MBS Technologies Provides Storage Options for Content Manager Users

Corrected: January 11, 2006

by Alex Woodie

iSeries shops that don't want to use optical libraries as secondary storage medium for their IBM DB2 Content Manager for iSeries environments have a friend in MBS Technologies. While IBM pushes optical libraries to Content Manager for iSeries users, MBS Technologies is having success selling its StorageView Alternative Storage Manager, which opens the content management solution to external disk arrays, such as IBM's new DR550, instead of optical.

Hierarchical storage, it would seem, is something of a blessing and a curse to users ofDB2 Content Manager for iSeries. On the one hand, the capability enables users to easily move documents and other business content from expensive primary storage to less-expensive secondary storage, depending on the stage in the document lifecycle. On the other hand, users' options for secondary storage on DB2 Content Manager for iSeries (which is not to be confused with the recently introduced DB2 Content Manager Standard Edition version 8.3, which lacks hierarchical storage capabilities) is limited to optical storage.

When DB2 Content Manager for iSeries was first developed in 1987, disk was prohibitively expensive, and optical libraries were a popular choice for secondary storage, especially for the long-term archival needs of banks, hospitals, governments, manufacturers, and other users of the product. While DB2 Content Manager for iSeries at this time supported other secondary storage mediums, a good percentage of the users chose optical libraries, including the 9 GB magneto optical (MO) IBM Model 3995 optical drives.

However, in 2004, IBM made changes to the product that permanently cemented optical libraries as the only choice for secondary storage with this product, says Jim Engelking, director of business development for MBS Technologies.

In response to this change, MBS Technologies decided to do something about it. As it turns out, it was just the company for the job, because it had originally developed the software, led by Randy Dufault, MBS Technologies' government practice principal and a COMMON board member, for IBM back in 1987.

In late summer of last year, MBS Technologies announced the general availability of StorageView Alternative Storage Manager. This product uses Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) to enable other devices to serve as secondary storage for DB2 Content Manager for iSeries environments. Any storage device that can "talk" to TSM (and it should be noted that not all do) can utilize the StorageView middleware. Not surprisingly, most MBS Technologies customers are choosing IBM disk as their new secondary storage platform.

MBS Technologies is packaging StorageView with a recently introduced network attached storage (NAS) device from IBM called the DR550 (see "IBM Addresses Data Retention Requirements with DR550"). The company works with other business partners for the acquisition of the DR550 hardware, and includes installation and configuration with its solution, which ranges in cost from about $14,000 to about $35,000. The DR550 hardware ranges from about $40,000 for 1.1 TB of space to about $100,000 for the full-size device outfitted with over 3 TB of disk.

StorageView makes financial sense even for companies that have just upgraded their optical storage, Engelking says. For example, one recent customer had just bought $60,000 worth of new optical platters, but still saved money when it switched again to StorageView and external disk.

Further helping MBS Technologies is the fact that there is no easy upgrade from IBM's old Magneto Optical (MO)-based Model 3995 optical libraries to IBM's new Ultra Density Optical (UDO)-based Model 3996 optical drives, which were designed by Plasmon. It's going to be a migration regardless, says Engelking. MBS Technologies, whose entire business revolves around DB2 Content Manager for iSeries, also sells data migration tools.

For more information on MBS Technologies, see www.mbstechnologies.com.

This article has been corrected. Randy Dufault holds the title of government practice principal at MBS Technologies, not president. Dave Fetters is the company owner and president. IT Jungle regrets the error.