New Versions of SRM From CA

CA announced new versions of its storage resource management software for mainframe and distributed systems that help customers reduce the cost of supporting their complex storage environments and address critical data protection and compliance objectives.

CA SRM r 11.7 provides centralized management of UNIX, Linux, NetWare, and Windows-based storage resources across the enterprise – allowing IT staff to more effectively and efficiently allocate capacity, monitor usage, define and enforce policies, and troubleshoot problems. The new version reduces complexity by easing the management of environments with large numbers of virtual server instances through detailed reports about storage capacity associated with virtual hosts. It also features new management tools that help IT staff better utilize existing physical storage assets through simplified storage virtualization.

CA Vantage SRM r12 SP2 automates major storage management operations, including critical monitoring and analysis tasks and corrective actions across the IBM z/OS storage environment. It helps enable continuous job processing by predicting and preventing out-of-storage conditions. New audit functions enable IT staff to quickly pinpoint data sets that are not being backed up in accordance with corporate policies, which helps improve data protection and adherence to internal storage requirements.

Both products operate under a common user interface, enabling customers to visualize and manage their storage infrastructure from a single point of control.

Kawasaki Monitors Diverse Storage Environment
Kawasaki Motors Corp., U.S.A. is using CA SRM and CA Vantage SRM to monitor a diverse enterprise storage environment that includes Windows, NetWare, and Linux servers, an IBM mainframe, SANs from multiple vendors and a variety of applications including IBM Lotus Domino. Kawasaki’s IT staff uses the CA solutions to do everything from monitor excessive use of storage resources by individual users to centrally manage multiple error logs.

“CA continues to respond to our evolving storage management needs by making it easier for our IT staff to get the most business value out of every dollar we spend on storage capacity,” said James Grande, Computer Operations Supervisor at Kawasaki. “CA is also helping us address our IT budget constraints by making it easier for our staff to implement and use their management solutions.”

Enhanced Microsoft Cluster Server Support
Additional enhancements in CA SRM r11.7 include multi-path I/O support that helps IT staff reduce downtime and solve the performance problems that can result from I/O bottlenecks, especially in query-intensive data warehouse environments. In addition, enhanced Microsoft cluster server support shows how shared storage resources are used by clustered servers, making it easier for IT staff to take advantage of clustering for high availability and performance.

Real-Time Alerting to Changing Conditions
Additional capabilities in CA Vantage SRM r12 SP2 include real-time alerting to facilitate responsiveness to changing conditions that can potentially threaten the availability of mission-critical applications. In addition, support for CA and third-party solutions streamlines management operations that involve viewing storage in the broader context of other infrastructure resources and the business applications they support.

Release Synchronization
The synchronized release of CA SRM and CA Vantage SRM underscore CA’s commitment to simplifying and unifying product release cycles—so that customers can streamline the acquisition and deployment of software in their management toolkits.

“Because of the explosive growth in enterprise data, the effective use of storage infrastructure presents today’s IT organizations with some of the greatest potential gains in both cost- and energy-efficiency,” said Stefan Kochishan, director of mainframe product marketing at CA. “CA continues to enhance its storage management solutions to help customers achieve these operational objectives.”