QStar Technologies Announces the Release of Version 4.20 of Their Storage Management Software Solutions
Support for New Blue Laser technologies, EMC Centera, UDF spanning capabilities, and Windows XP and 2003 added to storage solution products.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida, December 16th, 2004
QStar Technologies, Inc. today officially announces the availability of release version 4.20 for QStar HSM, Data Director, CD/DVD Master and CD/DVD Axxess products, enabling customers to manage large pools of data through a seamless hierarchical storage management (HSM) structure. The storage management products from QStar provide customers with a multi-tiered, cost effective approach to answering today's and, more importantly, tomorrow's storage needs by utilizing wide and varied storage technologies to their full potential. The software manages the movement of data from one tier to the next via access patterns keeping infrequently used data on the cheapest, most abundant storage device while still maintaining a clear view of every file in the filesystem.
The development focus for v4.20 was to add functionality support of the new blue laser technologies, the newest Windows operating systems, EMC Centera and the ability to manage hard disk and RAID space as a simulated jukebox, and improve UDF flexibility with spanning capabilities.
New Blue Laser technologies, UDO and ProData, have been added to the support list. Plasmon UDO drives have been certified as well as the Plasmon UDO Powered G and Gx series and Hewlett-Packard’s new UX series jukeboxes. Mixed media support for UDO and MO drives and media in the same library have been added. SONY ProData drives and the ProData powered jukeboxes from SONY, ASM and DSM have been tested and qualified.
New enhancements to the caching mechanism including more prefetching capabilities offer greater recovery options and more file level control. QStar has also introduced a new “grace period” feature that will make files read only after a predetermined amount of time. This option allows a company to lock out deletes and modifications to a filesystem to prevent data tampering and increase file security. Another new feature, dated mount, provides a procedure for mounting a filesystem in a read-only state to a previous date and time. The specified time can be to the second. Sets can now also be created without the storage device present. If the storage device should go offline or has not arrived yet, QStar allows the user to begin or continue writing to the set.
Adding the ability to manipulate hard disk and RAID devices gives QStar the flexibility to manage them as simulated jukeboxes. This functionality has also been used as the basis for supporting EMC Centera. The integration of simulated jukebox with the Centera API calls brings the capability to add these devices into the QStar storage hierarchy.
QStar has increased the functionality of DVD-R media by adding the ability to use UDF spanning. UDF spanning allows multiple DVD-R media to look as one large set. Underneath, every media surface is a compliant, standalone UDF filesystem. This allows applications to simply store data into a mount point while QStar manages the writes and closing of the media transparently.
New library enhancements include the ability of the administrator to manipulate the priority of each individual drive in a jukebox or library. For example, the first three could be assigned to writing duties while the other five are dedicated to reading only. This gives the administrator greater control of their individual storage environment. Defect lists can now also be built for all media types. This functionality which is usually reserved for DVD only configurations will now monitor all of the supported technologies. Greater reporting of individual media trends warns the user of possible future problems, allowing them to take proactive steps.
NFS support on Windows has been added. This feature facilitates greater heterogeneous environment use. Now sets created on Windows servers with QStar software installed can be exported and read on UNIX and Linux servers, without the need for a third party protocol package. Double byte character support(UTF-8) has also been added.
Additional hardware support across the QStar line of products in release v4.20 includes the JVC MC-R434U, Pioneer R7322 and DVDR7783, Panasonic/Matsushita SW-9572, SW-9582, and SR-8588 DVD Drives and DVD jukeboxes from BDT, xStore and the Pioneer DRM-3000. Also introduced is tape support for IBM LTO-2, SONY S-AIT and Quantum S-DLT drives and the Qualstar RLS, BDT, Overland Data NEO series, xStore and Spectra Logic libraries. These additions span the complete line of supported operating systems, which include Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, SGI Irix, HP/UX, Compaq Tru64, and Mandrake, SuSe and RedHat Linux as well as Microsoft Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003. Newly added operating systems and versions are Hewlett-Packard’s Tru64 5.1b, Windows 2003, Windows 2003 Storage Server, Windows XP and RedHat Linux 9.0 as well as 64-bit architecture support for AIX 5.1 and 5.2.
About QStar Technologies, Inc.
Founded in 1987, QStar is an international software company specializing in providing storage management solutions for use with advanced automated data storage equipment. The company's corporate headquarters are located at 99 NE Eglin Parkway, Suite #37, Fort Walton Beach, Florida 32548 (850) 243-0900 fax: (850) 243-4234, Web Site: www.QStar.com, with further sales and development offices in Europe.
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QStar Technologies and the QStar logo are registered trademarks of QStar Technologies, Inc.
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