Network Appliance gets snappy with storage

Storage specialist Network Appliance is unveiling new software and hardware this week in a bid to help companies to reduce downtime.

The NAS (network attached storage) outfit will be introducing a disk-based back-up and archiving appliance, called NearStore R100. It will also unveil software for mirroring, replicating and restoring data.

The software products are named SnapMirror, SnapRestore and SnapVault. The products are designed to help protect enterprise resource planning applications (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and financial and telecomm applications.

Network Appliance has developed a first of its kind NAS/SAN software named Snap Manager for Exchange 2000. The SnapManager works by taking instructions from the storage hardware interface called SCSI (small computer system interface) and then sends the data back to the relevant storage device where these commands are processed.