|
contents | hardware | |||||||
| Hitachi Introduces 21st Century Digital Archiving Solution Hitachi Data Systems has entered the "active archive" market by unveiling its 21st century digital archiving solution, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform. Where first generation content-addressed storage (CAS) solutions failed to deliver open standards based interfaces, seamless scalability and enterprise class levels of data protection, Hitachi is again changing the storage landscape with an active archive solution that addresses these long-standing issues. Just as Hitachi redefined storage virtualisation with the introduction of the TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform, Hitachi is redefining the digital data archive. The Hitachi Content Archive Platform is an active archive solution comprised of both software and hardware, which supports policy-based integration from many distributed or centralised repositories such as e-mail, file systems, databases, applications and content or document management systems. The Hitachi Content Archive Platform ensures secure archival-quality retention, preservation and verifiable destruction of content. Through the use of the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, users can leverage a set of common and unified archive services such as centralised search, policy-based retention, authentication and protection. E-mail, patient medical images or account information are critical digital records that must be managed and retained for operational, business, legal, or regulatory mandates. Companies that have purchased first generation content addressed storage solutions have found that they could not adequately scale to meet the growth of these files, preserve the integrity of the data or easily locate and/or retrieve this information in response to corporate litigation and electronic discovery requirements. While first generation CAS solutions require a proprietary API to integrate content-producing applications with their systems, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform uses open, standards-based interfaces such as NFS, CIFS, WebDAV and HTTP as well as storage management standards such as SMI-S—saving companies money on additional development and training costs associated with proprietary APIs. In addition, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform stores files in their native form with original names to ensure easy access to and retrieval of data over time. In support of the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, Hitachi has partnered with several leading application, file system, enterprise content management and database archiving companies to ensure interoperability for customers. To meet the growing demand for storing, preserving and searching digital records, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform scales to over 300 terabytes and supports 350 million files per archive, and can scale linearly with additional capacity—allowing companies to stay ahead of their growing digital archive requirements. Using proven high-end Hitachi storage functionality such as RAID in a storage area network (SAN) + array of independent node (SAIN) architecture, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform ensures unrivaled data protection. With 4 gigabytes of cache per server, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform delivers up to 5 times better performance than first-generation CAS solutions. Building on Hitachi Data Systems' Application Optimized Storage strategy of aligning storage resources with application requirements, the Hitachi Content Archive Platform provides an archive tier of storage where aged data on primary storage can be moved. Working with Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform or Network Storage Controller intelligent virtual storage controllers, data in the active archive can be offloaded from expensive disk to less-expensive ATA, SATA storage—improving overall application performance. As opposed to burdening customers by introducing yet another island of storage for content archives and yet another set of software tools and management interfaces, Hitachi customers will be able to monitor, report on and control the entire Hitachi Data Systems tiered storage infrastructure, including the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, from a single management interface, reducing operating expenses. The Hitachi Content Archive Platform is an integrated solution of proven software and storage systems: * Hitachi Content Archiver – The Hitachi Content Archiver, powered by Archivas, is the software component which provides the intelligence, policy-based control, authentication, preservation and protection of the Hitachi Content Archive Platform. The software runs on a pre-configured operating system which runs on industry standard servers. * Hitachi Content Archive Platform Storage – The initial Hitachi Content Archive Platform configurations leverage the Hitachi TagmaStore Workgroup Modular Storage, model WMS100 SATA-based storage system. The Hitachi WMS100 offers high capacity, easy-to-install data storage ideal for active archive environments. The WMS100 matches requirements for the cost-effective scalability, easy upgrade and performance in a small footprint while maintaining renowned Hitachi reliability. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Computing News :: home page |