Formerly from Rainfinity and now aquired/offered by EMC, the Rainfinity Global File Virtualization (GFV) platform is an appliance based offering targeted to the management of unstructured data throughout the organization. Specifically, GFV enables the creation and access of files through a virtual file system representation; a representation that can persist even when the files are physically moved from location to location. I.E., files that are open and being actively used can be physically migrated without a negative impact on the user accessing those files. As such, the platform is targeted primary to storage administrators as a storage management platform; enabling them to transparently manage and migrate physical files as needed without interrupting users. The platform supports the management of data on NAS (NetApp, EMC), File Servers (Windows, Linux, UNIX and specific HP, Sun and IBM-UNIX variants), and now CAS (EMC Centera) storage; presenting the files on these heterogeneous systems through a single virtual view.

Key features of the Rainfinity GFV platform as touted by the vendor are its ability to work with existing standards to implement its virtual file presentation abilities, and the fact that it does not require constant in-band access to the network traffic flow to perform its duties.

To implement its single view of the various file systems of the infrastructure, Rainfinity GFV's Global Namespace Manager module does not require its own proprietary file system, switch, namespace, or end-user agents; but rather it plugs into the environment operating at the CIFS and NFS protocol layers, and leverages existing namespace technology (DFS, Automount, LDAP/NIS). Specifically, it can use the built-in transport mechanisms of these technologies to update Windows and UNIX clients without impacting the end user; it requires no client reconfigurations or mount point changes.

This reliance on existing technologies further enables the product to exist as a "plug-in" platform without requiring constant in-band access to network traffic flows. Instead, the platform operates at Layer 2 and can selectively process data in-band; processing the traffic only for the source and destination filers involved in the transaction. While in-band, the appliance can also fine or course-grain filters to optimize its traffic handling. When the transaction is complete, the appliance moves back out-of-band, passively monitoring traffic for capacity and performance analysis purposes. Because of this selective processing capability, the vendor bills the product as scalable to large enterprise implementations with HA requirements.

Onto this base appliance, EMC offers seven applications: Capacity Management; the aforementioned Global Namespace Management; Migration and Consolidation; Performance Management; Synchronous IP Replication; Tiered Storage Management; and the newest addition, File Management. The File Management module, in particular, allows for the automatic, policy-based identification and archiving of static files in the environment.

Rainfinity Global File Virtualization is available now through EMC at a starting price of $93,000. Contact EMC for further information.