BlueSAN Technology ezSAM

ezSAM Pro
Introduction ezSAM is used as a short form  for "Easy Storage (mostly file data in the storage) Administration and Management" software product suite by BlueSAN Technology. 

ezSAM is an integrated suite of software for managing all aspects of file data in environments ranging from a single Windows computer of an individual user to hundreds of heterogeneous file servers in an enterprise environment. The software is available in configurations that serve the diverse needs of these varying environment. 

File data is the largest segment of managed storage in most IT environments and this storage is growing at a rate over 50% each year - ezSAM provides the easiest and most comprehensive solution for keeping the growth of this storage segment in check at a price that will pay for itself in matter of months.

Existing Storage Resource Management (SRM) tools and management software products are so large and complex - they possibly make sense for the largest of the IT environments with dedicated expertise for these products.  

ezSAM is a combination of storage management functions that are designed and integrated with the specific goal of not to add to the administration and maintenance work of already burdened user/administrator. Judge it based on these simple facts.

  • You can download just over one MB self-extractable SW package and install it with a single click under 5 seconds.
  • You can discover all your file shares in your network with a single click.
  • With a single click, you can collect, analyze and prepare space usage reports of all discovered file shares based on file age, file access, file size, file types, duplicates and Owners. ezSAM does it at a rate of 2 to 10 million files/per hour using only about 3% of CPU per share. 
  • You can modify few parameters in the pre-defined filtering criteria and with a single click you can clean up all your file shares by deleting or moving out old and/or unwanted files.
  • You can implement an easy to define and manage data protection and business continuity solution by using unused storage space of one file server to replicate the file shares of other servers.
  • With a single click you can identify the changed files in all file shares, compress them, encrypt them and save them in a remote vault/archive to implement a disaster recovery solution. For individual users, SOHO and SMB, ezSAM provides the capability to leverage the free (or low cost) but highly failure-proof storage provided by the web email services giants like Google, Yahoo and Hotmail.
  • You can associate email recipient with each share/directory and distribute the changed files in all the shares in compressed and encrypted form with a single click.

This document describes the functionality that are available to home users, SOHO, SMB and enterprises - this group of functionality is termed ezSAM-Pro. The functionality specific to the enterprise environments is described in ezSAM-Enterprise document.   

ezSAM-Pro Modules:                

Download ezSAM and try it free for 15 days.

Use it free forever for data protection on one personal computer.

Brief description of the modules are available at the following links. 
Vault Analyzer Optimizer Replicator Distributor

From high level descriptions of the modules or by following the links below, you can get detail information on the modules. 
Vault Analyzer Optimizer Replicator Distributor
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Vault

The Vault module of ezSAM provides an easy and cost effective data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery solution for home users, SOHO and SMB by utilizing low cost USB-Hard Disk, unused disk space from different machines and almost free remote email storage from web email providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, Google or your own ISP.

At fraction of the cost of getting online storage from the online backup vendors for data protection, you can get significantly large, highly protected and failure-proof storage from these technology giants for almost free to build and deploy your data protection and disaster recovery solution.

In your day-to-day use of computer, if any of the following is true, you will save money and many hours of your time by deploying this low-cost, one-click operation.

  • You spend time in saving files into CD/DVD only to find out that the CD/DVD is corrupted after using it few times.
  • You spend time in copying data from hard disk of one or more computers to an USB-HD or to hard disk of another computer for protection of your data against system/hard-disk failure.
  • You keep important data in web emails for accessibility from anywhere and for data protection.
  • You know that important computer data needs to be saved away from the location of the computer to protect the data against any kind of disaster, but do not have time/resource/expertise to deploy and use a solution.

The Vault module depends on some amount of functionality from the Analyzer, Optimizer and Replicator modules. For the  SMB environment involving limited number of computers, these modules are bundled together as part of the Vault Module.

The Vault module is free for personal use on a single computer for aiding in the best possible protection of your personal use data.

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Analyzer

The Analyzer module of ezSAM provides the easiest and most efficient way to find out how effectively the storage space in different file servers and NAS systems in your computing environment is utilized. With a single click, you can discover, analyze and review the space utilization for all the file shares in your computing environment across multiple domains.

The Analyzer produces the following reports for all shares/local disk drives with a single click. See Sample.

Summary Information: 

  • This report provides information on amount of space available, total space used, total number of files, number of users using the file system and which user is taking up how much space etc.
  • Shows what type of files (e.g., office files, audio files, video files etc.) are taking up how much space.
  • Shows how the overall space is taken up by smaller files vs. larger files.
  • Shows how the overall space is taken up by files that has accumulated over time but not used since.
  • See Sample. 

Inactive Files:

  • This report specifically deals with files that are inactive in the file shares and have not been used within a given amount of time.
  • Shows the space taken up by these inactive files - grouped by user, file types, file size and file access date.
  • Provides a listing of all these files so that you can take action of moving out or deleting these files through the Optimizer module.
  • See Sample.

Recently Used Files:

  • This report deals with files that are active in the folder (i.e., used recently as specified in Storage Analysis Filters).
  • Shows the space taken up by active files - grouped by user, file types, file size and file access date.
  • Also provides a listing of these active files so that you can replicate these files to another folder/system through the use of Replicator module and have a business continuity solution.
  • See Sample.

Files created and/or modified after last vaulting:

  • This report provides information on the files that are created and/or modified within the shares/folders since a reference time in the past (usually the time of last vaulting operation).
  • Shows the distribution of files according to users involved, type of files and size of files.
  • Provides a listing of these files to the Vault module of ezSAM so that these files could be compressed, encrypted and saved locally and remotely to achieve a very effective data protection and disaster recovery solution.

Duplicate Files:

  • This report deals with duplicate files in the shares/folders and shows the distribution of these files - grouped by user, file types, file size and file access date.
  • Provides a list of these duplicate files so that you can take action of moving out or deleting the unneeded copies.
  • In the enterprise and SMB version of the product, duplicate analysis across a given set of folders within a domain or within a given set of computers is available as an add-on functionality.
  • See Sample.

Analyzer is a core module and every other ezSAM module depends on some level of functionality of this module - it is always bundled with other modules. But, the Analyzer module could be used stand alone as a storage environment analysis and monitoring tool for file servers consolidation, file virtualization and data center consolidation projects. 

Apart from the ezSAM family of products, BlueSAN Technology provides consulting services for these previously mentioned projects of enterprise customers. In consulting engagements, BlueSAN provides the ezSAM Analyzer for free. In the product form, the Analyzer works only for Windows File servers, but in consulting engagements, the product could be customized to analyze the file services from Solaris, all different variations of UNIX (Linux, AIX, HP-UX) and NAS systems. In near future, support for all these File Server environments will be available as an ezSAM module termed Analyzer+.

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Optimizer

The Optimizer module of ezSAM provides the unused and duplicate files management capability. Through the use of the Analyzer module, the unused and duplicate files are identified. The Optimizer takes these files and clean them up or move them out of the source file shares/folders to pre-designated places without any interactive involvement from the user. 

Using this functionality, old and unused files could be moved out of the file shares/folders leaving only the files that are used regularly or recently. These shares/folder will have more space available in order to provide optimized file serving performance, along with the benefit of having less data to manage during data protection activities. 

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Replicator

Industry survey shows that in SMB and departmental computing environment of enterprises, 40% or more of the direct attached disk space in file servers are unutilized. Using ezSAM Analyzer and Optimizer, you can find out and recover even more space by removing or moving out the  unnecessary files from these file servers.

Then utilizing ezSAM Replicator, you can deploy the easiest and most cost effective data protection and business continuity solution in this  SOHO, SMB or departmental environment by utilizing unused disk space from the different machines. 

Utilizing the Replicator module, valuable data of one machine could be replicated into the unused space of another machine automatically on a regular basis. In case of failure of a machine, the important data of that machine is available in another machine in the same geographic location. 

With ezSAm product suite, in the SMB environment and departmental computing environment of enterprises, unused disk space of one file server is leveraged to provide data protection and business continuity functions for the data of another file server at fraction of the cost of other alternatives.

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Distributor

ezSAM Distributor is an add-on functionality to ezSAM Vault. With the Distributor module, while Vaulting, changes to the managed shares/folders are identified, compressed, encrypted and distributed to their designated recipients.

In your day-to-day use of computers, if you create or modify digital information that are to be distributed to different clients of yours while ensuring that their respective content remains private and secured, then you will find the ezSAM Distributor to be very useful software that saves you hours of valuable time.

The Distributor module is used as follow:

  • Organize the information for individual clients under separate folder/file share.

  • Add these folders/file shares to be managed under the ezSAM.

  • Define encryption password for each folder/file share.

  • Define recipient email address for each client. 

  • Mark the folders/file shares to be tracked for changes by doing a baseline of each folder/file share.

  • Anytime you want to distribute the changes for a specific client, simply click on the Vault/Distribute menu item.

  • It may not be necessary to Distribute whenever Vaulting is done - a choice is given so that you can Vault intermediate changes for your own data protection without Distributing the intermediate changes to a client.

The ezSAM Distributor is in Beta phase - please contact us if you would like to be a beta user for this module.

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