The more information technology (IT) changes, the more our IT problems stay the same. I remember when I visited clients in the early 2000’s, they were concerned about the cost of data growth, and security, consolidation and migration of enterprise data to faster, cheaper, and easy-to-manage centralized storage platforms. 

Well, IT professionals of distributed enterprises who are considering IT Modernization or Cloud as a key IT initiative today are also seeing similar problems in their IT infrastructure, thanks to many years of network attached storage (NAS) capacity upgrades, the addition of new NAS devices resulting in filer sprawl, and complex data replication and backup/DR processes for exploding unstructured data and backup pools[1]. These problems are especially frustrating when IT professionals realize that 80+ percent of files in these pools have never been modified since they were created and are accessed only a few times a year.

Today IBM is introducing IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) File Access to allow our clients to “drain the NAS” as part of their IT Modernization or Hybrid Cloud initiatives. This software-defined storage solution enables enterprises to discover and migrate infrequently accessed files and active archiving workloads from existing NAS devices to COS on-premises or in private or public IBM Cloud. It helps lower the cost of storage for a variety of file archiving use cases, including video surveillance, medical imaging, media asset preservation, and more.

By consolidating archive and backup data from 1 to 100’s of filers to IBM COS using a centralized browser-based admin portal, you can free up space on your filers for active workloads and decrease the backup window of your filers or NAS devices. All the files archived on IBM COS are now centrally located (no more data silos) and protected using geo-dispersed erasure coding to provide high availability.

IBM COS File Access is a virtual edge caching appliance that provides a standard file protocol (SMB and NFS) interface to enterprise applications to store and retrieve infrequently accessed files on IBM COS. The solution leverages block-level, source-based de-duplication and compression to accelerate data transfer over high latency connections, making it an ideal solution for long-term archiving needs from distributed locations.

For enterprises who are concerned about data privacy, security, and compliance, the IBM COS File Access solution meets a variety of international regulatory standards including the GDPR, and its cryptography is FIPS-140-2 certified. It can be deployed entirely within a customer’s firewall, or it can leverage the IBM Cloud object storage public service.  In either case, enterprises can be rest assured that their data is fully secure as it is encrypted at rest and in motion and, in case of any suspected data breach, it can be shredded remotely. The solution also provides an ICAP antivirus integration option and infinite snapshots of file shares to recover from cyber-security incidents including ransomware attacks. 

Find out more about IBM COS File Access here and request a demo today.

Note: IBM COS FA is expected to GA later this year.

[1] Source IDC, 2020: Worldwide File-Based Storage capacity is expected to grow at 33% CAGR over the next 5 years.