Is there a way/product to virtualize files?

[Jim Krol]

Looking for a method or product (have $$$
for the right product) to accomplish the
following:

Current Situation:
------------------
dirA (and all below)
is a normal vxfs filesystem:

/dirA/dirB/DirC/file1 (filesystem 1)
file2 (filesystem 1)
file3 (filesystem 1)
file4 (filesystem 1)

Wanted Situation:
-----------------
dirA (and all below)
is a combination of two or more
filesystems:

/dirA/dirB/DirC/file1 (filesystem 1)
file2 (filesystem 2)
file3 (filesystem 2)
file4 (filesystem 1)

The reason for this is some files are
highly used and go on our $100/GB HP XP
SAN disk, while we want the less used
files to go on a TBD $10/GB SAN system.

The user will see NO DIFFERENCE from
current situation.

Thanks,
Ted Saylor
480-891-7884

[Hoefnix]

can't you just use symbolic links in this directory?

Just move the less used files into the slow filesystem and make symbolic links to those files?
ln -s /newdestination-of-file/filename filename

Regards,
Peter

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Since you mention have dollars for this, the best solution is a Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) solution. One such choice is OmniStorage. http://www.openview.hp.com/products/oms/index.html

There are a number of these on the market but the idea behind it is that frequently accesses files are kept on expensive media and less frequently accessed files are kept on less expensive media -- often optical and/or tape. The migration (in both directions) is done transparantly to the application and everything looks like a giant filesystem.

[Jim Krol]

To further clarify,

We're talking thousands of files in hundreds of directories that are not directly accessed on the HA ServiceGuard Packages - but rather thru NFS and Samba.

Thinking symbolic links could cause lots of trouble with this situation.

Does the HSM move the files back quickly (e.g. < 10 seconds per file)?

Ted

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The migration speed depends upon the size of the file AND the type of near-line storage. In many cases the data are made available to the application while the migration is continuing. If you want to do this seamlessly and automatically then HSM is the way to go.