News

posted on 23 June 2008 07:04

Data Domain is adding Retention Lock software to its offering to provide secured retention periods for files and prevent their improper deletion or modification.

Beth White, Marketing VP at Data Domain, said: "This follows our announcement last fall when we opened up our systems (from) backup-type workloads ... to nearline applications." These are storage applications that don't feature high IOPS or transaction rates.

She added: "Our customers are using Data Domain systems for both backup and archive in the same system. Others buy a separate archive system. We do see both scenarios; it's almost half and half."

"Retention Lock offers an augmentation to the existing nearline functionality and locks files down until a future data for deletion or allowing changes to file content."

Data Domain's deduplication works across both types of data storage if they are present in one system.

The new software enables storage aministrators to ensure file retention compliance. Different files, either backup files or archive, can be assigned different length retention periods and both locked and unlocked files can co-exist on the same system. There are standard file-serving interfaces for this and not a specific API. A locked file cannot be deleted or modified by users. However, a properaly authorized administrator can over-ride Retention Lock settings. The administrator can also set minimum and maximum retention periods for the entire system.

Retention Lock has been tested with EMC's Email/Disk Xtender, Commvault software and Symantec Veritas' Enterprise Vault. It is a licensable software feature for any Data Domain system and is fully integrated with Data Domain's replication functionality.

The Retention Lock software is available immediately and priced per system, starting from $500 for Data Domain's smallest system, the DD120.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}