Microsoft debuts storage middleware
eWeek | at | by Mike
Microsoft Corp. Tuesday announced new storage management middleware and numerous storage hardware partners for its upcoming Windows .Net Server 2003 release. The new software, Volume Shadow Copy Service and Virtual Disk Service, came to light earlier this year and were publicly discussed at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in April. "The VSS is about data; the VDS is about disks," Jay Paulus, a lead product manager in the Redmond, Wash., company's Windows .Net Server group, said at the Microsoft Exchange Conference in Anaheim, Calif.
In essence, VSS is a driver that application developers can write to for conducting storage hardware snapshots, Paulus said. However, it won't be used for actual inter-array virtualization. VDS is similar middleware for Windows for translating between applications and actual disk commands, he said.