EMC announced an upgraded version of its
content-addressed storage server, Centera, which is aimed at
financial services firms struggling with regulatory compliance
issues.
EMC's Compliance Edition of Centera is pricier than the previous
model - about $10 (£6.91) more per gigabyte of capacity - but has
improved software and hardware that allows IT administrators to set
up strict retention and deletion rules for e-mail and documents, as
well as added security with regard to access.
The server also uses Simple Network Management Protocol to
remotely notify systems administrators of problems within the
array.
At its most basic level, Centera incorporates inexpensive
Advanced Technology Attachment drives to keep the price lower than
high-end storage products, but uses software that creates a unique
27-character identifier for each document or image stored in the
system. A file with an identifier is created each time the data is
changed, so the data cannot be overwritten.
Roy Sanford, vice-president of Content Addressed Storage at EMC,
said the Compliance Edition of Centera is between 15% and 20% more
expensive than previous models. The list price for an entry-level
Centera system with 4TByte of usable storage is $148,000
(£95,261).
The Compliance Edition of Centera keeps metadata about objects
it is storing and uses that data to determine if requests to delete
information should be honored. For example, if a request came in to
delete an e-mail, Centera would first calculate whether the e-mail
had reached the end of its regulated lifecycle.
The array also uses a scanning algorithm to ensure that
documents are deleted, proof of which is required by the US
Securities and Exchange Commission's.
Brad Nisbet, an analyst at IDC, said financial
regulations covering electronic records retention and laws that
require chief executive officers to sign off financial reports, is
driving adoption of storage systems like Centera.
"The most significant change EMC made to Centera seems to me to
be the fact that you can set the retention period," Nisbet
said.
The latest model also allows administrators to set policies for
e-mail and document retention at the object level, meaning an
administrator can request that one set of e-mail be stored three
years and another for longer or shorter periods.
EMC is using the latest 250GByte IDE drives rather than the
160GByte IDE drives on previous models, for up to 32TByte of raw
capacity.