Tarmin Technologies is shipping the second release of its GridBank active archive platform for unstructured, fixed-content data on secondary storage resources. In addition to providing active archive functionality, GridBank also encompasses object-based storage (aka content-addressable storage, or CAS) and information lifecycle management (ILM) functionality.

GridBank 1.5 includes enhancements such as 64-bit versions for Linux and Windows Server 2008, and e-discovery and search functionality for storage resources outside of the GridBank environment, but the key enhancement is support for Microsoft SharePoint, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0.

The integration with SharePoint includes business rule-based, granular archiving with full content index and search functionality.

Archiving/migration features in GridBank 1.5 include single instancing, compression, thin provisioning, and regulatory/compliance features. GridBank 1.5 also combines ID-centric security with Active Directory integration and data encryption.

In addition to SharePoint, GridBank supports CIFS/NFS hosts. The underlying grid-based hardware consists of industry-standard servers and storage platforms.

Other enhancements in GridBank 1.5 include:

• Support for more than 500 file formats
• A Web-based management console
• Support for the Representational State Transfer (REST) protocol (in addition to NTFS, CIFS, HTTP, WebDAV and FTP)
• Data classification reporting for storage resources not archived in the GridBank infrastructure

GridBank 1.5 is in beta now, with production shipments expected in July.