Advanced Information Technologies' Advanced Optical
Storage - A.O.S. is a production-class storage management application
designed for high-volume document management environments. A.O.S. is now available
for Novell NetWare and Microsoft Windows NT Server environments. The software continually
proves itself as the industry's choice for back-end storage in production environments,
and can be scaled for workgroup, departmental or enterprise-wide solutions.
A.O.S. for Windows NT takes advantage of NT's powerful
multi-tasking environment, and utilizes standard Windows socket protocols for requests and
file access. A.O.S. for Windows NT is functionally compatible with the NetWare
version. In fact, the same client API set is used in both versions.
High Performance
Flexible Storage
Scalability.
Enterprise Connectivity
Portability.
The A.O.S. Approach
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With A.O.S., your application requests storage and
retrieval of files from optical volumes; in most cases, a volume is one side of a platter.
In a "demigrate" scenario, A.O.S. copies the files from the appropriate optical
volume and writes them to the cache directory on the attached file server's hard disk. In
a "migrate" request scenario, A.O.S. copies the files to the desired optical
volume. This approach provides the most capable optical management solution because the
application is not concerned with where a file is written on a volume or how to manipulate
the physical devices. A.O.S. handles all of this for you.
The A.O.S. optical cache service efficiently manages requests from
multiple clients against multiple platters. The jukebox scheduling algorithms ensure that
requests for specific platters are serviced together to minimize jukebox
"thrashing." The request queue is also managed for "time-in-queue" to
ensure "fairness" of request processing across all platters. The number of
clients can grow while maintaining good response for optical retrievals.
The Storage Process Return
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Images are stored on
optical disks using A.O.S.. A.O.S. offers a quantum leap in speed
for retrieval of documents stored on optical disks, allowing large volumes of document to
be processed quickly and efficiently. Besides writing to a special Volume and File System
designed to optimize performance in a document imaging system, A.O.S. utilizes caching to
yield the access speed of magnetic disk storage with the security of Write-Once Read-Many
- W.O.R.M. optical storage. The most active documents are maintained in magnetic cache as
well as on optical, giving users immediate access to these documents, without users having
to wait for documents to be retrieved from slower optical drives and autochangers. A.O.S.
optimizes requests using an elevator-logic algorithm, to service requests for data not in
cache, from optical media in the most efficient manner possible. The elevator-logic
algorithm optimizes these requests for both autochangers and stand-alone drives. Combining
optimized volume and file system, caching, elevator-logic, and multi-tasking technologies
in A.O.S., provides the best possible performance an information and image management
storage system can offer. The flexibility and scalability of A.O.S. provides the most
economical storage solution available. A.O.S. can reduce the number of optical devices
required for an application and make media management significantly easier, while
providing increased performance, and extending the expected life span of optical storage
devices.
Scalable
Configurations for Enterprise-Wide Solutions Return
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Designed to grow with your organization, A.O.S. is not
limited to any maximum number of users; it supports all standard networked PC client
workstations in your environment. Cascaded services allow departmental-level servers to
maintain their own optical devices, yet connect to an enterprise-level server and its
optical devices when required. Files retrieved from the enterprise server are cached to
the department server. This enables customers to create departmental cache servers that
greatly decrease network traffic, while multiplying available cache resources. A.O.S. is
designed to grow with your storage requirements, with minimal impact on server resources.
An independent optical file system is used that does not consume server overhead.
Furthermore, server RAM is not related to the amount of storage A.O.S. manages, so that
storage capacity can expand without impacting the server.
Optical
Backups Return
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Optical backup capabilities are provided by A.O.S. that
enable a backup volume to be synchronized with an associated original volume. The backup
process can be run while the server is in use; backups can be executed once or
periodically to synchronize volumes. A.O.S. has several fault-tolerant features. In the
event of a system fault, all file system information and file data are safely contained on
the optical platters. No recovery operations are necessary with A.O.S. to make the optical
data available to your application. A.O.S. supports shelf storage of optical media by
maintaining a database of optical volumes that have been removed from jukeboxes or drives.
This feature provides a cost-efficient means for storage for less frequently used files
and offers users of individual drives the option of growing into a jukebox as the need
arises.
CD-ROM
Support
Customers can build an archive of files, create a CD
master of the database and distribute the database on CD for use on remote standalone PC
systems or networks. Migration of files to the CD mastering area and retrieval of files
from CD-ROM drives and jukeboxes are transparent to the application.
Mix-And-Match
Device Support Return
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With A.O.S., single or multiple optical storage devices
can be connected directly to a server, providing customers flexibility in designing
configurations. Combinations of jukeboxes and optical drives (even from different
manufacturers) can be supported on a single server. The number of devices that can be
connected is limited only by the number of available SCSI addresses on the server. The
software supports a wide variety of optical storage peripherals, including 12" WORM,
5.25" WORM, MO, and CD-ROM. Each A.O.S. supported device is extensively tested,
including functional tests, configuration tests and endurance tests. This ensures
efficient and trouble-free operation of all supported optical devices. Whether for Windows
NT or NetWare, A.O.S.'s multi-threaded device drivers are built for performance and
reliability. Separate threads of operation allow A.O.S. drivers to perform more than one
task simultaneously on multiple devices such as reading data from two platters at the same
time or reading and writing to drives with simultaneous jukebox movements. The
multi-tasking, multi-threaded architecture enhances throughput and maximizes server
processing for the highest performance.
