As part of IBM's "Project Big Green" offerings, IBM announced new storage virtualization software, its System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software, to manage and consolidate volumes of business data.

"IBM is dedicated to helping its clients improve their information infrastructures through powerful virtualization technology," said Barry Rudolph, VP, Storage Stack Solutions, IBM. "We have been the leader in storage virtualization since SVC was introduced five years ago, and this latest version from IBM further showcases our innovation and represents our commitment to clients to incorporate green, efficient technologies into our storage portfolio to help clients manage the data center crisis of today."

IBM said its SVC 4.3 software includes the following features:

• Uses disk space only when data is written instead of reserving disk space for the entire capacity of a virtual disk
• Uses disk space only for changes between source and target data and not for the entire capacity of a virtual disk copy
• Stores two copies of a virtual disk on different disk systems
• Includes support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Mac OS X Server, as well as Pillar Axiom disk systems

"Power consumption continues to be a top concern for our key large data center clients and IBM SAN Volume Controller is addressing this with the most efficient storage utilization technologies," said Andy Slater, Chief Operating Officer, Tectrade. "Since its launch five years ago, SVC has continued to evolve, and SVC 4.3 now offers the Space-Efficient FlashCopy feature, which uses disk space only for changes between source and target data rather than for the entire capacity of a virtual disk copy -- a real benefit for clients looking to reduce their carbon footprint."