* How one bank solved an expensive data storage problem with NetWare
There’s a new case study up on the Novell Web site that outlines a NetWare-based service that could be useful when deciding what to do with your installed NetWare servers – or give you a reason to add new ones.
“Archiving in the Novell NetWare Environment in the Banking Sector” shows how a major U.S. bank solved an expensive data storage problem through the use of NetWare servers in combination with state-of-the-art file grooming applications from CaminoSoft and EMC.
Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) was all the rage some years ago when magnetic storage was much more expensive than it is today. The general idea was that files could be moved from “online” storage (the stuff you access on your server) to “near-line” storage (stuff semi-automatically pulled from, say, a tape drive connected to the network or perhaps an optical drive, when requested by a user) to “offline” storage (tapes removed from the drive and stored safely either on or offsite).
As the costs of magnetic media dropped (in 1991, for example, I was over the moon when I found 1GB drives had finally dropped to below $2,000 each!) the importance of HSM systems appeared to fade. I say “appeared to” only because I no longer paid attention to storage. But then EMC, founded in 1979, began to gain momentum in the storage arena.
Recent regulatory compliance issues (HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leech-Bliley, etc.) have brought storage back to the fore simply because of the inordinately large amount of data they require you to keep available for many years. Fortunately for NetWare users, HSM has been an integral part of NetWare for almost 15 years and innovative third party vendors such as CaminoSoft can connect that to cutting edge storage-and-recall platforms such as EMC’s Centera.
Read the white paper and see how this major bank not only reduced the time it took to access files as needed but actually cut expenses as a result. Then review your own file retention needs and policies as well as the potential costs (in both money and time) to recall archived material in response to current and future mandated compliance reporting issues. Maybe those NetWare servers can perform one more useful function for you.
