News

posted on 25 April 2008 17:36

E-mail archive vendor Mimosa is going to extend out its NearPoint product to embrace file backup functionality with a single repository. A link with Interwoven will add a document store into the repository as well.

According to persons familiar with the situation Mimosa will introduce its new product in three phases with the first announcement early next month. The mantra behind it is 'dynamic live content archiving' into an Indexed Object Repository (IOR).

Mimosa's NearPoint e-mail archive is actually functionally equivalent to a virtual tape library or disk-to-disk (D2D) target as it has granular e-mail restore capabilities at disk speed and single instances attachments. The e-mails in it are not just archived for long-term retention in case they are needed at some point in the future.

Mimosa uses Microsoft's Transaction Log Shipping (TLS) protocol for its e-mail archive as this, unlike the MAPI and journalling approach used by competing products such as Symantec's KVS, contains complete metadata and e-mail contents. The new IOR product will also use TLS in some unspecified way.

Because of this Mimosa can extend the functionality of NearPoint outwards to include files. MAPI and journalling-based e-mail archive competitors are not able to extend their products to incorporate file archiving functions so easily.

(Mimosa flowers.)

IOR will be able to archive files - unstructured information - and SQL Server database records as well as e-mails to provide a single repository for Windows users. The link with Interwoven will apparently enable IOR to index documents in Interwoven's store through some linkage between IOR and Interwoven and so develop IOR into a single universal Windows archive.

However the new product is not a document content management system.

The metadata involved will enable a sophisticated search functionality to be implemented.

Phases 2 and 3 will involve a backup function for files, one that does not involve the use of legacy backup software. These phases will also involve the addition of storage tiering with two or more tirers of disk supported so that, as archive contents age and become less active, they can be moved from high cost, high performance storage tiers to a lower cost, lower performance one.

When files are moved or 'extended' into the archive a pointer or stub will be left behind so that the original access path isn't compromised. This is said to be the same method that is used as e-mails are moved into the NearPoint archive.

The file archive was characterised as providing both backup/restore functionality and archival long-term storage functionality.

It is not known if sub-file-level de-duplication will be a feature of the new product. Nor is it known if it will provide a content-addressed store (CAS) capability as exemplified by EMC's Centera.

IOR has been developed inside Mimosa and does not rely on any bought-in technology.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}