Capacity Balancing

Enterprise Challenges

• Capacity across file servers is unbalanced, leading to stranded storage and under-utilization.
• Balancing capacity today is an ongoing disruptive and manual process that requires server downtime and frequent user reconfiguration.
• The enterprise needs to gain centralized management and visibility into existing server utilization with automated resource management. 

The Acopia Solution

Acopia's Adaptive Resource Switch (ARX) products enable organizations to reclaim stranded storage by balancing capacity across existing file storage infrastructure. This is accomplished via the ARX's policy-driven migration of files across servers based on utilization, free space or the placement of new files and/or directories onto the appropriate file server.

Policies can be scheduled to occur at user-defined times or can take effect in real time based on server capacity thresholds. The ARX's Global Namespace masks users from the file migration process-even while it is occurring-and maintains a consistent file path for the user. Acopia balances the effective capacity across all servers, allowing the enterprises to defer costly purchasing decisions by increasing the utilization of existing file storage capacity.

Benefits of the Acopia Solution

• Enables the pooling and balancing of an existing heterogeneous file storage environment.
• Automatically determines the capacity of a file server without requiring agent software on the server.
• Migrates files during administrator-defined times or on demand based on the goals of the enterprise.
• Delivers uninterrupted access to file data during the capacity-balancing process so users benefit from a consistent file path regardless of where data resides.
• Provides a single platform for managing file storage capacity while eliminating the error-prone and highly manual process of capacity management.
• Reclaims existing storage capacity so the enterprise can defer the expense of acquiring additional storage capacity.