Features - Storage Innovations:

NuView UNVEILS FILE LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

NuView Inc announced the general availability of File Lifecycle Manager (FLM), a policy-based data management solution that automates the lifecycle of files in networked storage environments.

FLM provides a simple and automated means for moving files between primary and secondary storage devices, enabling the creation of tiered storage architectures. FLM effectively counters the impact of both rapidly increasing primary storage consumption and shrinking backup windows, to deliver ongoing decreases in storage TCO and a significant ROI.

"If you took a picture of any average Fortune 2000 company, at any given time more than 60 percent of the total stored data would be a perfect candidate to be moved to a second or third tier media," said Steve Duplessie, principal and senior analyst at Enterprise Storage Group. "To date, it's just been too hard to figure out what to move, and how to move it, to justify anything but leaving it on the most expensive storage."

"FLM will enable enterprises to automate the lifecycle of files from creation to disposal," said Rahul Mehta, CEO of NuView. "For the first time, enterprises will be able to strategically align their file storage policies with their business priorities, resulting in lasting TCO benefits."

"We were running out of capacity on our primary NetApp Filers and yet we knew that over 40 percent of the files were not accessed in over a year," said Eugene Atteberry, manager of information systems at Mustang Engineering. "We found FLM easy to deploy and simple to operate. Within minutes, we were able to create various policies that enabled us to migrate the files to nearline storage without disrupting the users and applications. FLM enabled us to create a tiered storage architecture, thereby helping us reduce the cost of storage."

FLM allows administrators to analyze, classify, move and organize file data based on its access patterns and several other attributes reflecting business objectives, while providing users and applications with transparent access to the data. By using FLM, administrators can not only optimize storage capacity utilization, but also improve the performance of their primary disk-storage systems.

"NuView's FLM handles file migration and retrieval in a way that is transparent to applications and users," said Mike Fisch, director of storage and networking at The Clipper Group Inc. "This distinction not only provides a better experience for users, but also simpler installation and management for administrators."

Key Applications for FLM:

• Moving infrequently accessed data from higher-cost storage systems to lower-cost storage systems.
• Moving static data including reference information off high-performance storage systems. Examples include digital images, digital documents and data with legally prescribed retention and access requirements.
• Simplifying the backup process by reducing the amount of data and numbers of devices that need to be backed up regularly. The reduction in backup data translates into shorter backup windows and therefore higher data availability.
• Centralizing management of archival data spread across multiple secondary storage systems.

FLM's advanced architecture delivers compelling benefits to IT organizations faced with rampant growth in data. Through its intelligent policies, management automation, and centralized web-based operation, FLM simplifies the creation of tiers of storage, enabling enterprises to optimize existing storage investments and leverage lower-cost secondary storage platforms.