supports IBM
AIX, Red Hat Linux, SUSE LINUX, Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows.
"The promise of utility computing benefits the end user when costs are kept
moderate, however, management costs can increase in scale when multi-vendor
datacenter environments need to interact," said Fred van den Bosch, VERITAS
executive vice president and CTO. "VERITAS OpForce 3.2 enables our enterprise
customers to obtain the benefits of a utility computing model by provisioning
resources on any platform, which allows datacenters to run more efficiently,
and at lower costs."
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