White Paper File and Networking Services
Novell File Management Suite An overview of the three products comprising the Novell® File Management Suite
Table of Contents page Addressing Network Storage Growth through a “Find, Manage and Relocate” Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Find . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Manage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Relocate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Novell File Management Suite Offerings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Files Matter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
File and Networking Services White Paper Novell File Management Suite
Addressing Network Storage Growth through a “Find, Manage and Relocate” Approach The humble file may be the smallest cog in the vast infrastructure that encompasses your network, but it’s also the most important. Your network exists to facilitate file storage and access. Your most valuable intellectual property is stored in files. Contact informa tion, account details, transaction records, financial statements— everything your people do, everything that’s important to your business and your customers sits in a file.
1. Let
The majority of files on the average network can be classified as “unstructured data.” These are the spreadsheets, word processing files, media files and all types of other files that are not structured in a database.
Offered together in the Novell File Management Suite, Novell provides a unique “Find, Manage and Relocate” approach that addresses the growth and management of unstructured data on the network.
Unstructured data continues to grow rapidly on many networks, and as new files are created, older ones become less relevant. Yet these less-relevant files tend to remain on the network—oftentimes on ex pensive primary storage. Over a short amount time, this unstructured data quickly becomes unmanageable. The research organization Gartner summed it up best: “Organizations have little awareness of the volume, composition, risk and business value of their unstruc tured data.”* At Novell, we recognized the chaos and risks of an unmanaged net work early on and developed products that: __________ * Innovation Insight: File Analysis Innovation Delivers an Understanding of Unstructured Dark Data,” Alan Dayle, March 28, 2013, G00250750
2
you know what files you’re storing and who has access to them, using Novell® File Reporter. 2. Automate network user and group storage management, using Novell Storage Manager. 3. Automate storage tiering, using Novell Dynamic File Services.
Find
A significant challenge organizations face today is determining what is stored on their network and who has access to it. This information is especially important to meet compliance regulations and policies on how data is secured and retained. And with many organizations stor ing terabytes, and sometimes petabytes of data, knowing what data you have stored and who has access to it is more important than ever. There are real costs to not knowing this type of information. Most no table are the catastrophic effects of illicit access to confidential files, which can damage a company’s reputation for years. Less dramatic, but still important, is compliance to government or industry regula tions or internal policies specifying that certain types of documents are secured, stored for a specified amount of time, accessible during an audit, and in some cases, deleted after a certain number of years.
Of course, there are also the storage hardware costs themselves. Too many IT department personnel can’t determine the relevance of data that continues to grow on their organization’s primary storage devices. As a result, the IT staff continues to regularly back up nonrelevant files that users haven’t accessed for years. In the meantime, storage grows, cooling costs incur and backup windows continue to become larger and larger. Novell File Reporter inventories network file systems and delivers the detailed file storage intelligence you need to optimize and secure your network for efficiency and compliance. Engineered for enterprise file system reporting, Novell File Reporter gathers data across the millions of files and folders scattered among the network storage devices that make up your network. Flexible reporting, filtering, and querying options then present the exact findings you need so you can demonstrate compliance or take corrective action.
Using Novell File Reporter, you can identify which files are currently on the network, the size of the files, when users last accessed or modified the files, the locations of duplicate files, and much more. In addition, Novell File Reporter helps calculate storage costs and identifies access rights to folders and, consequently, the files that are contained within. Novell File Reporter integrates with the network’s directory service (NetIQ eDirectory or Active Directory) to ascertain and report on file content and permissions tied to the file system. Through an agent, Novell File Reporter scans a storage resource’s file system at a given moment. Scans are indexed data that is specific to a storage resource and the means of generating a storage report. Novell File Reporter conducts scans according to the specifications of scan policies that you establish. Specifications include how often to scan a device, what time of day to do so, and who to notify in case there is a problem. This allows Novell File Reporter to automate the scanning process so you don’t have to stay late and initiate the scan yourself.
The components of Novell File Reporter include the PostgreSQL or SQL Server database, agents deployed on Novell and Microsoft storage resources, and an Engine server. Novell File Reporter authenticates to either eDirectory or Active Directory while reporting on storage resources on both Novell and Microsoft networks.
www.novell.com
3
File and Networking Services White Paper Novell File Management Suite
Manage
IT personnel not only keep the network running, they address the changes that must be made to the network on a daily basis. There are storage areas to set up for new users or group projects, access rights to establish or adjust, storage content to load balance, files to move or archive, disk quota to establish or adjust, and much more. The challenge for most organizations is finding the time to do these tasks because they tend to be performed manually—which cuts into the time an oftentimes understaffed IT department has for working on other projects. A better approach is network file system management through au tomation. Specifically, automating your storage management tasks so that storage for network users and groups is provisioned when needed, distributed and migrated when storage is nearing capacity, and even cleaned up on a regular basis. In other words, you can automate the full lifecycle of network user and group storage from home folder creation to archiving or disposal, along with the normal day-to-day maintenance associated with this storage, freeing up IT to focus on other important projects. Novell Storage Manager automates network file system tasks that are traditionally done manually, resulting in cost savings and assur ance that the tasks are being performed properly. Leveraging the network directory (eDirectory or Active Directory), Storage Manager automates a comprehensive set of storage management tasks based on events, identities, and policies.
Novell Storage Manager automates the complete lifecycle of user and group storage in both Novell and Microsoft networks. Identity-based management actions are enacted through directory events or when you choose to enforce the policy.
4
Directory events trigger actions that Novell Storage Manager takes, according to policies. Policies can specify: Where to create user home folders and group storage folders, which specific files to provision inside the folders, along with the rights and storage quota settings Where to move home folders and what rights and quotas to modify when a user is moved in the directory Unallowable file types (such as MP3 files) that are to be “groomed” from home folders and group storage What files to keep and what files to dispose of when a user leaves an organization Once an event takes place for which there is an associated policy task, Novell Storage Manager performs the task automatically—ac cording to the policy. Through its strict enforcement of policies, Novell Storage Manager assures that compliance for storage retention, se curity, and access is enforced. You can also “enforce” the policy when no directory event has taken place to do things such as:
Move storage Load balance storage Groom storage Adjust disk quota settings and rights and attributes settings
Relocate
Some files are more important than others. For example, a spread sheet of the current sales pipeline is probably more important to a company than a similar pipeline spreadsheet from five years ago. In an ideal network storage scenario, the more recent file is secured on primary storage while the older one is stored on a lower tier (less expensive) storage device, or even stored on archive media. Storage tiering places files on different storage devices according to relevance or file type. One challenge with implementing storage tier ing is determining the relevance of the files you want to tier. Similar to Novell Storage Manager, this is where Novell Dynamic File Services automation and policies come into play. Novell Dynamic File Services intelligently tiers data between two stor age locations. With Dynamic File Services, you can define policies to store mission-critical data on the primary path and move less impor tant data to a secondary path. For example, if users store personal files, such as music files, on the network, you can define policies that transparently move files based on their file extension or file type to the secondary location, where the cost to store the data is less. The file content can be scanned to ensure that file types are moved regardless of how a file is named.
Likewise, Dynamic File Services policies can store frequently ac cessed data on the primary storage, and move infrequently used data to secondary storage (based on the date the file was last modi fied or accessed). In addition, Dynamic File Services policies can allocate files between the primary or secondary paths, based on their file size. This allows you to distribute files between two disks to make the most of the stor age capacity that you have. Large files that rarely or never change can be available to users without consuming expensive storage. Best of all, the tiered storage content does not appear to be distrib uted among two storage locations. To the end user, it looks like all of the files are available from the same storage location—without the “stubs” that appear in HSM systems. Secondary storage locations can include the cloud, using cloud vendors like Amazon S3, CloudMe, or Dropbox. In fact, secondary storage can be any location that can be specified through a UNC path. That means that you can make backup media a secondary tier location in a Dynamic File Services policy.
Before deploying Novell Dynamic File Services, primary storage is generally comprised of both relevant (active) and non-relevant (stale) files. After d eploying Novell Dynamic File Services and implementing tiering policies, non-relevant files are moved to secondary storage. Despite the files being located across two locations, the files appear in a merged view of a single location to the user.
www.novell.com
5
File and Networking Services White Paper Novell File Management Suite
Novell File Management Suite Offerings
We offer Novell File Management Suite as a two-product suite for customers running a Novell network platform and a three-product suite for those with a Microsoft network. For Microsoft networks, we offer Novell File Reporter + Novell Storage Manager + Novell Dynamic File Services in a comprehensive offer ing that lets you find what you are storing, set automated polices to manage that storage content, and automatically relocate files based on file type or relevance. For Novell networks, we offer Novell File Reporter + Novell Storage Manager to provide the ability to find and manage files as a comple ment to the relocation ability of Dynamic Storage Technology that is already built into Novell Open Enterprise Server.
6
Files Matter
AYou drive your business through intelligence that’s stored in files. So why not manage those files intelligently? Find which files you’re storing and who has access to them, then put policies in place that Manage these files, and create additional policies that Relocate these files based on their relevance. For more information, please visit: www.novell.com/products/filemanagement-suite/
By engaging Novell Services for Premium Support, Consulting or Training, we can help you get the most of your product investment to suit your business needs. Please contact us today, or contact your local Novell Solutions Provider: Premium Support and Consulting: 1 800 714 3400 U.S./Canada 1 801 861 4272 Worldwide
[email protected] Training: 1 800 233 3382 U.S./Canada 1 801 861 3381 Worldwide
[email protected] Novell, Inc. 1800 South Novell Place Provo, UT 84606 USA
www.novell.com
462-002205-001 | 07/15 | © 2015 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved. Novell and the Novell logo are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
