Delivering relevant files to counsel for review under tight time constraints is the key to success in electronic discovery. As automation in the industry improves, price pressures are severe. The unstructured source data collected in almost all legal matters usually comprises a large volume of small files. Data integrity is paramount and fast, accurate small file processing is vital. BlueArc powers your processing network with the storage architecture that can cost effectively handle swarms of files without slowing your processing.
Analyzing millions of documents, including e-mails, to determine possible relevance requires reading all the files, sometimes multiple times, with specialized tools. Small file handling is a prime factor in source data processing speed, which in terms is a fundamental determinant of electronic discovery response time.
In addition, storage requirements can expand rapidly as the scope of discovery changes. By nature, the discovery process yields information that can expand or reduce the scope of legal or administrative action. If the number of targeted individuals in an investigation doubles, then the volume of source data typically doubles as well. Alternatively, if the time frame of the investigation expands, the volume of potentially relevant data explodes! Further, collected and indexed data is frequently repurposed for other related discovery requests.
Compounding the need for large storage pools at electronic discovery processing centers is that it is often necessary to maintain the data for particular matters for years while supporting multiple discovery requests simultaneously. Storage that can keep up and expand without constant administration significantly eases scheduling of concurrent activity.
As storage is one of the core components of the electronic discovery process, effective storage architectures are fundamental to business success in this market. BlueArc provides industry-leading performance for storing, retrieving and maintaining large collections of small files. BlueArc removes the file-processing bottleneck that challenge seven the most powerful electronic discovery environments with its unique hardware and software architecture. By implementing file system protocols and all of the I/O management logic in silicon, rather han in software running on a general purpose computer, BlueArc Titan NAS controllers sustain data throughput at near network line speed, even when file system Administration requirements are severely burdened by millions of files. With features including tiered storage that allow mixing high performance ãactiveä disk and lower-cost ãarchivalä disk behind one system, BlueArc delivers the highest performance with the lowest total cost of ownership and simplified management.
BlueArc storage solutions: Aligned with electronic discovery requirements
BlueArc's Titan 2000 is the ideal solution for the high demands of electronic discovery. In electronic discovery, millions of typically small files are analyzed for relevance. E-mails, office documents, TIFF image files and other common application file formats are normal. Titan's hardware accelerated file system delivers consistent throughput and access over vast populations of small files that would choke more ordinary file system architectures.
Most file systems support adequate levels of throughput when dealing with large files, but thousands or millions of small files degrade performance due to the high percentage of non-data transfer operations. BlueArc's Titan hardware allows thousands of parallel operations, maintaining throughput even under these extreme circumstances typical to electronic discovery.
Solutions that speed up directory lookups, improve file access, accelerate extraction and processing
It is essential that your storage solution accelerate the electronic discovery workflow. With millions of files, the sheer quantity of files in a directory can cause performance issues. File access and directory lookups often degrade as more files are added to a directory. While this may not be a problem when you have several thousands of files in a directory, with millions of files this can become a crippling impediment. BlueArc's unique object-based file system, combined with Titan's hardware architecture, provides a
quantum improvement in directory lookup speed. Ordinary file systems need to create extraneous directories or folders to effectively handle this many files, while Titan can easily handle millions of files in one directory.
Electronic discovery storage requirements are constantly expanding in scope, as cases can last years, or new projects come on line. BlueArc's Titan 2000 scales to meet expanding demands on your business
The need to expand file storage can occur at any time, as projects rapidly accelerate, more data requires extraction, and your business takes on new clients. Many electronic discovery cases can last years and related requests come in frequently. The need to expand file storage can occur at any time. A storage system that scales quickly and easily to hundreds of terabytes without the need for extra equipment is optimal. Titan discovers new storage and immediately starts placing it into service without configuration complications.
Titan provides more cost effective processing storage. Finally, electronic discovery businesses need to operate cost efficiently. Titan has the lowest total cost of ownership for storage, and when combined with its unique throughput advantages, Titan becomes an obvious choice for electronic discovery.
