Building on its commitment to help enterprises align their IT resources with business objectives, VERITAS Software Corporation (Nasdaq: VRTS) today extended its heterogeneous storage management software with a new version of VERITAS CommandCentral^TM. VERITAS CommandCentral 4.2 is a fully integrated family of products that enable IT organizations to deliver services that are measurable, accountable and precisely integrated with business objectives. VERITAS CommandCentral software provides increased flexibility, reduced management costs and a solid foundation for enterprises to manage, monitor and meter their storage, backup and recovery and server operations from a single unified management console.

By deploying VERITAS CommandCentral 4.2, a unified storage management solution, customers can reduce the number of tools, scripts and consoles required to manage their complex storage environments. Furthermore, IT organizations can eliminate the manual process of aggregating data from disparate point products to understand how storage, backup and recovery and server resources are being utilized by applications, lines of business, geographies and any customized business view or operational task required by the user.

VERITAS has diligently integrated the metering functionality obtained via its acquisition of Ejasent Inc. in January 2004 into the latest version of CommandCentral software, making it the only complete software solution to tie together storage management and CPU utilization reporting and chargeback within a single interface. CommandCentral 4.2 is also the first partner solution to provide complete visibility for Network Appliance^TM unified storage, delivering improved utilization, automation and administrator efficiency by way of a centralized console.

“VERITAS delivers a technically savvy solution which helps our customers maximize their storage utilization and lower costs by allowing them to gain visibility into how much storage they have across the enterprise, how it is configured and allocated and exactly how it is being used,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Products and Partners at Network Appliance. “NetApp is leveraging VERITAS CommandCentral software as a preferred storage management solution to help customers lower storage costs and improve business productivity and efficiency.”

CommandCentral 4.2 also introduces an enhanced process automation engine, which ties human tasks and technology together through one shared interface and allows customers to standardize data center operations, resulting in time and cost savings. The CommandCentral 4.2 process automation engine has been integrated with VERITAS Storage Foundation^TM software, bringing even greater value to VERITAS customers. The CommandCentral 4.2 adapters allow workflow and process automation for common data center operations such as storage provisioning and re-sizing of database table spaces. In addition to the adapters for VERITAS Storage Foundation software, CommandCentral 4.2 also includes standard adapters for select Oracle databases as well as EMC Symmetrix and CLARiiON systems.

“Most global enterprises have complex heterogeneous server and storage infrastructures equipped with a broad range of storage platforms and architectures such as SAN, NAS and direct attached storage devices,” said Phil Goodwin, President, Diogenes Analytical Laboratories, Inc. “Relying on point solutions rather than having a comprehensive storage strategy and management platform will always result in the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. During our lab evaluation, VERITAS CommandCentral demonstrated a breadth of capabilities that yield actionable information needed by storage teams to increase operational efficiencies throughout the storage stack.”

VERITAS CommandCentral 4.2 Key Features

• Enhanced NetApp® functionality: CommandCentral 4.2 can discover NetApp unified storage systems and retrieve detailed inventory, capacity and performance information about NetApp configurations including volumes, files, shared drives and quotas.
• Metering: CommandCentral 4.2 can collect usage statistics from specified hardware and software components into a central database, and distill these statistics into a robust interface for reporting purposes.
• Expanded platform and array support: CommandCentral 4.2 software offers expanded support and visibility into software and hardware systems from IBM, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, Oracle and Sun. Additionally, CommandCentral users can benefit from new internal and external array performance reports as well as application, database and replication reporting enhancements.
• SNIA SMI-S Certification: CommandCentral 4.2 software provides customers with a standard based heterogeneous management solution that can maximize the utility of existing resources, while allowing for the flexible and cost-effective deployment of new storage technology.