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Hitachi picks up Brocade's file virtualization suite

StorageX spins into HDS

By Austin Modine • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise, 7th January 2008 21:14 GMT

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Brocade has cut a deal with Hitachi Data Systems to vend its storage management wares.

HDS will resell Brocade StorageX: a suite of applications that handles file management and virtualization (when it isn't driving against Speed Racer, of course).

StorageX gives a global namespace (that's presenting a single, logical view of distributed files) across numerous NAS boxes and multiple file systems. In a nutshell, it allows users to access files without knowing their location.

The software package also supports tasks such as data migration and consolidation, remote site data management and data classification and reporting. You'll also find non-disruptive data movement, which is nice. For instance, customers can migrate user data to a larger NAS box without remapping drives to point to a new server location. Such file virtualization is dead useful when dealing with loads of unstructured data. Or so we hear.

For those interested in the history: StorageX came to Brocade via a $60m purchase of NuView back in 2006. Brocade has since lent the software to IBM and has ambitions with others such as NetApp, EMC, Sun and HP.

While EMC has Rainfinity for file virtualization and IBM has VFM, for instance, that doesn't stop a vendor from shaking hands and selling Brocade's package as well. ®

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