Northern Storage Suite 8.5

Northern announces the release of
Northern Storage
Suite 8.5, featuring several new additions and enhancements to
provide complete control over complex enterprise environments. The
faster, more scalable 8.5 version offers identification of aging data
over time, enabling administrators to see percentages of seldom used or
modified files per host, volume, share, and user.

This broadens the new version’s support for HSM-managed environments,
enabling organizations to further maximize their ROI in HSM technology.
Indeed, one of the chief objectives in the new release is to facilitate
the easy integration and central management of an organization’s full
complement of storage technologies.

“The new version of Northern Storage Suite addresses a central
business challenge that today’s over-extended system administrators all
face: efficiently constraining massive data growth, aligning the value
of data with the cost of storage and extending the life of storage
infrastructure”, says Thomas Vernersson, CEO of Northern. “A
recent report found that only 35% of files are ever re-opened after
creation. With the new version of our suite, administrators can perform a
quick probe to identify files that are infrequently accessed or used,
and through integration with their existing HSM technology, have them
moved to less-expensive storage devices, while business critical files
are maintained on the organization’s top level, high-availability
storage devices. Combined with performance enhancements via the new
multi-threaded scanning engine, Northern Storage Suite 8.5 is a
significant new release and an indispensable tool delivering
cost-effective enterprise-wide user data management.”

Aging Data:
Discern Aging Data Trends for Storage Policies
The suite’s storage reporting component now offers administrators both
quick and deep visibility into aging data, enabling them to identify
outdated or unused files wherever they may reside. Administrators can
identify and compare the amount of data that hasn’t been accessed or
modified within customizable time intervals, i.e., the last 2 years;
with another interval, i.e., within the last 30 days. So, in addition to
managing user data based on user thresholds, data distributed across
volumes and file types, administrators can see percentages of seldom
used or modified files per host, volume, share, and user within
specified time periods.

The new version of Northern Storage Suite efficiently constrains the
massive growth of user data and aligns the value of data with the cost
of storage, extending the life of storage infrastructure.

Maximize ROI in HSM Through Managing User Data
The new version of the suite is designed to centralize an organization’s
core storage management technologies, beginning with its Hierarchical
Storage Management (HSM) aware Quota Policies and HSM support in the
Reporter GUI. Northern Storage Suite 8.5 allows administrators to set
quotas to control multiple tiers of storage or only the primary layer,
allowing them to easily identify and move ‘dated’ data to less expensive
or secondary storage while identifying and moving frequently accessed
files to more expensive storage, i.e., Fibre Channel storage. The suite
will address the full cycle of HSM, from clearly showing the potential
savings of implementing an HSM solution, via providing the possibility
to tuning the implemented policies using real data, to finally measuring
the efficiency of the HSM implementation. This gives administrators the
ability to correlate the value of data to the value of the storage
device, and maximize their ROI on HSM technology.

Faster, More Scalable: 2-5 Times Faster Scanning
Northern Storage Suite 8.5 also introduces next-generation scanning
technology, providing robust, multi-threaded file monitoring and more
precise resource utilization. The engine automatically resumes scans
from the point they’ve been suspended or interrupted (i.e., for system
troubleshooting or maintenance) without losing data that has already
been collected.

What’s New in Northern Storage Suite 8.5:

• Enhanced Storage Reporter with Aging Data: Administrators
  can immediately identify the amount of data that hasn’t been
  accessed/modified in the last 2 years, or the amount of data created in
  the last 30 days. Administrators see percentages of seldom used or
  modified files per host, volume, share, and user; they can easily
  identify where stale data resides and archive it out of the primary file
  system.
• Next-Generation Scanning Engine: Administrators can spawn
  multiple scanning threads; precisely throttle the resource utilization
  of Northern Storage Suite and resume stalled scans without losing data
  that has already been collected. Data collection is up to five times
  faster than in previous versions of the suite.
• Dynamic Reporter Interface: Users can choose list or
  graphical display, select which column to sort on and how to sort, and
  view in bytes or dynamic units. The customizable interface remembers all
  user choices.
• HSM-Aware Quota Policies: Quota policies are most commonly
  set on logical file sizes; this new feature will allow policies to be
  calculated and enforced on usage according to physical file sizes,
  offering HSM-aware quota policies.
• HSM Support in Reporter GUI: Administrators can choose to
  view usage according to both logical and physical size, identify usage
  across HSM tiers and expose stub files.
• Real-time Quota and File Block Editing: Quota paths and
  path exclusion rules can now be added, removed, or modified in a live
  quota. Administrators can also change File Block policies on-the-fly.

NSS is priced per host and capacity.