Northern Storage Suite is a software solution that enables organizations to control the use of storage resources; specifically the way in which users exploit this resource.

As much as 60% of the unstructured data accumulated, and accumulating, on your storage infrastructure is of no strategic value. Northern Storage Suite provides you with the tools needed to control the user behaviour that leads to this storage misuse; changing user attitudes towards storing private, duplicate, triplicate, obsolete and other low value files.

Disk Quotas

• Soft Quotas: use quotas simply to trigger notifications
• Hard Quotas: set hard ceilings for users and disk objects
• User Quotas: control usage by user in department shares
• Directory Quotas: set quotas on individual directories
• File Block: prevent specific file types from being saved
• File Allow: only allow specific file types to be saved
• Interface: information-rich and customizable

End User Interaction

• Report to users: show files that could be safely deleted
• Interactive reports: allow action directly within reports
• Timely reports: send a user her report at quota threshold
• Secure reports: run in the user's security context

Reporting

• Drill-down interface: from overview to specific bottleneck
• Scheduled reporting: regular updates on areas of interest
• User reports: list all files owned by a specific account
• Binary format reports: list all renamed MP3 files
• Exchange reports: report on mailbox size
• Duplicate file reports: across the network or share level

Forecasting

• Usage history: at all drill-down levels including file types
• Projections: project usage for hosts, volumes and users
• Near full: list volumes with dangerous growth rates

Analytics

• Warning flags: draw attention for immediate action
• Warning flags: point to where future problems will lie
• Action recommendations: outline viable strategies

Chargeback

• Financial reports: spread awareness of the financial costs
• Strict billing: spread payable invoice for storage service
• Cost centers: charge for usage by user, group, OU, path
• Data sources: file system, exchange, quota

Northern Storage Suite is a Windows-based software solution that can be used on any direct attached storage, all CIFS compliant NAS devices and has dedicated support for EMC VNX, EMC Isilon and NetApp NAS.