Veritas says Sun will dump DiskSuite But Sun says it ain't over till it's over

April  1997

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Click here to see the statement SMCC made Veritas issue as a result of this story

San Francisco (April 1, 1997) -- DiskSuite, the storage management software currently bundled with the Solaris operating system, is not in for the long haul, according to Veritas Software, whose Veritas Volume Manager is being touted as DiskSuite's heir apparent. Veritas Marketing Manager Roger Klorese, says that Sun, which already bundles Volume Manager with its SPARC Array products, will ship a Sun-branded version of Volume Manager, Sun Enterprise Volume Manager, within the next quarter. Sun has also committed to ship and support a Veritas-branded File System product in the same timeframe. Klorese says that a slimmed-down version of Volume Manager will then come bundled with Solaris as soon as Sun works out the migration strategy for its DiskSuite users -- a project that Veritas is apparently helping out on.

The whole DiskSuite/Volume Manager story is a bit of a prickly pear for Sun. Its hardware unit, Sun Microsystems Computer Company (SMCC), has been bundling Volume Manager with its storage arrays since 1995, while its software unit, SunSoft, has sold the internally-developed DiskSuite software with Solaris. Since, unlike Volume Manager, DiskSuite runs only on Solaris, it does little to further Sun's heterogeneous management story. Sources within Sun say that DiskSuite has suffered, too, from the recent exodus of engineers at Sun's Colorado Springs campus, where the product's development has traditionally taken place. The lack of engineers has reportedly pushed back indefinitely the release date of the next version of DiskSuite, which had been planned for this fall.

The official word at Sun, however, is that DiskSuite is still alive. Product Manager Donna Eastep cautions, "there are a lot of reasons not to make hasty decisions on this." But she admits, "we certainly want to give customers the option to move (to Volume Manager) if they want," adding "there are probably good reasons to do that."

Scott McIntyre, a product manager with SMCC, agrees. "We've had two volume management products for quite a while," he says, adding that "for the last few years we've had pressure from our customers to make a decision." Such a decision, McIntyre adds, will not come in time for Solaris 2.6, which is expected this summer.

Veritas says that Sun will also sell the forthcoming Veritas Performance Optimizer, now being beta tested by Veritas. Klorese says that the pared-down version will not include Volume Manager's online management capabilities. He expects that migration will be easy for the most part, but some features, like recovery may prove more difficult.

--Robert McMillan

Resources

• Veritas
  http://www.veritas.com/
• "DiskSuite-Volume Manager migration service now available as Sun expands its sales of Veritas product line,"
  http://www.sunworld.com/swol-06-1997/swol-06-sunspots.html#5
• SMCC's Volume Manager
  http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/servers/datacenter/products/storage_sw_sols.html#volume mgr Solstice DiskSuite 4.1 http://www.sun.com/sunsoft/solstice/em-products/system/disksuite.html

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URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-04-1997/swol-04-disksuite.html
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