NuView StorageX 3.0

Understanding and managing network data storage becomes exponentially more difficult as your network grows in size and complexity. The data that employees need might be organized across dozens of servers, and the use of Networked Attached Storage (NAS) to provide inexpensive room for data growth throws another curve at data management. (Imagine what the already complex task of server backups—not to mention the management of the physical devices that make up any given set of user data—begins to look like when crucial data spans multiple servers that aren't even geographically collocated.) Microsoft Dfs lets you create virtual share points that end users can map to and lets you modify the physical shares that make up a virtual share without changing the end users' configuration. This virtualization of the storage architecture creates a logical namespace that can span an entire corporate environment and make your data's physical location irrelevant to end users, but Dfs provides only rudimentary management tools, in the form of the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Distributed File System snap-in.

Enter NuView StorageX 3.0. StorageX is enterprise storage-management software that runs on Windows 2000 Server, builds on Dfs technology, and significantly extends the logical namespace concept. The product provides a set of tools that give real manageability to shares, storage, and home directories, all of which exist in what NuView calls the global namespace. (Understanding the StorageX global namespace is the key to understanding the product; the product documentation sufficiently explains the concept.)

The World in 5 Parts
If you're thinking, "I already use Dfs and don't have any problems managing the shares in my Dfs namespace," you probably don't have an environment large enough to benefit from the advantages that StorageX provides. But think about the amount of time necessary to keep a large enterprise environment running. When you deal with hundreds or thousands of shares daily, the advantages of a centralized management tool that tackles all the problems related to share management become immediately obvious.

StorageX groups features fall into five basic categories: global namespace, business continuity, file-server expansion and consolidation, data movement, and NAS management. Global namespace features deal with what you'd typically think of as Dfs-related activities: managing the logical namespace and deploying and managing Dfs. Business-continuity tools perform disaster-recovery tasks such as providing automatic failover and assuring continuous data availability. File-server expansion and consolidation features tackle data migration and the ability to add servers, Storage Area Network (SAN) devices, and NAS devices. Data-movement features involve what you might think of as data replication (i.e., copying data to multiple locations to help ensure data availability), as well as data migration, application, and publication. NAS-management tools concentrate on StorageX's cross-platform nature and provide the means to monitor Network Appliance filers and manage NetApp Snap-Mirror software. StorageX carries out all these tasks through a policy-based automation engine that lets you create policies for key management functions, then apply those policies to any data that the application manages.

Getting Started
I don't have a large corporate-enterprise network that I can reconfigure at will, but I set up a small test network that let me thoroughly test StorageX's various features. I created a global namespace, stretched across six servers and 12 clients, for the product to manage. I ended up with a moderately complex Dfs environment comprising almost 140,000 files in 11,000 folders for a total of almost 200GB of data.

Because of my slow network infrastructure (i.e., 100Mb Ethernet), I limited data-replication tests to a maximum of 5GB transfers to reduce the time necessary to complete my testing. (In an actual disaster-recovery scenario, you'd probably perform data replication of an entire data set in advance of configuring the replication, then regularly update the data set to keep it current.)

After installing a late beta version of StorageX 3.0 on a Win2K server—an exceptionally simple process—I accessed the main StorageX console, which contains four default objects: Admin View, Logical View, Physical View, and Reports. My first step was to use the Logical View object's context menu to display an existing Dfs root. The context menu also provides a method to create a Dfs root from scratch, but I chose to use my network's existing Dfs roots.

Next, I needed to add the existing shares that I wanted to be accessible from the Dfs root (I also had the option to create new shares). To do so, I used the Dfs root object's context menu, which offers options to add one link or multiple links. I selected the Add link option to add one share.

At this point, I found a bit of strange behavior: The application opened a blank selection box, and clicking Add brought up a series of screens that I needed to navigate to search the network for the share I wanted to add. The Add multiple links menu option, however, behaved differently. When I tested that option, clicking Add Links immediately opened a network browser so that I could select the shares that I wanted to add. (I mentioned this discrepancy to the vendor, which told me that it would look into the behavior.)

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