Maestro: Manage

Simplify and automate storage management

Although many companies are striving to reduce the number of storage devices, most administrators are still burdened today with the complex and time-intensive task of managing a large number of heterogeneous file servers. Each device and its associated resources must be backed up and managed individually. In addition, any changes made by systems administrators to the physical location of files impacts the users.

Through file virtualization, Maestro simplifies and automates storage management across the enterprise. Using statistics collected about files, such as last access date, file type, and last update, administrators can create policies to automate file migration across heterogeneous storage devices. The policies can be run in real time while users are accessing or modifying the files being migrated. And, clients can continue to use the same file names after the move.

With the power of file virtualization and intelligent policies, systems administrators can perform file server software upgrades and replacements, capacity expansions, data migrations, storage tiering, and other file management activities—quickly, cost-effectively, and during business hours. Let’s take a closer look at some of these storage management functions.

Automate Tiered Storage. Most enterprises store unstructured content on NAS devices or file servers, organizing the information by department or business process. Although the majority of content tends to receive little use as it ages, storage administrators do not have the time or tools to sift through millions of files to perform manual migrations.

Using Maestro, administrators can create automated policies across all file servers and NAS devices to direct infrequently accessed data to lower-cost, secondary storage. Scripts can be defined to optimize file placement based on business-value, data protection, compliance requirements, and other needs.

Since Maestro preserves the location of files in the virtual namespace, users can still access the migrated files by the same pathname. By freeing up their most expensive storage for data that is frequently accessed and demands high performance, companies can defer the purchase of additional high-end storage devices. Creating multiple levels of storage for Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) becomes quick and easy with Maestro in your network.

Balance storage capacity—add or remove storage capacity on the fly. Some storage devices may be nearly filled to their limits while others have a large amount of unused capacity. Load balancing is important for balancing storage capacity and performance, but when done manually it can be extremely labor intensive for storage administrators and disruptive for users.

With Maestro, administrators can define policies to automatically move files to underutilized file servers to balance capacity. Users are able to access and modify files while the data is being moved to another file server. And, by rebalancing the load among file servers, your company can significantly improve the ROI of its storage investments.

Balance performance. Companies can optimize performance by creating a tiered storage environment or moving files as performance needs change. To accomplish these moves without impacting user access to data, systems administrators typically need to work nights or weekends.

With the Maestro File Manager, administrators can define policies to move files based on storage capacity, file activities or other statistics to balance performance in real time or create tiered storage—without impacting users or applications.

Match file types with most cost-effective storage device. Maestro’s file type policy enforcement ensures that high cost storage is only used for its intended purpose. The Maestro namespace may exclude the storage of specific file types, such as movie, image, or audio files which consume considerable space. Or, specified file types may be directed to particular storage tiers. For example, large temp files may be directed to a low-cost storage device without impacting user access.

Quickly locate files. With Maestro in place, it is easy to retain files on the most cost-effective storage device and retrieve files quickly. By improving file storage and access, your business can better comply with new government regulations for data retention and retrieval.