Untitled Document
SUITE SMELL OF SUCCESS
From STORAGE Magazine
Vol 4 No 05 - September/October 2004
Storage requirements in the enterprise are being driven along at a tremendous rate, making it essential that administrators manage their resources effectively to avoid expensive wastage and unnecessary upgrades, argues Dave Mitchell.
Disk quotas are one of the best methods of controlling storage usage and
Northern Storage Suite (NSS) provides a complete network storage management
solution, based around the concept of quota management.
When StorAge took a first look at NSS (see April 2004), we were very impressed
with the levels of features and integration of the modules, but at the time it
was a ‘work in progress’, with two of the modules still in development. These
have now been completed, so we take a first look at NSS in all its glory. Along
with the Quota Server, Storage Reporter and Storage Portal, you now get Storage
Assistant and Storage Chargeback components, which provide intelligent
housekeeping and the ability to pass storage costs back to users.
Quota Server is central to NSS operations, but all other components are
optional, so the suite can be easily tailored to fit a wide variety of scenarios
and requirements. However, the NSS topology depends on the other components you
choose to install, including the Reporter and ChargeBack modules, and requires a
Master Server and an SQL database, although for the latter you can use the
bundled copy of MSDE.
Storage ChargeBack can easily have a positive impact on disk space usage, as it
allows administrators to pass on the costs of storage to users. It gathers
storage data by disk, user or user group, creates reports on disk usage for
selected servers and calculates charges based on pre-defined billing classes.
Once a base storage cost has been determined for a class, you can add extra
fields that could increase charges incrementally as usage goes up. The entire
costing process is managed by ChargeBack, which will also issue XLS and CSV
reports, and even automatically produce invoices for users and departments. A
Projections tool complements the costing ,process as it provides a wealth of
reports on estimated future storage costs, based on current usage.
Support staff will appreciate Storage Assistant, as it can automate the more
mundane housekeeping tasks. It’s very easy to configure, as you choose the hosts
to monitor, select specific events and assign a number of actions. You could,
for example, use a calendar event to fire up disk defragmentation tasks on
selected servers at regular intervals or monitor pages on an Intranet web site
to ensure they are available. There’s much more, as you can also monitor NSS
system events, plus specific files and directories, and tie in events such as
directory replication, file copies and deletions, FTP and HTTP actions, and
email notifications. There’s no limit to the number of events and actions that
can be assigned to a host. And Storage Assistant provides a complete rundown on
activity, with views on real-time status, history logs and statistics, plus a
timeline graph.
These two new components complete the NSS picture and enhance what is already a
sophisticated storage resource management product. With Quota Server at the head
of the family, you can control disk usage with a comprehensive range of
policies, while Storage Portal can easily delegate storage tasks down to users
by advising them when their quotas are running out and giving them the
opportunity to do something about it. Detailed storage analysis is on offer, as
Storage Reporter provides extensive information on critical data, content and
the general status of storage on the network, whilst also providing good
trending facilities to help you keep in step with future demand.
Product: Northern Storage Suite
Supplier: Pillar Solutions
Tel: 01732 363670
Web site:
www.pillar-solutions.com
Price: Complete NSS Suite - ten servers - £1,850 per server
|
