A few years ago, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) set out to create an open standard for archiving fixed content data. The initiative was led by major software and hardware vendors that focused on archiving. XAM, short for eXtensible Access Method, included goals that were quite noble, if not lofty. The idea was to create an interface, or API, that most major hardware vendors would support as a means to get data in and out of archiving platforms.
Today, there is no denying that EMC’s Centera platform is the market leader in this segment and it’s no surprise that EMC provided the biggest push for adoption. EMC wants to grow the market for these devices and providing an open standard API would be just the right trick. Even if this decreased EMC’s percentage of market share in the segment, the market would still grow with regards to the total amount of data under management. Lots of data = lots of dollars, so EMC would still win.
The argument for adoption of this sort of API is that fixed content rarely, if ever, changes. Therefore, the API should provide software vendors with ways to: 1) ensure indelibility and 2) avoid the pains of secondary indexing. The first point makes a lot of sense for compliance reasons. The second point can be accomplished by providing flexibility (in terms of metadata) in describing objects sent to the storage. This is currently a big ticket item in the cloud storage arena since most vendors support custom metadata for objects, a place where normal file system interfaces like CIFS or NFS don’t hold up well.
Seven10 integrated XAM into our StorFirst EAS product, and found the process to be very easy and straightforward, likely because it resembles the older Centera API. We are wondering, however, when and if widespread adoption will come. We have partnerships with many of the vendors listed as part of the XAM Initiative, but as far as we know, less than a handful actually have plans to integrate XAM as a connector, never mind actually begin shipping with one.
How long does it take for a standard to become widespread? Is XAM the right tool for archiving, compared to other methods available? Does fixed content archiving necessarily have to be CAS? Lots of questions and few answers at this point. If you have any questions or comments, specifically about XAM or more broadly about fixed content archiving, please post them in our comments section.
- Adam Marcionek, Principal Engineer at Seven10
UPDATE: Today Dell announced they are developing an object-based storage device that will support XAM as an interface. There is mention of communication over HTTP, but no specifics as to whether that will be a RESTFUL API interface. Announcements like this bode well for XAM’s future.
