Northern Storage Suite is a user and data centric software solution that enables organizations to control data growth, align the value of data with the cost of storage, and extend the life of storage infrastructure – making efficient storage consumption a part of business culture. Specifically, Northern Storage Suite delivers:

Insight into user-generated data through:

• Enterprise wide reporting on global or business unit level, showing how resources are currently being used and how they will be used in the future.
• Role-adapted reporting provides line of business, data custodians, project managers and end-users with information about how their data storage behavior impact the organization. By distributing reports into the organization, the business is able to support cost and risk reduction efforts by data owners and to improve cooperation between IT and other business divisions.

Control over user-generated data through:

• Disk quotas, showing the end-user a reasonable upper limit for how much should be saved, bring hard control over directory size and usage by user, or soft control for monitored growth and enhanced accountability.
• File blocking can decrease liability, help structure your data and inform end-users what type of content is undesirable by preventing specific file types from being saved. Extension based real-time scanning and scheduled binary-level scans preserve system performance.

Northern Storage Suite is a Windows-based software solution that provides insight and control into user-generated unstructured data across hardware platforms, geographical sites, data sources and file formats. The solution can be used on any direct attached storage, all CIFS compliant NAS devices and has dedicated support for EMC VNX, EMC Isilon, Hitachi HNAS and NetApp NAS.

Storage Reporting

It is expensive and inefficient to make decisions about storage without information. Don’t manage mission critical data in the dark. 

Using Northern Storage Suite's Usage Monitoring functionality (found in the NSS:Storage Reporter component) you can:
- Reveal actual server, NAS and SAN content.
- Identify unwanted usage patterns and take immediate action.
- Tune storage management policies to better achieve strategic goals.

Reporting

• Drill-down interface: from overview to specific bottleneck
• Scheduled reporting: regular updates on areas of interest
• User reports: list all files owned by a specific account
• Binary format reports: list all renamed MP3 files
• Exchange reports: report on mailbox size
• Duplicate file reports: across the network or share level
   

Forecasting

• Usage history: at all drill-down levels including file types
• Projections: project usage for hosts, volumes and users
• Near full: list volumes with dangerous growth rates

Analytics

• Warning flags: draw attention for immediate action
• Warning flags: point to where future problems will lie
• Action recommendations: outline viable strategies

Chargeback

• Financial reports: spread awareness of the financial costs
• Strict billing: spread payable invoice for storage service
• Cost centers: charge for usage by user, group, OU, path
• Data sources: file system, exchange, quota

Automation

• Open process: replace hidden scripts with open process
• Scheduled cleanup: nightly removal of MP4 files
• Scheduled move: monthly zip and move of old files
• Immediate mail: watch for changes in a webpage

Northern Storage Suite is a Windows-based software solution that supports Windows cluster, HP PolyServe, HP StorageWorks, SAN devices when connected to a Windows host, all CIFS compliant NAS devices and has dedicated support for NetApp NAS and EMC Celerra.

Specifications
Managing Host - Preferred System

• Windows Server 2016
• Internet Explorer 11
• CPU: 6 core
• RAM: 6 GB or more
• HDD: 20 GB available
• .NET Framework 4.5 (for NSS Console, Data Gathering API and SharePoint scanning)

Managing Host - Supported System

• Windows Server 2008 - SP2 with Windows Update 2763674
• Windows Server 2008 R2 - SP1 with Windows Update 2949927
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2016
• Internet Explorer 9-11
• CPU: 4 or more core Intel Xeon 5500 or equivalent
• RAM: 4 GB or more
• HDD: 20 GB available

Remote Client Operating System
Most commonly the NSS client is run directly on the NSS server machine; administrators connect to an NSS server using remote desktop or similar and the manage all policies from that client. The client can also be run on the following desktop operating systems. Instructions for installation of remote clients is available in KB-2885.

• Windows Vista - SP2 with Windows Update 2763674
• Windows 7 - SP1 with Windows Update 2949927
• Windows 8
• Windows 10 (preferred)

DBMS
Database size is determined by the size of the environment being managed, the  automatic data-retention policies in place, and also by the way in which the software is used; the number of configured file-level reports, frequency of host scanning, etc. A useful rule of thumb is that the database will be under 0.2% of the size of the environment after 1 year of normal use with all data retained; i.e. a 100TB environment will result in a database of 200GB or less.

• MS SQL Server 2016 (preferred)
• MS SQL Server 2014
• MS SQL Server 2012
• MS SQL Server 2008
• MS SQL Express 2008 or later (POC/pilot deployments only)

In addition to this, both the database and the database server default collation has to be set to Case Insensitive. If your SQL server's default doesn't include '_CI' in the collation setting, you need to configure a new SQL instance with this setting in order to correctly create and use the NSS database tables.

LDAP
Northern Storage Suite uses a mixture of LDAP lookups and AD queries, particularly in quota operations. As such Active Directory is the required directory system.

• Windows Server 2008 AD DS
• Windows Server 2012 AD DS
• Windows Server 2016 AD DS (preferred)

Target Storage Devices
NSS can manage multiple target device types. The requirements for each supported device are as follows:

• EMC Unity/VNX/Celerra: DART 7.0.12 or later (VEPA/CEPA installation required)
• Isilon 6.5 or later
• HDS HNAS 12.3 or later
• NetApp 7-Mode: Data ONTAP version 7.3 or later 
• NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP - Single Branched Tree architecture: Data ONTAP 8.2 or later, NSS 9.5 or later
• NeApp Clustered Data ONTAP - All architectures: Data ONTAP 8.2, NSS 9.6 or later
• NeApp Clustered Data ONTAP - All architectures: Data ONTAP 8.3 or later, NSS 9.61 SR1 or later
• Other IP Storage: Fully compliant with Microsoft CIFS (some NSS features not available)
• SAN: Any SAN that is presented as a local drive to the NSS managing host (host requirements above)
• DAS: NSS is installed locally, as such the host requirements described above apply
• MSCS Windows 2008 (Active-Active or Active-Passive configurations, no restriction #nodes)
• MSCS Windows 2012 (Active-Active or Active-Passive configurations, no restriction #nodes)