The three products highlighted in the accompanying review aren't the only ones that take advantage of HSM technology. A recent boom in HSM introductions includes stand-alone products from major storage management vendors as well as backup programs with HSM added. And makers of medium-specific storage management software are adding HSM or alternative technologies.
Cheyenne has announced
Hierarchical Storage Manager 1.0
, a product that should be available by the time you read this but wasn't ready in time for the review. Like the three products we evaluated, Cheyenne's HSM software will consist of a collection of NLMs that allow a NetWare file server to become part of an HSM environment. Cheye
nne says the new product will let administrators define a variety of migration parameters, including available server disk space, as well as file use, age, type, owner, and size. The software won't require a TSR agent, which means it should be able to work with files that DOS, OS/2, Unix, and Macintosh workstations create. Cheyenne also says Hierarchical Storage Manager will be able to demigrate files temporarily for browsing and searching.
Lotus Development, in conjunction with Kodak, offers the Lotus Notes: Document Imaging product (LN:DI, commonly pronounced ``Lindy''). LN:DI is a set of client/server tools for managing image files, which are often good candidates for HSM. LN:DI includes Windows client software that performs basic imaging functions (e.g., scanning documents, compressing/decompressing files, and zooming, panning, and rotating). The server component, which runs on an OS/2-based PC, manages an image database with integrated HSM. Before LN:DI, Lotus Notes treated document images like a
ny other type of file and replicated those files indiscriminately, a practice that could bring a WAN to its knees. With LN:DI, Notes stores images centrally and references the files via 100-byte pointers in distributed Notes databases.
Kodak also worked with Novell to produce a version of NetWare 4.x that has special support for image files. The two companies created Image-Enabled NetWare, a set of client components, NLMs, and APIs that implement storage management, server-based imaging, and a document management front end. Kodak wrote the storage management modules, which consist of optical media drivers (collectively called the High Capacity Storage System) and HSM capabilities (Mass Storage Services) for NetWare 4.x.
Alphatronics offers Inspire Migrator, which works in the NetWare 4.x environment and relies on the built-in data-migration API of NetWare 4. Alphatronics has much experience building HSM products for the Unix environment but is relatively new to PC LAN HSM. For now, Inspire Migra
tor can only use optical disks, but Alphatronics says it is working on a version that will support magnetic tape libraries. The program also lacks tools for monitoring hierarchical storage. If NetWare 4 becomes widely popular and if Alphatronics adds the planned features, Inspire Migrator will likely become a contender in the HSM arena.
Micro Design International offers EZ-Express, which uses the concept of SSM (Simplified Storage Management), rather than HSM. EZ-Express doesn't migrate and demigrate files for access by workstations, but instead lets workstations on the LAN treat secondary storage as mappable NetWare volumes. This approach, says MDI, allows transparent, direct access to the data stored on secondary volumes. The secondary storage can be any model of SCSI Express optical devices.
Another partial list of HSM solutions is Watermark Software's Watermark HSM, which adds support for optical storage to the company's Image Server software.
Hewlett-Packard has said it may develop a
full-featured HSM product. HP's move would be a natural one, because the company manufactures a popular line of high-capacity magnetic tape drives and optical jukeboxes.
screen_link (54 Kbytes)
The Emerging Faces of HSM
