Tiger Bridge

Tiger Bridge supports the NTFS file system natively. As such, it can be installed on any Windows server to extend a local file system into a secondary tier of storage.

The primary storage can contain live data. Once configured, files residing, created or updated on the primary storage are automatically replicated to the target storage (according to the policy and schedule).

A Tiger Store, Tiger Pool or NTFS volume can be used as primary as well as secondary tier of storage. In some instances, both at the same time.

Tiger Bridge supports a wider variety of secondary tier. Tiger Store, Tiger Pool, and NTFS file systems can be used as primary or secondary tiers.

Virtually any device supporting the SMB protocol can be used as a secondary tier target. This includes solutions such as XenData and StrongBox.

LTO tape libraries such as IBM and Qualstar can also be used.

S3 Interface:

- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- IBM Cloud OpenStack Services (ICOS)
- Microsoft Azure
- Spectra Logic Blackpearl
- DataDirectNetwork Web Object Scaler (WOS)

When a file has been moved to a secondary tier of storage and needs to be removed from the primary tier, a stub-file containing all the valuable metadata information is left behind and can be readily accessed by users and applications.

Unlike backup software, there is no need to consult a database to find out where a file content was moved. All you need to do is navigate your browser, as usual.

On PCs, the stub-file attribute is set natively. When used alongside Tiger Store stub-files will appear as grey tag on Mac computers.

When a stub-file is open, its content is automatically and transparently retrieved and made available to the application requesting it.

The Reclaim Space policy lets the admin sets a usable threshold level on the primary storage (ex: 75% full). If the established volume capacity has not yet been reached, selected folders will be replicated automatically, but files will not be tiered. When the file system capacity exceeds the threshold, only files meeting the specified criteria (ex: not touched in 12 weeks and larger then 1GB) will be flushed. In other words, they will be replaced with stub-files.

Of course, files, folders or the entire volume can also be manually selected for replication.

When the secondary tier is relatively fast (i.e. local storage, NAS) it is most convenient to put the system in automatic-retrieval mode. This way, users just need to open a stub-file to retrieve its original content.

When the secondary tier is tier slow or is based on a pay-per-access (i.e. LTO Tape, AWS Glacier); it is best to have an admin control the retrieval process manually.

Tiger Bridge supports partial retrieval. This means that if a user (or the application) tries to access a particular portion of a file that is being retrieved, Tiger Bridge will seek that information first. This greatly enhances the user experience when trying to access large files. For instance, a video editor won't need to wait for the entire file to be retrieved when trying to "scrub" a file that is on the cloud.
Tiger Bridge is also smart. This means that if a user simply tries to browse a folder, all files won't be retrieved just to display thumbnails. Finally, when retrieving from a linear storage such as LTO-tape, a smart bulk retrieval engine optimizes the order in which files will be retrieved in order to minimize seek times.

Unlike other popular gateway solutions that transfer blocks of data into the cloud, Tiger Bridge transfers files. As such, the same file and folder structure is accessible from within the cloud as from your local server. Any number of virtual compute engines can easily be fired up to crunch all your data. Facial recognition, transcoding, big data analytics and other type of cpu intensive applications are now at your fingertips, without even having to change anything to your existing infrastructure.

Tiger Bridge provides all the policies you might need:

- Replicate: Replicates files from primary tier to the secondary tier. You end up with two copies. The reported size of the bridged volume is the size of the primary volume.

- Tier: Once a file has been successfully moved to the secondary tier, the original file will be removed from the primary tier and replaced with a stub-file IF there is a need to make space on the primary tier. The reported size of the bridged volume will be the largest of the primary or the secondary.

- Overflow: The secondary tier appears as a direct extension of the local volume. Once a file has been successfully moved to the secondary tier, the original file is removed from the primary tier and replaced with a stub-file. A file can be in either location, but not in both. The reported size of the bridged volume will be equal to the primary plus the secondary volumes.

- Sync: A special version of Tier policy, allowing multiple servers to sync on the same cloud account. As a result, when a file gets copied to the cloud from any connected server, a stub file is automatically be created shortly after on all other connected servers.

Integrating Tiger Bridge into your Active Directory environment is a real breeze. Indeed, the native NTFS file system is native to Active Directory and ensures a perfect fit.