Duo to Standardize Removable Storage

StorageTek and Veritas are embarking on a joint venture to develop and promote a standard interface for managing removable storage. The resulting product will be a software controller that will unite disparate storage libraries and management platforms.

StorageTek's Automated Cartridge System (ACS) and Veritas' Media Library technologies will be combined into a software server that will interpret StorageTek's ACS and Microsoft's Remote Session Manager (RSM) storage APIs, due in Windows 2000.

StorageTek plans to deliver this so-called "media server," which will link tape libraries across mainframe, Unix, and Windows 2000 platforms in the first half of 2000.

"We've agreed to work together to promulgate a way for [varied] tape libraries to interface with one another," said Gary Lyng, director of product management at Veritas.

If widely adopted, such cross-platform functionality would be embraced by vendors and IT managers organizing storage on networks, experts said.

"On Unix and NT, there has not been a standard way for applications to share removable media resources," said Mark Nicolett, research director at the Gartner Group, in Stamford, Connecitcut. "As SANs [storage area networks] are deployed, there will be, for the first time, a way to connect library configurations to a large number of servers, something that was on [the MVS mainframe OS] forever."

StorageTek plans to release a "lite" version of the software by mid-1999. The completed server, due next year, will provide SAN support through Ethernet connectivity and storage device arbitration, officials said.

Storage Technology Corp., in Louisville, Colorado, is at www.storagetek.com. Veritas Software Corp., in Mountain View, California, is at www.veritas.com.

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