Aug 10, 2012 : NetApp Launches StorageGRID 9.0

📅 August 10, 2012 - StorageGRID 9.0 with E-Series enables partners to build big data storage solutions with secure, predictable lifetime access to data.

NetApp, a storage and data management solutions provider, yesterday announced the release of StorageGRID 9.0 software, enabling organizations to adapt to data growth, manage big content, cut costs, and better share information.

The company states that StorageGRID software combined with its E-Series storage platform is designed to manage petabyte-scale distributed repositories of images, video, and records for enterprises and service providers. With the release of StorageGRID 9.0, it is the first major storage company to include support for the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) open standard that specifies a protocol for self-provisioning, administering, and accessing cloud storage. Building on its history of industry partnerships and standards support, the company provides native multiprotocol functionality to support a wide range of protocols, including Network File System (NFS), Common Internet File System (CIFS), RESTful HTTP, and, now, CDMI.

It further states that StorageGRID combined with E-Series is the foundation for the NetApp Distributed Content Repository solution that scales to hundreds of petabytes with billions of records across hundreds of sites in a single name space. NetApp E-Series offers flexible, high-performance, and very dense storage ideal for big data applications. The NetApp Distributed Content Repository solution based on StorageGRID and E-Series supports a single, unified repository for data with enforceable metadata-driven granular retention policies across multiple locations. Enterprises benefit from secure, large-scale, and long-term distributed repositories with predictable and timely access to data.

The company mentions that StorageGRID 9.0 enables the NetApp Distributed Content Repository solution to provide:

• Scalable multivendor repository strategies with support for the SNIA CDMI standard that enables the creation, retrieval, management, and deletion of data in the cloud
• Simplified enterprise data retrieval by storing hundreds of petabytes and billions of datasets in a single logical container
• Reduced data center space requirements with industry-leading storage density
• Lower costs through secure large-scale distributed repositories for unstructured data
• Improved business agility through scalable multisite content repositories

It claims that in today's era of big data, having access to the right clinical data at the necessary time is one of the challenges facing the healthcare industry. Medical organizations are looking at how to best address the rapid growth of medical images and other digital content, while adhering to privacy rules, providing access to data at remote sites, and maintaining regulatory compliance. Many of these providers turn to Iron Mountain, a Service Provider Partner that uses the company's technology, to provide their clinicians with long-term and predictable access to data and to consolidate diverse data sources into a unified cloud environment.

"As the amount and types of data grow in this new big data world, technologies like CDMI help our customers manage not only raw growth but also the increasing pressure to leverage data to gain insight across ever more distributed environments," said Rich Clifton, Senior Vice President, Solutions and Integrations Group, NetApp.

"Our healthcare customers ask us to help them deal with their rising storage volumes, as well as manage the retention and access for their medical imaging data," said Ken Rubin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Healthcare, Iron Mountain Incorporated. "In response to this, we offer a managed service that provides the dual benefit of controlling their storage costs while improving their ability to recover from a disaster. Our service, powered by StorageGRID coupled with the E-Series platform, enables us to deliver our customers cost-effective, long-term storage without compromising security or access."