The 7.7 release’s emphasis is on a broad range of feature functionality enhancements.

Teaneck N.J.-based Data Dynamics has announced the release of StorageX 7.7, the latest release of its automated-policy based mobility solution for NAS based migrations to next-generation hardware platforms. The new release improves file security management, reporting and scheduling and planning cutovers to new destination storage devices. The platform has also been upgraded to a 64 bit architecture.

“The transformation in the storage space because of the growth of raw capacity, where unstructured data doubles every 18-24 months, combined with the challenge of managing heterogeneity with multiple vendors has led to a need for management of data and storage and that’s where we come in,” said Piyush Mehta, Data Dynamics’ CEO.

“The major change with this release is the addition of significant feature functionality.”

One key change deals with security concerns around access. StorageX now lets users automatically map SIDs (security identifiers) from the source to the destination using one or more SID mapping rules.

“This deals with an orphan SID problem, typically where employees have left, and access remains showing for users who may no longer be there,” Mehta said. This lets you clean up orphan SIDs, and goes beyond cleanup capabilities to do things like merge domains and give new user IDs.”

This version also enhances reporting capabilities, particularly around DNS information, networking information and access clients.

“Customers asked for this,” Mehta said. “They wanted to know exactly who would be impacted when they move stuff. You can schedule it and have it emailed to you so you can get a historical log over time.”

For business impact planning and management, StorageX now provides a new Cutover Estimation tab that lets users plan cutover windows for one or more resources.

The Cutover Estimation tab analyses policies based on past incremental runs to determine if they will finish within a specified cutover window.

“This new cutover planning can tell you if you will meet your cutover window, and you can move policies around, so you can plan for cutovers far ahead of time,” Mehta said. “A lot of channel providers are building solutions around our software, and this eases the pain on their lifecycle management process.”

Visual data mobility planning is now facilitated by StorageX now providing a graphical representation of upcoming scheduled items with the Calendar view.

“We were asked to make possible a much more comprehensive view, so we created a calendar similar to Outlook,” Mehta said. You can filter daily, weekly, and monthly views of scheduled actions by replication agencies and policies, and it’s just a drag and drop to update policies.”

All StorageX applications, including the StorageX server, Console, Windows replication agent, FileInsight, LogViewerX, and the Support Site Kit, now run as 64-bit processes.

“This additional plumbing allows you to run more concurrent policies – 16 at a given time compared to 4 before on 32 bit,” Mehta said. “You can also make better use of memory, eliminating performance bottlenecks.”

Data Dynamics Version 7.7 adds cluster-aware data mobility. For data movement policies and migration projects, StorageX now allows users to choose which nodes to utilize for reading and writing to and from clustered NetApp and EMC Isilon resources.

“This gives you scaling capabilities for massive amounts of data going into individual clusters,” Mehta said. “We recently had a media company with a month to move 60 TB of data move it in five days with us, when they had expected it would take four months.”

Data Dynamics’ StorageX 7.7 is available now. Pricing starts at $50,000.