StorageTek introduces Lifecycle Director for DB2

StorageTek®, a Colorado based company, will introduce Lifecycle Director for DB2 archive solution for IBM mainframe databases, at the August 15-20 Share User Event in New York.

Lifecycle Director extends StorageTek's ASM data movement technology that has been in the mainframe for a number of years by interfacing the data mover with DB2. This revolutionary approach interfaces in such a way that it archive-enables any DB2 application without the need to make changes to the application code.

Traditionally, archiving has always been done through a process of purging records from the database environment, moving those records to a secondary database or secondary table, and then using Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) to move the data to another storage platform. Essentially, this data is now disconnected from the application and the only way to make the application aware of the archived data is through application modifications.

Modifying the application code is a costly approach, esp. in the mainframe DB2 environment. Applications can easily be 20 or 30 years old, personnel that built the application are often no longer available. If they are available, they are generally busy doing other work and do not have the time to dig through an application to determine what impact archiving data would have nor do they have the time to go through that application to archive enable it. Lifecycle Director, which can be implemented in a few days, without impacting the application, and requiring no application code modifications is an attractive solution to this problem.

Another benefit of Lifecycle Director is operational savings. DBAs spend a lot of time managing data. Archiving inactive data eliminates the need to do re-orgs against old data, it eliminates the need to manage that data and it eliminates the need to back up that data.

Lifecycle Director has a number of built in capabilities that support both data retention and data destruction as dictated by individual industry regulations. In addition, Lifecycle Director has built in WORM (Write Once Read Many) support to ensure that data is written only once, which is often a requirement of those regulations.

Another unique aspect of Lifecycle Director is that it can be implemented in such a way as to ensure that referential integrity is maintained. Traditional approaches often disrupt referential integrity.

StorageTek has focused on improving data storage since 1969. Based in Louisville, Colorado, with more than 7,000 employees in 32 countries, they design, manufacture, sell and maintain data storage hardware and software and provide supporting services.