Moving Beyond the Legacy File System

Too many IT organizations are finding that their data management strategies are held hostage by the limitations of their existing file systems. In order to solve the data management issues that are a critical component of any effort to rein in the costs of storage, IT organizations typically need a new file system. The problem is that migrating all their legacy data into a new file system is not particularly feasible.

To address this issue, the folks at Auto-Virt have come up with file virtualization technology that makes it easier to migrate data across different file systems. The company recently released version 3.5 of its namesake software that adds the ability to classify data by age, size, location, owner or other attribute, while also including new tools to assess the efficiency of the overall storage environment.

Currently, AutoVirt CEO Josh Klein says AutoVirt supports legacy Windows file systems such as Microsoft DFS. But the company plans to add NFS support later this year.

Whether it’s simply trying to move data into the cloud or finding ways to sharply reduce the percentage of the IT budget consumed by storage, IT organizations need more intelligent file systems. But unless they can bridge the gap between, for example, a modern object-based file system and their existing legacy file systems, making that leap creates two separate systems to manage, and adds more complexity to an already difficult equation. Taking a virtual approach to file systems will allow IT organizations to migrate to modern object-based file systems at their own pace without necessarily having to throw out the legacy file system baby with the rest of the bathwater.