Features - Storage Innovations:

FalconStor IPStor SOFTWARE ADDRESSES COMPLIANCE, ILM

Further demonstrating its leadership role in the storage industry, FalconStor Software Inc announced the availability of the next generation of its awardwinning IPStor Enterprise Edition network storage infrastructure software solution, designed specifically to deliver the advanced data and storage management features needed to unify storage and ensure enterprise-level interoperability, optimize performance, enhance security, facilitate information lifecycle management and help companies achieve regulatory compliance.

FalconStor continues to invest resources in the development of enterprise class services that will set a new standard for network storage solutions, while addressing the growing complexities and costs associated with storage management for both networked and direct attached storage across Fibre Channel and IP/iSCSI. The company is also completing compatibility testing of IPStor with leading Intel and AMD 64 bit servers, which will allow companies purchasing these systems to leverage the storage services offered by IPStor.

"Today's corporate IT storage environments are having more demands placed upon them, with regulatory compliance and corporate governance initiatives as major factors," said Brian Garrett, technical director of Enterprise Strategy Group Lab. "FalconStor's WORMLock software in the latest version of IPStor is an intelligent, cost-effective and easy to use solution that delivers the essential functionality needed to help customers develop best practices for corporate governance and compliance mandates. WORMLock drives down total cost of ownership by utilizing existing disk arrays for WORM volumes as a cost effective alternative to optical storage and specialized storage subsystems."

The new IPStor WORMLock Option for NAS addresses regulatory compliance by enabling an organization to use off-the-shelf, third party disk arrays to emulate the behavior of traditional WORM media to meet internal and external data retention requirements associated with securing, protecting, and storing regulated information. It facilitates archiving and retrieval of files based on the write-once-read-many paradigm (WORM), and can attach a hidden digital signature to uniquely identify each file and protect it from being changed for a specified period of time. Once a file is locked, it cannot be changed or removed until the retention period has been met, and any attempt to access or tamper with a locked file (i.e., changing the system clock to hasten the retention period) is detected and logged. IPStor Capacity-on-Demand Agents for NAS also support WORMLock volumes for long-term data archiving.

The IPStor Capacity-on-Demand option assists information lifecycle management by optimizing disk space utilization and automatically performing real-time disk space provisioning based on policies. To ensure business continuity and prevent downtime caused by low disk space conditions, it also performs automatic capacity expansion of NAS shares, sensing when available disk space come close to a critically low point by means of a pre-determined setting.

The latest version of IPStor also incorporates many NAS and SAN storage services for optimizing and enhancing performance, and strengthening data protection for business continuity and disaster recovery. IPStor Enterprise Edition now includes new functionality for:

• Interoperability:

• The NAS Option delivers multi-language enterprise NAS services with industry-standard Directory integration (Microsoft Active Directory, Novell eDirectory) and support for trusted domains on Windows platforms.
• The NAS Option supports Samba version 3.0, with full unicode support for multiple languages.
• Fibre Channel Target Mode now supports LSI Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), optimizing utilization and improving SAN throughput.

• Strengthened Data Protection:

• Application-aware Snapshot Agents for Informix for Microsoft Windows and Pervasive SQL for Microsoft Windows help maintain data integrity during backup.
• FileSafe provides file-based remote replication of data on physical direct attached storage (DAS) and supports all major platforms and operating systems, while including an I/O Throttling feature, enabling IT administrators to regulate network bandwidth usage based on their companies' priorities, ensuring quality of service (QoS).
• DiskSafe provides real-time, block-based mirroring of data on physical direct attached storage (DAS), and integrates with IPStor Snapshot Agents to ensure transactional integrity and point-in-time consistency of data in active databases and message stores, while also supporting Group Snapshots to maintain database integrity across multiple disks or partitions.
• MultiPathing Option ensures constant availability of data on Fibre Channel (FC)-attached storage devices through the use of parallel active storage paths between the IPStor Server and storage pools, transparently rerouting traffic to a redundant storage path, without interruption, in the event of a storage path failure, while allowing IT administrators to designate storage paths that maximize efficiency and enhance system performance.
• DynaPath support for Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft's MPIO driver model, performing FC and/or iSCSI HBA transparent failover and fail-back services as well as load-balancing for application host servers, ensuring constant data availability and optimum I/O performance across a FC or iSCSI SAN.
• RealTime Virus Scanning Option for NAS leverages advanced antivirus technology from Trend Micro.

"Businesses have an increasing need to manage their data as part of a lifecycle or process for regulatory compliance and storage quality of service, in addition to the requirement of business continuity and disaster recovery planning," said John Lallier, FalconStor vice president of technology. "FalconStor continues to extend its reach with new features that increase efficiency, minimize downtime, and lower storage management costs, while targeting fundamental storage management issues today's enterprise customers face."