We just had our sales presentation on EMC’s Centerra Content Addressable Storage system. I have to admit, I went into it knowing a little about it, and even the 60,000 foot “executive summary” EMC put together really impressed me.
The idea of putting so much data to tape but keeping it up and available just floors me. But for a “reasonable” price, I can offload all of our imaging (we don’t use paper records) voice recordings for the call center, and email traffic to a system that is widely considered to be so bulletproof (when in a multi-location DR environment) that it doesn’t require backups.
By doing object-level mirroring it seems like they’ve really conquered the need for backups, as well as the management nightmare that is records retention.  Since the objects can be mirrored within the frame, as well as to a remote frame, that makes it even more solid.
I have to say I’m impressed – now to sell it to the Execs….. (Actually our CEO is so “compliance driven” it may not be much of a hard sell)
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I remember visiting Filepool when we bought the technology seven years ago and I was like, “Wtf?” Then I saw what we built with it and I was all “Aha!”
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When you start thinking about it, the idea is pretty ingenious, and considering that EMC has convinced the American SEC beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is a true “WORM” (Write-Once-Read-Many) device, (a claim that can never be proven, only disproven) it seems to do exactly what compliance-minded companies have been desparately in need of.
With something like this, someone like Enron would have had tremendous difficulty dodging the bullet….
…Then again, they didn’t really “dodge” that one per-se, right?