p>Just two months after releasing GridBank 1.0, Tarmin Technologies has announced GridBank 1.5 which is expected to ship in Q3/09. GridBank is a policy-based Content Addressable Storage (CAS) solution allowing the indexing and archiving of enterprise data.

The key target for GridBank 1.5 are Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). Both MOSS and WSS allow users to collaborate and share data. User can create document libraries for projects or even create their own site when working on a single document such as a complex business proposal. This allows all relevant information to be captured in the one place.

The challenge of administering MOSS and WSS has been dealing with the duplication of data they create. Where users used to just keep copies of everything on their local device, they now upload everything to document libraries. If a user is involved in several projects that are related, it is not uncommon for them to save the same document in several libraries. As a result, both MOSS and WSS have created an explosion in storage.

This is where GridBank 1.5 comes in. Using a policy-based solution it can work through all your different MOSS and WSS sites and create an index of documents. Using its own hashing techniques, it creates a Unique ID (UID) for each file. Once it has completed the indexing it then begins to de-duplicate the data leaving just a single instance of a particular file. All other locations simply get a very small stub which acts as a redirect to the location of the complete file.

This indexing and stub approach is not only applied to live data but can also be used with archived data. The result is a significant reduction in the amount of data that is kept on disk. Should any instance of a file be changed, then GridBank will create a new UID and keep just one copy of the new file along with a copy of the old file.

For companies with multiple locations worldwide who want to eliminate any delay in retrieving files can have a master copy of each document kept at each site. This means that local retrieval is as fast as possible while not compromising the gains to be made from de-duplication.

GridBank works with both AD and LDAP to get user permissions and group data. Once files have been indexed you can tighten up access by applying additional policies over and above file system privileges. The policy-based engine can then be used to control document searching across all corporate data. This is done through templates which can be set either at the MOSS or WSS top level or on each document library.

Tarmin have added a shopping cart approach to the retrieval of documents from GridBank. When you do a search, it will show you all the possible matches. You can then go through the query result and select various files to be placed in your 'shopping basket'. When you have finished selecting files you can then have the selected files downloaded or opened with a single click of the mouse.

New features in GridBank 1.5 include:

• Seamless integration with SharePoint, supporting both Microsoft Office Share Point Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0.
• Policy management automation with extensive templating for more comprehensive SharePoint and file-based data policy-based management and storage. Templates speed GridBank deployment; administrators can also create custom templates for when new server resources are brought on-line.
• Support for over 500 file formats, substantially broadening GridBank index, search, and e-discovery.
• 64-bit versions of GridBank compatible with Linux and Windows Server 2008.
• Web-based management console to deliver enhanced access and flexibility to GridBank’s extensive management features.
• E-discovery, content indexing, and search for storage resources not migrated/archived into the GridBank infrastructure.
• Support for the Representational State Transfer (REST) industry-standard protocol to allow other applications to communicate with GridBank. GridBank also support for NFS, CIFS, HTTP, WebDAV, FTP and a number of other industry-standard protocols.
• Data classification reporting for storage resources not migrated/archived into the GridBank infrastructure. Included in the reporting capabilities of GridBank 1.5 are file type, usage analysis, capacity consumption, file aging, and a number of other important parameters.