The Fujitsu ETERNUS2000 and ETERNUS4000 Storage Systems were recently designated as Microsoft Simple SAN (Storage Area Network) components. The Simple SAN program is designed to simplify SAN installation and reduce the costs of Windows server environments by reducing their complexity. 

The Simple SAN designation provides further proof of the simplicity and ease of use of the ETERNUS Disk Storage Systems. To read more about the ETERNUS systems and the Simple SAN designation, go to this link. 

This month in Bridging the Gap, we focus on the Fujitsu storage systems and the CentricStor VTL storage solution. As the global effort to go green picks up momentum and as energy costs increase, Fujitsu offers a storage solution that dramatically decreases the energy needs by spinning down infrequently accessed RAID groups. The associated white paper provides a great explanation of the technology.
For those of you who would like an easy-to-understand explanation of the Fujitsu storage systems, we’ve provided a link to a new online video. You will also read about how the University of Delaware relies on the ETERNUS4000 storage systems to perform its mission-critical backups, and how the CentricStor v.4 was named a top VTL market leader.
We’re proud to announce that Fujitsu has been named as one of the top Green-IT Companies for 2008 by ComputerWorld, and you will learn about Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation’s new deal with Tech Data Corporation, which will now offer the Fujitsu line of highly reliable mobile PCs. We’re also proud of the fact that the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) has for the second year in a row, named Keith Swenson, Fujitsu Computer Systems’ vice president of research and development, as the WfMC’s vice chairman (Americas) and technical committee chairman.
We hope you enjoy this Bridging the Gap newsletter, and would like you to send us any comments or suggestions for improving it.
Richard McCormack
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation

Fujitsu has long been in the vanguard of environmentally-responsible companies that understand the vital importance of protecting the globe. In a recently published white paper, Fujitsu details the steps it has taken to lower the energy demands of its ETERNUS storage systems. 

In its statement of scope, the paper notes: “Today, because of strong demand for storage capacity, customers are faced with serious issues of power and cooling in their data centers. The density of today’s storage systems, the insatiable demand for storage and the rising cost of energy are forerunners of an impending energy crisis in the data center. 

“Analysts predict that data centers will soon reach their capacity limits in terms of power and air conditioning. This may impose tight restrictions on companies who want to expand their business but also need to substantially increase IT support in growing market segments, if there are no changes in the energy efficiency of IT systems and their operation. Gartner predicts that within the next several years, half of the world’s data centers will become obsolete because of power and space restrictions and that energy costs will eat up to one-third of IT budgets. Gartner forecasts that in 2008, 50% of all data centers will no longer be able to meet the power and cooling requirements of their IT systems.” 

To read the entire white paper about this enormously important subject, go to this link. 

On February 4, Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation announced that ComplianceEase, a division of LogicEase Solutions Inc., has standardized on a Fujitsu ETERNUS(R) storage area network (SAN) and Fujitsu SPARC(R)-based servers running the Solaris(TM) operating system to power its industry-leading risk management platform, including ComplianceAnalyzer(R), a hosted web-based automated compliance solution for the financial services industry. With Fujitsu, ComplianceEase(R) now enjoys unmatched support from the Fujitsu Customer Services team, and has further augmented the level of performance and reliability demanded by its annual SAS70 audit. 

Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, ComplianceEase serves the mortgage industry with a patented, web-based automated solution that uses advanced reasoning and decisioning technologies as well as natural language processing to review residential mortgages for regulatory compliance in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches. The company’s success is directly tied to the performance and reliability of its IT systems. 

“We needed to upgrade our systems with the most current technology for better performance, reliability and security, and with our annual SAS70 Type II audit of internal controls on the horizon, the timing was ideal,” said Jason Roth, SVP Product Development & Engineering at ComplianceEase, referring to the third-party assurance certificate program developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). 

To read the entire press release about the Fujitsu-ComplianceEase arrangement, click here. To learn more about ComplianceEase, be sure to visit their web site. 

CentricStor’s position as a top market leader in an independent, cross-vendor study of virtual tape appliances crowns the recent launch of Version 4 by Fujitsu Siemens Computers.
In a report published January 31^st, “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Open Systems Virtual Tape Libraries, Q1 2008”, CentricStor was named by Forrester Research as a top market leader, based on evaluation of 12 vendors based upon 58 criteria.
In addition to a top score for its strategy, the Forrester report states that “Fujitsu Siemens Computers leads for its host support, architecture, and tape integration”. Furthermore, the report states: “As a major systems vendor in Europe, Fujitsu Siemens Computers has a solid installed base of more than 300 customers and more than 500 VTLs, mostly in large enterprises. It has solid growth in new customers and one of the highest percentages of repeat customers.”
Dr Helmut Beck, Vice President Storage at Fujitsu Siemens Computers, comments: “Being awarded a position as a leader for CentricStor Version 4 from independent research is gratifying. The Forrester report acknowledges our unique architecture, the support for both mainframe and open systems allowing real tape consolidation, and CentricStor’s capabilities for embracing tape and therefore reducing the cost of managing tape dramatically and making tape fit for ILM. Having passed 500 installations, we have grown CentricStor into a world-class enterprise storage solution.”
The new version of CentricStor provides the industry’s biggest backup capacities – starting with the biggest VTL cache, which now scales up to a massive one Petabyte – and a trebling of the number of logical volumes that can be processed in one system, from 500,000 to 1,500,000.
About CentricStor: CentricStor is the first virtual tape solution that provides intelligent data protection by storing all enterprise backup data autonomously on disk or on tape. This unique dual-target storage solution exploits the best of disk and tape in a seamless manner. Making tape fit for Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), enterprise data protection can be flexibly aligned to different Service Level Agreements (SLA). CentricStor offers superior connectivity with True Tape Virtualization and enables outstanding reductions in TCO by consolidating all backup storage devices. The powerful CentricStor Grid Architecture features unmatched scalability and disaster resilience for every type of data center. To read more about CentricStor, be sure to go to this link.

Fujitsu focuses on developing total network storage products and services that execute your mission critical requirements in the best way possible. They not only protect your essential data assets, but also provide the functions and performance that allow you to use the right data at the right time. 

If you would like a quick overview of the Fujitsu ETERNUS storage systems, there is a 12 minute introductory video go at this link on the Fujitsu web site. This video provides an easy-to-understanding overview of the characteristics, development, and features of the ETERNUS storage systems. 

The University of Delaware needed an enterprise-class storage solution for backup and recovery of critical academic and administrative data. The University required a highly reliable, capacity-intensive, and scalable solution that was also cost-effective. 

The ETERNUS®4000 Model 500 is used for mission-critical backup services and intermediary disk storage for disk-to-disk backup. Currently, the ETERNUS4000 is backing up 250 servers across the entire university. Directly attached to a server that runs EMC Networker, the ETERNUS4000 is used to back up academic research, Oracle databases for PeopleSoft applications, email and Web servers, and the library catalogue. 

Fibre Channel (FC) compatibility and FC disk drives increase performance and redundancy as well as provide greater storage capacity at a lower cost. Leveraging the ETERNUS4000, the University can recover lost data much more quickly, and has noticed a significant reduction in the time required to copy to tape. Having capacity scalability has also proven to be a benefit, enabling the University to grow its storage as needs evolve. The excellent support provided by the Fujitsu team has also proven to be a major advantage. 

To read the entire University of Delaware case study, go to the ETERNUS case studies site. 

The density of today’s storage systems, the insatiable demand for storage, and the rising cost of energy are harbingers of an impending energy crisis in the data center. It has been predicted that within the next several years, half of the world’s data centers will become obsolete due to power and space constraints, and that energy costs will eat up to one-third of IT budgets.
Over the past decade, Fujitsu has addressed the growing need for “green” technology by embedding the vision of environmental awareness into its corporate DNA with ecologically responsible product design and technology leadership.
ETERNUS storage systems from Fujitsu have been designed to accommodate the power and ecological demands of our customers.  As a leader in delivering RoHS-compliant storage, Fujitsu recognized the need to tackle the problem of toxic e-waste, and continues to demonstrate insight and leadership by addressing rising power demands and consumption. With LUN migration, concatenation, and expansion capabilities, ETERNUS’ Virtual LUNs deliver the ability to improve capacity utilization, which results in reduced demand and consequent power savings. 
All ETERNUS storage systems support MAID’s (Massive Array of Idle Disks). MAID for Green ROI allows customers to configure ETERNUS to spin-down selected drives by RAID group—thereby creating a third tier of addressable storage space ideal for archiving and low-availability requirements. MAID provides increased energy conservation and natural cooling by deferring disk spindle up-time. When you measure the cost of running other storage systems against ETERNUS you will see a measurable saving which improves as the amount of data you need to store increases. MAID is particularly useful in situations where there is a system sleep period during which data is not being accessed. The power savings can be significant. With effective use of MAID, customers may realize power savings as high as 20% from their ETERNUS storage. 

For more information on E4000/8000, please visit our ETERNUS website.