News

posted on 28 February 2008 12:14

Hitachi Data Systems' Content Archive Platform disk archive hardware and Atempo's ARCHIVE Server software are available as a combined product for long-term, disk archiving of unstructured file data. Software from HDS OEM ARchivas does not feature in this integrated product.

HDS' CAP does not use content-addressed storage (CAS) technology like EMC's Centera and its imitators. Instead archive data is stored in its original file format and managed at the object level. There is no proprietary API-only interface to data stored in the archive as is the case with Centera. The product was originally built from HDS's WMS100 serial-ATA-based disk product or NSC55 virtualising disk storage appliance. It includes archiving software; an OEM'd version of Archivas' archiving product.

In more detail the product provides:-

- A WORM file system and time-base retention at the object level
- Authenticated content preservation with a user choice of digital signature or hash algorithms
- Embedded full-text index, search, and retrieval for content discovery
- Automated object-level remote replication
- Custom metadata support
- Content privacy (encryption of data at rest utilizing patent-pending "secret sharing" technology)
- Standards-based interfaces, including NFS, CIFS/SMB, HTTP, https, WebDAV, SMTP, NDMP
- Duplicate data elimination
- Support for Hitachi's Universal Storage Platform V, Universal Storage Platform, Network Storage Controller, Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS), and Workgroup Modular Storage (WMS)
- Support for Hitachi Device Manager software and Tiered Storage Manager software for reporting of Content Archive Platform metrics
- Highly scalable with up to 32 billion objects (such as files or emails), and up to 20 petabytes of total data archiving
- High-availability with no single point of failure based on SAIN architecture (reliable SAN storage with an array of independent nodes)

Atempo’s file archiving software, Atempo Archive Server, was introduced in 2007 to provide for the long-term protection of critical data assets. The company bought Lighthouse Global Technologies amd its E-Trail Digital Archive e-mail archiving technology earlier this month. With regulatory compliance and e-Discovery requirements driving the need for e-mail retention, the integration between file and e-mail archiving has become critical.

E-Trail Digital Archive is a feature-rich retention, retrieval and compliance management system that archives e-mail and other electronic communications using real-time capture, batch capture, and by backfilling the archive from backup media in any format.

Atempo Archive Server (AAS) provides a centrally-administered, enterprise level archive featuring:-

- Open 3-tier software architecture, it enables targeted end-users to create and administer the archival of their data on the most appropriate storage resources, offering the required level of security and long term protection.
- Ease of Use: The user interface is totally integrated to the end-user desktop and very ease to use to enable them to archive and restore the data.
- Classification & Indexing: the data can be archived in personal archives or shared and is assigned the right meta-data information.
- Search: the restoration of the information is eased by advanced search capability of the meta-data available for the whole archive. (Individual or project-based).
- Long Term Protection: the data is archived on any type of storage media and using standard format. The architecture and the technologies used enable the administration of hundreds of millions of files.
- Automation: the data archival can be performed manually by the users or automated. In both cases, the metadata is automatically created.
- Central Administration: the administrator of the solution defines the structure and rules related to the archival policy for the enterprise.
- Data Lifecycle Management: depending on the evolutions within the enterprise, the archives can be reorganized, transferred or shared. Several retention management modes are available.
- Performance: in order to ensure that the best performance is met, the flow of data to archive or restore is handled continuously or in a differed manner after optimization of the requests.

What HDS and Atempo actually say is that "Content Archive Platform, the active archiving platform from Hitachi Data Systems, and Atempo Archive Server, the file archiving software from Atempo, have been mutually certified in order to offer a simple, integrated content archiving solution."

By integrating the Atempo software with the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, businesses can now apply a predefined data retention policy. The platform handles all the necessary interactions with AAS to ensure the policy is enforced, saving time and improving competency and reliability.

By off-loading data from primary stores the backup effort for data on them is reduced.

Comment: It is very necessary with an archive platform to have software for end-users/admin staff to use to select data on other storage devices for transfer to the archive, or to set up policies to do so, and to provide archive content search, retrieval and deletion facilities. That is why Sun is going the open source route to get such software generated and why HDS has partnered with Atempo although it has an existing arrangement with Archivas.