Global Namespace—provides users with a single, logical view of and access to files through a single drive letter.
Scalable, Enterprise-Level File Server Virtualization—designed to unify and simplify management of distributed file data through a consolidated logical view. Administrators can add and manage data shares while avoiding impact to users.
Designed to provide Non-Disruptive Data Migration—facilitates data movement and optimization of existing storage while avoiding impact to users.
Helps improve operations and increase productivity—designed to automate key data management tasks, including migration, consolidation, failover and remote site data management.
High User Access—designed to support business continuity by maintaining location independent user access to data in the event of a disaster at the primary site.
The challenge
The explosive growth of unstructured data and the associated proliferation of file servers and network attached storage (NAS) appliances have resulted in acute management challenges for IT administrators—as well as deteriorating data access for clients (users and application servers). Because every device represents an independent storage resource governed by its embedded file system, scaling these storage resources can become a significant challenge.
As presentations, spreadsheets and other user-and application-generated files accumulate, network storage requirements continue to grow. Storage administrators must determine how much storage is available and how much is in use, add new storage, balance loads, reconfigure existing storage, migrate and replicate data, prepare for disaster recovery, and consolidate storage—all without affecting users or incurring downtime. In addition, to find and access files stored on multiple machines, users must know the files’ locations, must be able to connect to each machine, and must use file shares and file-server names that can be cryptic and difficult to remember.
The solution
IBM System Storage™ N series Virtual File Manager® (VFM®) software is a comprehensive solution for managing unstructured file data. It is designed to provide data management functionality for server and storage consolidation, migration, remote office data management and disaster recovery features while avoiding disruption to users. It provides all of this functionality through automated policy-based data management leveraging a global namespace.
For users, it is designed to provide simplified and consistent data access, even when the underlying storage infrastructure changes. VFM creates a global namespace that aggregates distributed files located on IBM N series storage systems to present a single logical "pool" of storage. This helps enable you to easily and quickly change, add, migrate, or consolidate storage while avoiding impact to end users.
Because each device that needs to be managed independently can greatly increases the administrative costs in distributed file storage environments, VFM helps IT organizations simplify file system management, enhance data access, and reduce their data management costs. VFM helps enable administrators to increase data availability, minimize user downtime, optimize storage capacity, and dramatically simplify storage management; which can lead to a significant reduction in the total cost of ownership of enterprise data infrastructures. Virtual File Manager—Enterprise Edition takes advantage of the deep integration with IBM N series SnapMirror®, SnapLock® and Snapshot™ software to provide its rich set of data management capabilities.
Virtual File Manager is designed to automate key data management tasks such as:
Data migration and consolidation
Business continuity
Remote site data management
Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
Storage optimization
Data classification and reporting
Virtual File Manager provides IT administrators with powerful policies to perform the above tasks while avoiding disruption to operations or user data availability. By directly addressing the needs of both administrators and users, VFM can help to increase data availability, optimize storage capacity and simplify storage management—all of which can help lower costs of enterprise file-based infrastructures.
