Symantec Advances Data Center Automation Strategy With Veritas Server Foundation

Market Wire, May, 2007

Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced new enhancements to Veritas Server Foundation, a product family which improves application availability, automates common server management tasks, controls configuration changes, and optimizes server utilization. The latest release of Server Foundation will address today's data center challenges and builds further on Symantec's vision for comprehensive Data Center Automation. New features include workflow automation and configuration control capabilities to help minimize downtime, automate and standardize execution of critical server management processes, and provide increased visibility across the data center.

Data centers have experienced a dramatic increase in complexity due to the growing number of servers, increase in multi-tier application deployments, and the proliferation of virtualized environments. While systems and information management requirements continue to grow, tight resource constraints hold IT budgets and headcount flat, resulting in the need to automate critical IT processes that must be performed to maintain optimal service levels and availability across the data center.

The Server Foundation suite includes four products which discover in detail what is running on all servers in the data center, actively manage and administer those servers, and ensure that mission-critical applications running on those servers are available. Veritas Cluster Server is the market-leading cross-platform clustering solution(1) for high availability and disaster recovery. Veritas Configuration Manager provides holistic application discovery, accurate dependency mapping and real-time change tracking. Veritas Provisioning Manager automates the deployment and configuration of servers and applications including cross-platform patch management. Veritas Application Director provides runtime control of applications and virtual machines.

"Today's data center managers are embracing automation to maximize agility and control of their IT operations," said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president, Server Foundation product group, Symantec. "With sophisticated workflow and expanded configuration control capabilities, the latest release of Server Foundation addresses the challenges of increased complexity across the data center and represents a step forward in delivering on our vision for comprehensive data center automation."

New Workflow Engine Streamlines Critical Data Center Processes and Minimizes Planned Downtime

Operating today's data centers requires data center managers to execute complex processes consistently and efficiently across multiple IT groups. These processes can range in scope from basic tasks like application deployments to full Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes such as change or release management. These complexity and coordination challenges can result in errors that entail costly re-work, delays and outages caused by missed organizational handoffs, longer maintenance windows, and an inability to define or enforce IT policies consistently across the data center.

Server Foundation's new workflow engine addresses these challenges by coordinating notifications and providing user input between IT groups, enabling users to define and enforce IT standards while driving task automation at the infrastructure level. All three layers of automation are easily controlled using a workflow modeler with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.

While other tools focus on runbook automation (which automates action but is not flexible enough to accept user input) or process automation (which coordinates handoffs, but cannot reach into the infrastructure to do true task automation), Server Foundation enables both end user orchestration and infrastructure automation. Furthermore, it does this with deep automation capabilities not only at the server layer, but at the storage layer through integration with Veritas Command Central Storage.

"Data centers have become more complex, difficult to manage, and challenging to control. Yet, service level expectations continue to rise even as IT budgets remain relatively flat," said Brian Babineau, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "Clearly, next-generation data centers require management tools that reduce complexity, ensure availability, and improve efficiency and productivity without adding significant cost. Symantec is providing organizations the opportunity to take the next step in improving data center management with its latest release of Veritas Server Foundation."

New Configuration Control Capabilities Improve Application Availability

Changes deployed to the IT environment are a common cause of downtime in data center environments. These changes cause downtime due to configuration drift, which can happen in one of the following three ways. The first common scenario occurs when changes are deployed to production environments. If the changes are not reapplied to the pre-production environment, the testing environment becomes invalid. Another example is when changes such as patches are not deployed consistently across clustered environments, leading to unreliable failovers. Finally, configuration inconsistencies between production and disaster recovery environments can often render the environment unable to function effectively when needed.