Archivas has been trumpeting applications that run on commodity hardware as well as offering an object-oriented approach to archiving (http://www.archivas.com/product/) since it was founded in 2003.

The basic CAP module is a cell comprising a two-node cluster plus one WMS100 storage device. Hitachi, however, suggests that a typical entry-point deployment will have at least four nodes and 5TB to 10TB of capacity spread across two WMS100s. The cluster will run Archivas' applications to provide a single policy-based archive interface to multiple applications via familiar file and Web access protocols, including CIFS, NFS, HTTP, and WebDAV.

Adding more nodes will speed performance; adding more disk drives to the WMS100 will increase data transfer rate and capacity -- as fast as to 300TB and as many as 350 million files, according to Hitachi. The vendor estimates that CAP should outperform "first generation CAS" (Hitachi's euphemism for Centera) solutions 5-to-1.

Services provided by the cluster include searching, preserving content quality, ensuring secure custody, and verifying data removal when appropriate. CAP also provides those services for both structured and unstructured data, whereas most competitors focus only on the latter.

GA for CAP should be out this fall, at a price that will vary depending on number of nodes and capacity; Hitachi suggests a price of approximately US$225,000 for roughly 5TB of usable capacity, which also includes compliance applications, according to the vendor.