HP Automates Storage Management for Unstructured Data

HP this week unveiled a set of storage management applications that aim to converge storage and information management.

The applications that make it possible to analyze unstructured data that resides in files to optimize where that data should be most efficiently stored.

Joe Garber, vice president of information governance for HP, said HP Storage Optimizer will now make use of file analysis software that HP developed to enable IT organizations to reduce the size of the storage environment by eliminating files or moving them into an archive and optimize storage performance by placing files on the storage system that most efficiently meets performance goals and compliance mandates.

“We’re automating the sorting of the content and then creating a data map,” said Garber. “We’re making it possible to get the right information to the right cloud.”

When it comes to storage management for unstructured data, Garber said, most IT organizations have hygiene issues stemming from the fact that there is no easy way to determine not only what data is stored in any given silo but also where that file should be optimally placed.

To facilitate that process HP ControlPoint software that is used to migrate that unstructured data has been updated to not only provide tighter integration with HP Storage Optimizer but also support the HP Haven Big Data platform and HP Helion cloud environments that are based on the OpenStack cloud management framework.

Many IT management challenges that IT organizations face today stem from the fact that most of the ways data is managed is fundamentally inefficient.

Organizations make multiple duplicate copies of data sets that wind up getting strewn all across the enterprise. The end result is a lot of investments in IT infrastructure to support all those data sets. If IT organizations can reduce the number of data sets they need to support, there can be a corresponding drop in the amount of IT infrastructure they need to acquire.

Additionally, if IT organizations actually have insight into what files are being used, it becomes possible to make more aggressive use of cloud services that store that data more cost effectively online or simply move those files offline altogether.

As enterprise IT continues to evolve it is becoming clear that storage management and information management are converging in ways that should finally give IT organizations some long overdue control over where and how data actually gets stored.