New Version of PoINT Storage Manager

The new version of PoINT Storage Manager from PoINT Software & Systems GmbH provides integration of cloud storage services into an existing storage infrastructure.

Companies benefit from a link to cloud storage via a multi-tier architecture and therefore from advantages of cloud computing without neglecting data security. The storage cloud is homogeneously integrated – hence, the existing storage infrastructure is optimally supplemented. At the same time legal demands are fulfilled.

Cloud Storage as part of a storage infrastructure/concept offers companies an opportunity to meet today’s demands of daily increasing data volumes. Savings in IT expenses stand in contrast to increasing expenditure for data protection and information security. Such conflict can be managed by storage management solutions that help handling large data volumes and simultaneously support numerous compliance demands. An intelligent storage management solution should be based on a multi-tier storage architecture which is a hierarchically structured manner of data storage. It also allows organizations to meet compliance demands if IT budgets are stagnating or even decreasing.

PoINT Storage Manager which combines different local storage technologies (RAID, Tape, Optical) to a unique tiered storage architecture, now also integrates cloud storage services sensibly into existing storage infrastructures. Therewith PoINT Storage Manager functionalities inure to the benefit of cloud integration. In particular, data is stored in an encrypted manner – hence, also in the cloud additionally protected against unauthorized access. The PoINT Storage Manager realizes a three tier concept, existing of performance tier, capacity tier and archive tier. It migrates data automatically according to definable rules; so that data are always stored where it is necessary and reasonable.

Analyzing the lifecycle of data in a company shows a strongly decreasing data access rate with increasing data age, finally remaining at an unimportant level. In parallel to decreasing data access rates, respective data volumes are increasing. This leads to the demand that data should be migrated to different physical storage locations during its lifecycles as a general storage of information on high performance storage systems (e.g. SAS RAID or SSID) is far too expensive.

Such task is performed by PoINT Storage Manager by migrating data – according to its status – automatically to the most suitable storage tier. The storage cloud is homogeneously integrated into the archive tier and supplements the existing storage infrastructure.

As of Version 3.0, also the licensing model of PoINT Storage Manager has been simplified. It is now based on the managed data volume and independent of supported hardware.