Brocade FLM provides a powerful way to create tiers of storage and simplify compliance requirements resulting in lower overall storage costs.

In most IT environments, the business value of data varies widely-especially as data growth occurs unevenly across the enterprise. This imbalanced growth often results in higher hardware expenditures due to the proliferation of storage devices, increased data management challenges, and more difficult regulatory compliance.

To help overcome these challenges, organizations can proactively manage their data throughout its lifecycle (from creation to disposal) by aligning storage policies with business priorities and regulatory requirements.

Brocade FLM is a policy-based data solution that manages the lifecycle of file data in heterogeneous storage systems where the primary device is NetApp. Administrators can reduce the total cost of storage by analyzing, classifying, blocking, moving, organizing, and deleting file data using policies that reflect the business value of the data.

The solution optimizes data management based on attributes and access patterns. Organizations can implement tiers of disk-based storage, making more efficient use of lower-cost secondary storage. In fact, Brocade FLM can result in:

• More than twice the volume capacity as inactive data is automatically moved to secondary storage
• Up to a 50 percent reduction in storage hardware acquisition costs
• Reduced data backup costs as less important data gets transferred to lower-cost storage devices

Key Attributes	Benefits
Intelligent and powerful	• Enables simulation runs for detailed capacity planning and better understanding of data composition and distribution • Enables many-to-one and one-to-many migration configurations
Policy-based and automated	• Eliminates manual classification, migration, and deletion tasks • Provides standalone and integrated policies for a variety of lifecycle management tasks
Non-disruptive and transparent	• Enables users to see and access files through the primary filer • Masks data creation and protection applications from file migration
Reliable and scalable	• Scales linearly to efficiently handle millions of inactive files • Provides a highly redundant architecture with multiple availability mechanisms • Supports compliance requirements with strict information retention and maintenance regulations such as SEC Rule 17a-4, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, 21CFR Part 11, and DoD Directive 5015.2

• Enables tiered storage architectures by placing data on different types of disk storage devices based on the relative value of that data
• Facilitates the alignment of data storage policies with business objectives for proactive management of data growth
• Minimizes administration tasks with a variety of automated, reusable data management policies
• Balances capacity utilization to offset increasing demands placed on higher-cost storage and to better utilize lower-cost storage
• Eliminates backup redundancy through appropriate data classification and placement
• Creates an audit trail through sophisticated monitoring and reporting
• Supports compliance requirements through integration with NetApp SnapLock to help ensure data permanence, accuracy, integrity, and security