Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) announced its  portfolio  support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, as well as powerful new  storage  management  capabilities  for Xen virtualization. Through its partnership  with  the  Linux  market leader, Symantec plans to provide its core  Veritas  Storage  Foundation,  Veritas  Cluster  Server,  and Veritas NetBackup  solutions  for  customers  as  they  adopt  the new subscription release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Symantec  and Red Hat are also announcing a collaborative effort to deliver rapid,  highly  trained  support  expertise  to  customers  through  joint engineering,  pre-release  testing,  and  a  unique  and  innovative shared virtual lab support model.

To  further  aid customers in managing their complex data centers, Symantec is  leveraging  the  open  source  Xen  server  virtualization that will be bundled as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and other Linux distributions to   launch   a  beta  program  for  its  Storage  Foundation  and  Dynamic Multi-pathing   technologies.   For   the   first   time  with  any  server virtualization    platform,   this   will   unite   best-in-class   storage virtualization and I/O multi-pathing with virtualized workloads, enabling a standardized,  centralized  management  model  across all workloads and all operating systems, physical or virtual.

Symantec  and Red Hat are unveiling a joint customer initiative, which will ensure  faster,  more  comprehensive  customer support resolution to better serve   enterprise  organizations.  The  innovative  cooperative  agreement between  Symantec  and  Red Hat provides technical support engineers remote access  to  Symantec  and  Red Hat testing lab environments, combining both companies'  server  and  storage  infrastructures  to address virtually all customer support requirements. In addition, technical support engineers are being  cross-trained  to better support joint customers. The result will be superior  support quality, integrated escalation processes, and much faster time  to  resolution  since  the partners can troubleshoot and fix customer issues together on the same hardware.

"With thousands of data center implementations on Linux, Symantec customers expect  enterprise-class  features,  performance,  and  service," said Rob Soderbery, senior  vice  president of Symantec's Storage Foundation Group. "Symantec is delivering on these expectations, providing solutions that offer the highest levels of availability while exploiting the latest capability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5."

"IT  organizations  are  eager  to  adopt  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as an effective platform for driving IT costs out of deploying and managing their infrastructure  software,"  said  Scott Crenshaw, vice president of Red Hat Enterprise  Solutions.  "The rapid availability of Symantec's complete data management  solutions  for  Red  Hat  Enterprise  Linux  5  as  well as our collaborative  support efforts will help ensure that customers will benefit from their new open source environments as quickly as possible."

Symantec  offers  an extensive range of security and availability solutions that  support  Linux,  including its Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Cluster  Server  product families. These solutions provide IT organizations unprecedented  visibility  and  control  of  the diverse server and storage assets  in  their  data  centers.  Symantec  also  offers  Veritas  Storage Foundation  Basic,  a  free  version  of  Storage  Foundation  designed for edge-tier  and  infrastructure  workloads.  A growing number of Linux users are  adopting  Veritas  Storage  Foundation Basic as a powerful, affordable tool  for  enjoying  the  dramatic  benefits  of storage virtualization and standardizing  their  data  center  infrastructure software. Users can find additional information at www.symantec.com/sfbasic.

"Linux  plays a critical role in corporate data center operations, so it is imperative  that customers have proven tools that enable them to manage not only  their Linux infrastructure but their entire heterogeneous storage and operating  system  environments," said Bob Laliberte, analyst at Enterprise Strategy  Group.  "Customers should be impressed with Symantec's ability to

perform  I/O  multi-pathing  in  a virtualized environment. This visibility enables customers to link applications to infrastructure in complex virtual environments,  providing  faster  problem  resolution  and improved overall control."

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