StorNext File System is a shared disk file system made by Quantum Corporation. It is installed on hosts that are connected to the same disk array

Disk array

A disk array is a disk storage system which contains multiple disk drives. It is differentiated from a disk enclosure, in that an array has cache memory and advanced functionality, like RAID and virtualization.Components of a typical disk array include:...

 in a storage area network

Storage area network

A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...

 (SAN) . Client systems are not required to run the same operating system to access a shared filesystem containing StorNext data. As of January 2008, the operating systems with available client software are Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 (as Xsan

Xsan

Xsan is Apple Inc.'s storage area network or clustered file system for Mac OS X. Xsan enables multiple Mac desktop and Xserve systems to access shared block storage over a Fibre Channel network. With the Xsan file system installed, these computers can read and write to the same storage volume at...

 developed by Apple), Red Hat Linux

Red Hat Linux

Red Hat Linux, assembled by the company Red Hat, was a popular Linux based operating system until its discontinuation in 2004.Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994...

, SuSE Linux, HP-UX

HP-UX

HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...

, Solaris, AIX, and IRIX

IRIX

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...

.

StorNext is used in environments where large files must be shared by users without network delays, or where a file must be available for access by multiple readers starting at different times. An example of the former is analysis of real time satellite image data. An example of the latter is on-demand access of a movie stored on disk.

The original name was CentraVision File System (CVFS). It was created by MountainGate Imaging Systems Corporation to provide fast data transfer between Windows and IRIX computers. Advanced Digital Information Corporation

Advanced Digital Information Corporation

Advanced Digital Information Corporation was an independent American manufacturer of tape libraries and storage management software which is now part of Quantum Corp...

 acquired MountainGate in September 1999, added additional client types, and changed the name to StorNext File System. The first new clients were Solaris and Linux. In August 2006 Quantum acquired ADIC.

The StorNext File System is the foundation for Quantum's StorNext Storage Manager, a hierarchical storage management

Hierarchical storage management

Hierarchical storage management is a data storage technique which automatically moves data between high-cost and low-cost storage media. HSM systems exist because high-speed storage devices, such as hard disk drive arrays, are more expensive than slower devices, such as optical discs and magnetic...

system that is used for data archival with a back end robotic tape library.