SupportConnect - BrightStor SAN Designer Newsletter Version 04.01

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BrightStor® SAN Designer Newsletter
Version 04.01
April 01, 2004

In This Newsletter

WELCOME

Product News

BrightStor® SAN Designer Beta Program

Product Updates

BrightStor® SAN Designer v1.6 Update 7 is Generally Available

General Information

	>	BrightStor® SAN Designer 1.6 HP StorageWorks Switch Issue
	>	BrightStor® SANexplorer Helps Document Your SAN
	>	Storage Management Open Forums

Special Events

caworld^SM 2004

WELCOME
Note: BrightStor® SAN Designer now has its own newsletter. You are receiving the first edition of this E-News because our records show you are a subscriber to the BrightStor® Storage Management E-News. If you do not want to continue receiving news about BrightStor SAN Designer, do nothing. To continue receiving this newsletter, subscribe on SupportConnect ^SM or from the convenient link at the bottom of this newsletter.

Welcome to the first issue of the BrightStor SAN Designer E-News from Computer Associates (CA). We are the experts in "storage infrastructure life cycle management." There are four phases that describe storage infrastructure life cycle management: design, manage, optimize, and automate. BrightStor SAN Designer helps you graphically design and validate SAN configurations to help you design SAN environments from the ground up, or to implement changes in an existing SAN environment. Including a rich set of interoperability rules, design best practices and configurations, it saves a lot of time during the design phase and a lot of anguish during the implementation phase.

This newsletter will bring you periodic updates about all the research and analysis being conducted by our Networked Storage content team, relevant industry trends and events, and tips and tricks that we think may be useful. So, whether your storage project this month is consolidation, roll-out, upgrade, or performance analysis, make sure you have a copy of this newsletter to stimulate ideas, and a copy of BrightStor SAN Designer by your side.

We would like to thank all of our existing BrightStor SAN Designer customers and encourage those that are not yet customers to see what you're missing. Please visit ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=4590.

We hope that this newsletter gives you the storage knowledge that is encapsulated in our products and we look forward to your feedback.

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BrightStor® SAN Designer Beta Program
CA's family of industry-leading BrightStor® software just got better!

The new beta version of BrightStor® Storage Management products are specifically designed to save time and money, delivering a powerful set of features (below) to address the challenges of explosive data growth.

Storage design, planning, and change management
Storage intelligence and resource management
Storage infrastructure, fabric, and device management
Storage provisioning and work flow management

BrightStor Storage Management solutions deliver a powerful set of benefits:

Reduced labor costs with greater span of control
Increased storage utilization thereby accelerating ROI
Manage more with current staff through improved operational efficiency
Achieve regulatory compliance without breaking the bank

As a part of this beta initiative, we are also accepting applications for the next release of BrightStor SAN Designer. Besides added support for several new hardware devices, this release includes exciting new features that make the tool much more effective for designing and updating large SAN environments. You are cordially invited to participate in the BrightStor Storage Management Beta Program. By becoming a beta participant, you will gain firsthand experience as well as provide valuable feedback on new product functionality so CA can deliver the most business value and ship the highest quality product possible. Registration for the beta program and details on the new product features are available now at ca.com/betas. If you are interested in participating in this beta, please contact John Casey at 1-214-473-7104 or by email to John.Casey@ca.com.

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BrightStor® SAN Designer v1.6 Update 7 is Generally Available
New features include:

Cisco fabric discovery
1. It can now discover Cisco MDS 9000 Series of multilayer switches.
New shapes (see list of compatible devices on SAN Designer support page), including:
1. Bridges
2. SAN disk storage systems
3. SAN fabric equipment
4. SAN host equipment
5. SAN tape storage equipment
New design check plug-ins, including:
1. Cisco MDS Series switches
2. End-of-life messages if vendors declare end-of-life
3. Port check for Sun StorEdge 9970/9980 storage systems
4. WWN check if duplicate WWN are discovered
Enhancements to existing features, including:
1. Basic Compatibility Design Check is renamed Compatibility for Brocade Switches
2. Added StorageTek tape hardware rules to design check
3. Connectivity Check and Domain ID Check enhanced to include Cisco rules
4. Latest Firmware Check is brought up to date
5. BrightStor SAN Designer now supports Microsoft Visio 2003
6. A wizard is provided for StorageTek l180 and l700e
7. McData switches can be fully discovered
8. Discovery enhancements for Crossroads Bridges and Hitachi Freedom Storage

For customers on annual software maintenance, Update 7 is available at no cost and can be downloaded from the BrightStor SAN Designer Support Page: supportconnectw.ca.com/public/brightstor-sandsgn/infodocs/bssandsgn-7072.asp.

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BrightStor® SAN Designer 1.6 HP StorageWorks Switch Issue
Problem:
When you discover the HP StorageWorks SAN switch 2/16-EL using BrightStor SAN Designer, the switch is not recognized and dangling cables are displayed in the drawing.
(Issue 13151805)

Resolution:
To support customers using this switch, a solution is provided to display this switch as Brocade Silkworm 3800 switch. From the SAN design point of view, the characteristics of these two switches are the same except that for the StorageWorks switch one needs to purchase additional license to support a fabric with more than four switches. BrightStor SAN Designer can provide the correct shape of the HP 2/16-EL switch if there is enough demand. Please contact CA technical support if you would like to get a native BrightStor SAN Designer shape for the HP 2/16-EL Switch.

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BrightStor® SANexplorer Helps Document Your SAN
Always wanted a Visio diagram of your SAN environment without having to manually draw the entire topology? CA offers a free tool to discover your SAN topology. A component of BrightStor® SAN Designer, this free tool is called BrightStor SANexplorer. To experience the power of BrightStor SAN Designer, download the SANexplorer tool to better understand and document your SAN environment, available for download at:
ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.asp?CID=55451&ID=4590.

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Storage Management Open Forums
Want to meet and talk with storage users across the world? Check out the Storage Management Newsgroups after logging into supportconnect.ca.com.

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caworld^SM 2004
Learn and experience CA's BrightStor® solutions at caworld 2004,
May 23-27, 2004, Las Vegas, NV.

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