The amount of data not in databases, like images, video and office productivity files are consuming increasing amounts of storage capacity and the quantity of these files is also increasing exponentially. As a result, enterprises are struggling to keep up with the storage capacity needs of this fixed content data set. The typical “solution” of just adding capacity to a production NAS like NetApp is not a viable way to meet this growth head-on.
For a detailed product analysis, "StrongBox Brings Integrated Data Movement To NetApp Storage", register for Thursday's Webinar "Breakout of NetApp Capacity Jail and Set Your IT Budget Free" and we will send you a PDF of the analysis today
One solution is to use product’s like Crossroads’s StrongBox to be an archive target for this data. These solutions integrate disk and tape to lower costs and provide access to data via a single mount point to allow storage managers to break the capacity upgrade cycle and reduce backup overhead.
The challenge has been how to identify and move this data to that archive, and efficiently do so on a continual basis. Today this data movement, if done at all, is typically a manual process. It has to be upgraded to something more automated to keep pace with unstructured data growth. It also needs to be made transparent to users so their productivity is not negatively impacted.
Crossroads has recently announced an option for its StrongBox solution that may be a potential solution to these problems. Its StrongBox DataManager solution can integrate with NetApp NAS systems, Windows File Servers and Linux NFS servers to automatically migrate data into and out of an archive.
Crossroad’s DataManager solution solves the problems that legacy data movement solutions have experienced:
- All of the components of the solution are from a single vendor and are integrated together.
- The solutions uses the published APIs that each of the vendors now provide in order to properly integrate into their respective operating systems. In the past, transparent data archive required that the vendor essentially “hack” its way into the operating system.
- All the metadata and all stub files are retained within the StrongBox, guaranteeing the availability and access to the content.
For a detailed product analysis, "StrongBox Brings Integrated Data Movement To NetApp Storage", register for Thursday's Webinar "Breakout of NetApp Capacity Jail and Set Your IT Budget Free" and we will send you a PDF of the analysis today
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Crossroads is a client of Storage Switzerland
Twelve years ago George Crump founded Storage Switzerland with one simple goal; to educate IT professionals about all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought after public speaker. With over 25 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS and SAN, Virtualization, Cloud and Enterprise Flash. Prior to founding Storage Switzerland he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators where he was in charge of technology testing, integration and product selection.
