F5 Expands Acopia File Virtualization

F5 Networks, Inc. announced the general availability of its F5 Acopia FreedomFabric Network Operating System Software Version 3.0. In addition, the company today announced a new product, the F5 Acopia FreedomFabric Network Manager,
delivering the industry’s first independent management platform for
intelligent file virtualization networks. Together, they help customers
better manage the growth, complexity, and escalating expense of their
file data storage. The F5 Acopia family of products extends Application
Delivery Networking to include automated management of the data storage
layer, and today’s announcement is another milestone in F5’s continued
execution of this strategy.

"IT professionals are really
starting to see the benefits of infrastructure virtualization at every
level. With the addition of F5’s Acopia File Virtualization
services, IT professionals finally have the ability to really harness
all the power of virtualization-from servers to data. Adding Acopia has
made F5’s network virtualization service offerings among the most
complete in the entire industry," said Mark Bowker, an analyst with
Enterprise Strategy Group.

Highlights of the new F5 Acopia offerings include:

Virtual Snapshots
FreedomFabric
Network Operating System v3.0 offers an enterprise-class implementation
of heterogeneous virtual snapshots. Snapshots are replicas of data as
it existed at a specific point in time. Using this new functionality,
administrators instantly can create snapshots spanning many
heterogeneous filers. Users and applications then have direct access to
these federated snapshots for many uses including backup, replication,
and recovery of accidentally deleted or modified files or directories.
The process of creating the virtual snapshot is transparent to end-user
workflow. Without this functionality, snapshots cannot span multiple
heterogeneous filers. This forces administrators to follow complex,
often manual and disruptive, processes to protect their large file
infrastructures, restricting them to single vendor implementations.

Independent Management Platform
FreedomFabric
Network Manager is the industry’s first independent management software
platform for file virtualization. Running on an industry standard
server, FreedomFabric Network Manager provides the foundation for
managing policies across multiple distributed file virtualization
systems in large enterprises, greatly simplifying deployment and
operations, reducing errors, and lowering operational costs.

"Once
in production, it became obvious to us that we should leverage F5
Acopia virtualization across our entire datacenter environment," said
Stephen R. O’Neill, Vice President of Technology, Oversee Domain
Services. "For Oversee, the F5 Acopia solution has simplified data
management and helped keep our budget in check. This new functionality
means we won’t have to manage separate filers and individual snapshots.
I will now have unified access across all my systems-making life that
much easier."

F5
Networks