HSM software. What do you use?

growse · 15 Mar 2011 at 10:03

Following on from this thread (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18244553), I've been told that I'm actually looking for an HSM solution.

There seems to be a bunch of different HSM options, all of them expensive. So I thought I'd ask here: What HSM do you use, how much did it cost, and is it any good?

bluebox · 15 Mar 2011 at 22:00

It's a bit of a shameless plug but we've just launched a new product that is an archive appliance.
It appears on the network as an NFS share and you chuck data onto it. It then gets automatically migrated from Tier 1 storage to Archive MAID storage. The great thing about it is if your users are happy moving the data to the NFS share then you don't need any other software. It starts at 156TB useable and scales up to 1.4PB useable in a single rack.

growse · 15 Mar 2011 at 22:45

bluebox said:
It's a bit of a shameless plug but we've just launched a new product that is an archive appliance.
It appears on the network as an NFS share and you chuck data onto it. It then gets automatically migrated from Tier 1 storage to Archive MAID storage. The great thing about it is if your users are happy moving the data to the NFS share then you don't need any other software. It starts at 156TB useable and scales up to 1.4PB useable in a single rack.

Oooh, tell me more - which company / product etc.? Can you archive to a tape library?

At the moment, I've got a shortlist of:

Microsoft Remote Storage Service (Win 2k3 only)
XenData X64 (Again, Win2k3 only)
Oracle SAM-FS / QFS

Microsoft's is free, which is good. But no idea how well it works.

XenData looked impressive in a demo, but getting hold of an eval or pricing is impossible.

As for SAM-FS, I thought that it had been opensourced, but know the latest version is 5.x, and can only find a 4.5 eval ISO. And even that won't install on Nexenta, which is my only Solaris-based box.

Everything else (DataXtender, TSM) has mostly people advising to steer clear of, either because they're too expensive, too complex or will just make me cry

bluebox · 15 Mar 2011 at 23:05

If you google Arcfiniti it should be top of the list. Although the appliance is new it's based on stuff that we've had working in customers for a while so it's not bleeding edge.
Archive to tape is do-able but to be honest the MAID is really green with only 25-50% of the disks spinning as a maximum.
I work with the team who developed it here in the UK so drop me a message if you've got any questions.