RainStor 4 data archiving adds record-level management and legal hold capabilities

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RainStor 4 data archiving adds record-level management and legal hold capabilities

Todd Erickson, News and Features Writer
RainStor today launched RainStor 4, the latest version of its data archiving software, adding record-level management, legal

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hold and deletion capabilities for compliance, as well as increasing its ingestion rate and retrieval performance.

RainStor, which started shipping last year and changed its name from Clearpace Software Ltd. last December, also adds support for IBM AIX and Microsoft Corp. Windows x86 operating system platforms.

The RainStor repository software is aimed at organizations with up to billions of records stored in databases. RainStor software can be delivered as a virtual appliance, embedded in an application through partners or integrated into a cloud storage service. OEM partners include Informatica Corp. and OnPoint Technologies. EMC Corp. also supports RainStor technology in its Atmos cloud storage system.

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RainStor now lets IT and database administrators set record-level automated policies for expiry, legal hold and deletion. Ramon Chen, RainStor's vice president of product marketing, said many organizations want to delete data after mandatory compliance retention requirements for cost savings, performance gains and legal safeguards. "In some industries such as financial services, you don't really want to hold data for any longer than you have to," Chen said. "If you are mandated to hold it for seven years, in seven years and one nanosecond later you want it gone." Version 4 also includes the ability to group and tag records.

Chen said RainStor 4 also includes a 50% increase in data ingestion speed and data retrieval performance, thanks to tweaks to its algorithms to maximize the efficiency of handling different data types. He said a single RainStor software system can ingest up to 85 billion records a day.

RainStor also handles data deduplication inside the database, which especially helps in environments such as telecommunications with call data records and health care with medical record data.

Merv Adrian, founder of business intelligence consulting firm IT Market Strategy, said the startup could make inroads with database archiving. RainStor's Chen said relational databases are not designed to handle billions of records quickly or efficiently,

"RainStor is pioneering a market that has had a few people nosing around it for a while, but there hasn't been a real concerted effort to drive it," IT Market Strategy's Adrian said. "And it's becoming all the more important -- just because of the increasing volume of data, it's getting harder and harder for people to deal with it."

Adam Wilson, general manager of Informatica's Information Lifecycle Management Business Unit, said his company offers the RainStor technology as an onsite or cloud repository option in its Data Archive product because of its compression ability and price-performance. Informatica has had an OEM agreement with RainStor since the fourth quarter of 2008, and is also a RainStor investor.