Legato Announces AlphaStor 2.0
Legato addresses physical concerns of storage management.
While many software products attempt to simplify storage management, few address the physical concerns of locating tapes and media recycling. A product from Legato Systems Inc. now better aids administrators in these tasks.
Announced in February, but generally available since December 2001, AlphaStor 2.0 is Legato's first major update since it acquired the original developer, SCH Technologies Inc., last year.
AlphaStor 2.0 works with Legato's backup-and-recovery package Networker to manage tape libraries. It allows servers to share tape libraries and manages backup tasks. In addition, it creates an index of individual tapes to track their use and allows administrators to set policies for the reuse and shipment of tapes.
Administrators who need to open the library and pull an individual tape can easily find it through AlphaStor's index. Enterprises that ship tapes to a remote location for archiving can use the product to track tapes that need to be shipped.
Denise Reier, director of product marketing management solutions group at Legato, says it plans to integrate AlphaStor with other backup-and-recovery products like those from Veritas.
AlphaStor consists of two components, a central server and client agents. The central server runs on a standard Windows NT/2000 server and routes backup requests. Backup clients can run on a variety of server platforms including AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Windows.
Reier says the management server doesn't need to sit in-band to manage tape libraries. Instead, it can manage traffic by communicating with the server agents. "It's non-disruptive to the customer environment," she says.