Originally posted by: TonyPearson

Many often associate CAS with EMC's Centera offering, but with IBM's comprehensive set of compliance storageofferings, EMC doesn't talk about CAS or Centera much anymore.I covered the confusion around CAS in a previous post. When clients ask for "CAS" what they really are looking for is storage designed forfixed content, unstructured data that doesn't change once written. A lot of data falls under this category, such as scanned documents, audio and video recordings, medical images, and so on. Some laws and regulations further require enforcement that the data is not deleted or tampered with, until some time after an event or expiration date is met.

In the past, clients used write-once read-many (WORM) optical media, but today we have disk and tape offerings instead. Since the term "WORM" is inappropriate fordisk-based solutions, IBM has standardized to the use of the term "non-erasable, non-rewriteable" (NENR) to discusstoday's solutions and offerings.

Let's recap what IBM has to offer:

IBM System Storage DR550

This comes in both large version (DR550) andsmall version (DR550 Express).Both offerings provide NENR protection of fixed content data with your choice of a disk-only or disk-and-tape configuration. IBM also announced a DR550 file system gateway, extending the number of applications that can take advantage of this offering.

IBM System Storage N series with SnapLock(tm)

IBM has seen great success with the N series disk systems. A specificfeature called SnapLock allows some of the data stored to be NENR protected until an expiration date is met. As partof IBM's emphasis for "unified storage", a single N series appliance or gateway can manage both regular (erasable/modifiable) data with NENR data. Combining this with our recently announced Advanced Single InstanceStorage (A-SIS) de-duplication feature, and you get a very cost-effective offering!

IBM System Storage Multilevel Grid Access Manager Software

Recenlty, IBM introduced the Grid Access Managerwhich provides grid storage capability across multiple site locations. It is incorporated as part of IBM'sGrid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS),a disk-and-tape solution that allows healthcare and life sciences PACS applications to access medical images like X-rays across multiple hospitals or clinics.

WORM tape

A fourth option for NENR data is WORM tape. IBM supports WORM cartridge media in both the enterprise TS1120 drive as well as LTO3 and LTO4 drives. The advantage is that you don't need unique tape drives for WORM support. IBM drives can read and write both regular and WORM cartridges, and provide a cost-effective alternative to optical media.

As you see, IBM doesn't limit itself to disk-only offerings. Our leadership in tape allows us to innovate tape and disk-and-tape offerings that can provide more cost-effective solutions to store fixed content, retention managed data.The next time you have a conversation with a storage vendor, don't ask for CAS, ask instead for archive and compliance storage. Broaden your mind, and broaden the set of options and choices that might provide a better fit for your requirements.

technorati tags: ESG, analyst, Tony Asaro, EMC, Centera, CAS, IBM, system, storage, DR550, Express, N series, GAM, grid, GMAS, medical, archive, WORM, TS1120, LTO, LTO3, LTO4, NENR, fixed, content, retention