Special Section: SNW, Fall 2004 - Highlights From The SNW Floor:

CNT ANNOUNCES SAN-BASED HETEROGENEOUS DATA REPLICATION SERVICES

CNT announced the availability of the UltraNet Replication Appliance (URA). Enabling new levels of data protection for customers, the URA provides a complete suite of SAN-based local and remote heterogeneous data replication services over unlimited distances. In addition, CNT announced that the CNT URA has completed interoperability testing under the IBM TotalStorage Proven Program, and customers will now have the option to purchase the URA for use in asynchronous replication solutions employing the IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller (SVC).

The URA elevates data protection to a whole new level, enabling disk-based backup that eliminates backup windows, dramatically improves data recoverability and provides protection against both physical and logical errors. This breakthrough offering works with any type of storage, including heterogeneous and tiered storage environments, and delivers fully-managed SANbased local and remote storage services for cost-effective data migration, business continuity and disaster recovery. By using tiered storage in combination with the URA, customers are able to match application requirements to the most appropriate storage, dramatically reducing capital and operational costs.

Longtime CNT customer Lockheed Martin chose the URA because it provided a cost-effective way to reduce backup times. They can use their existing enterprise disk for their production databases and use the URA's snapshot replication capabilities to back up data changes on a nightly basis to lower cost per disk. The URA also simplifies management of their backup process, saving valuable administrator time. Its ability to support data replication among heterogeneous storage environments provides Lockheed Martin a great deal of flexibility in building their infrastructure, and as their needs evolve, the URA will support new applications such as remote disk mirroring and data migrations.

"As enterprises deploy tiers of storage to meet changing data availability and storage utilization requirements, they need solutions that allow them to effectively and consistently manage the migration and replication of data between different storage systems and between multiple data centers," said Richard Villars, vice president of Storage Systems Research at IDC. "Solutions like CNT's UltraNet Replication Appliance will play a critical role in helping IT managers deploy and manage tiered storage within their enterprise."

The combination of CNT's URA and the IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller can provide a technology solution for customers who need asynchronous replication capabilities for business continuity.

"Helping customers simplify their infrastructure and supporting business continuity is a key strategic priority for IBM. CNT's URA can remotely extend environments managed by IBM's SAN Volume Controller by providing asynchronous mirroring or replication across any distance between these environments," said Jeffrey Barnett, manager of IBM TotalStorage Open Software. "The URA complements the IBM TotalStorage Virtualization Family offerings by supporting the long distance, remote disaster recovery solutions clients require."

The URA's full replication portfolio includes local and remote mirroring, snapshot replication with delta and the ability to roll-back to previous snapshots to recover from logical errors. By leveraging CNT's award-winning and patented extension technology, end users can maximize the utilization of their network bandwidth and be assured of the highest performance over any distance. CNT's end-to-end storage network management software allows customers to view the complete remote environment, proactively preventing network problems and maximizing network uptime.

"By using CNT's UltraNet Replication Appliance, businesses now have the flexibility to migrate data for storage consolidation, leverage existing heterogeneous assets for disk mirroring, dramatically improve data protection and significantly reduce acquisition and management costs," said Mark Knittel, group vice president of Product Operations at CNT. "Combine these benefits with CNT's twenty years of experience in remote storage networking solutions and our end-to-end management capabilities, and you've got a solution no one else can deliver."