Execute 360 & EMC Centera

Alan Hitchings

By Eyejean

 

Hi,

I'm looking for some information regarding integration between Execute 9.x and EMC Centera. We are investigating a move from optical storage on Archive Manager to a Centera solution. Anybody had any experience in this area?

Alan Hitchings

By David Berglund

 

From a product perspective, I'd like to highlight a few items with respect to Execute360 Archive Manager for Centera

• The integration was implemented with the EMC Centera APIs; Archive Manager writes and retrieves content directly from Centera. This affords a high degree of reliability and performance.

• If content retention management is a feature you plan to leverage in EMC Centera, Archive Manager supports both fixed and event based retention features of EMC Centera in a few ways

  • Pool based configuration in Archive Manager can apply retention settings when workitems are written to Centera. This allows you to configure Archive Manager to apply retention according to workitem class.
  • Client APIs (Java, .NET and COM) provide APIs to set retention on workitems, trigger events for event based retention, and purge content after the retention period expires.
  • Execute360 Domain Services r10 provides a Retention Workstep, allowing a workflow or business process to set retention properties and trigger events. This workstep is not available in Domain Services release 9, but a custom workstep or process could be written with the Client APIs to do this.
• Execute360 Archive Manager has been tested in EMC's Centera Integration test facility in Hopkinton, MA. The integration has been tested under high volumes in this environment.

• Execute360 Archive Manager releases 9 and 10 both support EMC Centera storage. However, release 10 offers a few advantages over release 9

  • A substantial performance improvement of up to 5x throughput.
  • Advanced processing and health statistics, viewable through the Administration Website.
  • Implementation of 7x24 archival and retrieval process scheduling through the Administration Website.

Archive Manager release 10 works with both release 9 and 10 Execute360 Domains, but requires that a release 10 Administration website be available to administer and manage the r10 Archive Manager.

We have many customers who have successfully moved from optical to Centera storage. If you have further questions about this from a product perspective, please let us know.

Alan Hitchings

BY Mike Lomax

 

The migration of Execute360 workitems from Execute360 optical platters to any Execute360 magnetic storage can be accomplished in different ways.  The most efficient method is with the usage of a PSO supported utility called ATAU ( Archive to Archive Utility).   The usage of this Execute360 utility allows PSO to assist in analyzing, installing, configuring for the usage of the utility to migrate from the source (optical) archive to the destination (magnetic or Centera) archive.   The average migration rate when migrating from optical to a destination is about 2GB per hour per ATAU client.  Multiple ATAU clients can be configured for the optical migration.  Maximum clients could be one client for every optical drive (active and working) in the jukeboxes.  Multiple ATAU clients can be run from the same workstation or server where the ATAU software resides.

 The ATAU client will request the source archive to send the workitem files directly from the source to the destination archive.   The destination archive then archives the workitems on the appropriate storage media and updates the locator table with the new address where the file is stored.  The image and workflow domain(s) in this enterprise are not affected by the migration when utilizing the ATAU method. Users retrieving workitems to the desktops may not be aware of the migration occurring.  What the user will usually notice is a faster retrieval time of the workitem once the workitem has been migrated to the new destination archive.