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Veritas brings storage software to Linux

The company announces its most significant foray yet into the Linux market, saying that its Foundation Suite now runs on Red Hat's version of the Unix clone.

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Stephen Shankland
2 min read
NEW YORK--Veritas has announced its most significant foray yet into the Linux market, saying its Foundation Suite now runs on Red Hat's version of the Unix clone.

The Foundation Suite, which long has existed for Unix servers, lets administrators more easily manage how a server communicates with multiple storage devices.

Veritas, which earlier had sold backup software for Linux, said at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo that later this year it plans to bring to the open-source operating system its "clustering" software, a respected high-end package that lets one server take over for a crashed comrade.

Some executives at Veritas, a leader in the market for software that controls storage systems, had questioned the maturity of the comparatively new operating system. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is warming to Linux: On Wednesday at LinuxWorld, the company quoted IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky as predicting that Linux likely will continue to be the fastest-growing server operating system for 2001, a position it's held for the preceding three years.

The Foundation Suite costs $1,500 for a single-CPU server. FlashSnap, which lets a customer make rapid copies of a storage system and quickly backtrack to them if something goes wrong, is an extra option starting at $750.

Meanwhile, Veritas competitor Legato on Tuesday said that it has released its NetWorker software to help run IBM's database software on Linux. The software enables online backup and restoration of DB2 or Informix databases.

The announcements join several others for higher-end use of Linux this week. IBM, which is leading the Linux charge, said it's nearly recouped last year's $1 billion investment in the operating system. And mainframe software companies have begun backing IBM's effort to spread Linux to this venerable but expensive server line.