Symantec platform launched at Gitex 2009; helps customers build and manage cloud storage infrastructure

This new technology has already earned ground-breaking results for file serving in Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) tests, far exceeding current benchmarks.

Now available, FileStore can manage and protect critical information, maximize system performance and scale performance and capacity non-disruptively as application needs change. Organizations of any size wanting to leverage private clouds for the benefits of availability and the ability to manage large volumes of data can reduce their costs with a platform-independent software solution combined with commodity hardware.

"We're extremely pleased with the industry-leading results and the unparalleled price-performance advantages of Symantec FileStore," said Jeff Reed, vice president of clustered storage at Symantec, who is present at the Symantec stand at Hall 3 at Gitex. "The SPECsfs benchmark demonstrates that FileStore software delivers the high performance today's enterprises need for their cloud storage environments without locking them into an expensive, proprietary hardware infrastructure."

A system using FileStore software yielded record results of 176,728 SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 operations per second with an overall response time of 1.67ms in the tests. The FileStore results, using currently available software, demonstrated 47% greater throughput and 14 percent faster overall response time than the NetApp FAS6080 results posted in August 2009.

Symantec currently deploys FileStore as the file-based storage architecture in its own cloud services, with more than 40 petabytes of online storage for more than nine million active users - the largest SaaS storage environment in the world. Symantec also uses Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows and Veritas Cluster Server to manage this backup storage. With FileStore, Symantec delivers reliable, high-performance online backup services at a fraction of the cost by driving up storage utilization rates and eliminating planned downtime required to scale performance, capacity or daily administration tasks.

With FileStore, organizations can add or remove storage dynamically without taking systems offline. FileStore integrates natively with Symantec's leading security and information management solutions, including Symantec NetBackup and Symantec Endpoint Protection. These services run directly on the FileStore nodes, thereby reducing performance bottlenecks, enhancing security and simplifying operations by eliminating the requirement for additional server and storage resources for backup and security.

A single FileStore system scales up to 16 nodes, and 2 PB of total storage. The product is designed to scale from entry-level configurations in affordable increments that match the IT organization's need and budget. A simple implementation process self-deploys and self-configures based on just a few administrator-provided parameters, yet meets the performance requirements of demanding large-file applications such as medical imaging and geophysical exploration.

"As a growing number of enterprises look for ways to improve storage efficiency and reduce management complexity of their growing environments, they look to leverage storage architecture designs already deployed by storage service and public cloud providers," said Noemi Greyzdorf, IDC Research Manager.

"In evaluating their options, enterprise storage managers must consider the cost, scalability, availability, manageability and performance of any solution that will serve as the foundation for file-based storage services. With FileStore, Symantec is poised to deliver a platform that will provide the essential infrastructure to address the evolving demands of enterprise storage environments," added Greyzdorf.

FileStore takes advantage of Symantec's market-leading cross-platform file system that provides the cornerstone of an effective computing environment, which began 20 years ago with the first journaled UNIX file system, Veritas Storage Foundation, and has continued to evolve with Veritas Cluster File System. FileStore provides a consistent foundation between traditional storage models and new private cloud models, designed to increase scalability to support multi-petabyte applications, while also significantly enhancing the resiliency of storage environments and keeping storage capital and operational costs low.

Symantec FileStore is available immediately.