XAM Breaks the Cycle of Archival Storage Lock-In But More than XAM is Needed

For most end-users the promise of a truly open archival system has been mostly out of reach. The proprietary approaches taken by storage vendors in the deployment of archival systems inside the hardware and application stacks has left users without a viable, standards-based archiving option. XAM (eXtensible Access Method) promises to deliver companies from that place of affliction by breaking down the proprietary infrastructure and application stacks that exist now.

While it is tempting to curse storage and application vendors for the propriety access methods that exist now, in the absence of a standard, one will be created in a silo, which is exactly what occurred. To address that, XAM recently came into existence. IBM, EMC, Permabit and others originally developed XAM in conjunction with SNIA, to combat the proprietary nature of CAS (Content Addressable Storage).

SNIA, as part of proposing the standard, sought acceptance from Storage and Application providers as well as the End-User Community to ensure that the standard is equally beneficial to all involved. The specific benefits that XAM provides to companies include:

•     Flexibility. It gives companies the flexibility to pick and choose the archival application and storage platform they desire. Using XAM, companies can move archived data between not only from one storage vendor to another but have a standard that can live into the future for storage and applications yet to be developed while still maintaining the rigid compliance factors needed to satisfy internal and external security and audit requirements.

•     Scalability. XAM supports the scaling into the billions upon billions of records while still maintaining the integrity and performance attributes of the data.

•     Common Application Interface. Independent application service providers can use the same language to communicate with any storage device versus using the proprietary calls that different hardware vendors require.

•     Metadata and data management. Companies no longer need to treat their archived data in a one-off manner but can manage it as part of a company's larger data management approach in an efficient and resilient manner.

Yet one key benefit that XAM does take into account is how companies move data that is part of their archival infrastructure. If there was the ability to not only retain the data for your specified time frame, but also seamlessly move that data from one storage device to another, or even a step further one application to another, without costly professional services and any real technical assistance. Now that is an utopia I think everyone can enjoy especially when dealing with data that needs to be retained for a significant periods of time.

Version 1.0 of XAM will be coming out in the next month or so, and vendors such as EMC, HP, Sun, and Vignette have already adopted this standard. There have been archival vendors such as Permabit and others who started with an open approach from the beginning, using NAS based protocols (NFS, CIFS) to deliver this open architecture from day one. This standard just ratifies their point that approaches to archiving should be as open as possible.

Forward thinking technology leaders have been discussing this for a number of years now and how it will help reshape the face or archival environments for the very long-term. Time will tell if the real vision of XAM is realized, but with the backing of industry horses like SNIA and the end-user community, for the first time it has a real shot.

Jered Floyd CTO Permabit "Spring of 2007 SNW"

http://www.snia.org/forums/dmf/knowledge/tutorials/Green_Eggs_and_XAM_Spr07.pdf