IBM Spectrum Discover is a metadata management platform for on- and off-premises unstructured file and object data. It was introduced in 2018 as a component of IBM’s Spectrum Storage software suite. Notably, it integrates with IBM’s Spectrum Discover data protection and Spectrum Scale scale-out parallel file system software – both of which Evaluator Group covers in detail in separate Product Briefs. Additionally, IBM Spectrum Discover was incorporated into IBM Spectrum Fusion, which fuses Red Hat OpenShift and containerized versions of Spectrum Scale scale-out file system, Spectrum Discover for search and metadata indexing, and Spectrum Protect Plus for container and virtualization backup (see Evaluator Group’s Technical Insight for more information).
Spectrum Discover first scans for and catalogs system-generated metadata from a variety of IBM and non-IBM, on- and offpremises storage resources as defined by the customer. The full list of storage resources supported by Spectrum Discover is noted in the “Usage and Deployment” section of this report. Spectrum Discover populates this catalog by generating a pointer to the metadata’s location on its originating storage resource, rather than physically migrating the metadata into a new database. The storage resource itself continues handling the creation and updating of system-generated metadata.
What Spectrum Discover handles is the application of custom tags that augment system-generated metadata with additional identifying information/context that allows files and objects to be identified, located and managed more easily. Tagging can be based on system metadata; version 2.0.1 introduced the ability for custom tagging based on an inspection of the contents of files and objects conducted by Apache Tika. Tagging is policy-based, can be triggered to occur manually/immediately or on a periodic and scheduled basis, and is controlled via either via a GUI or APIs.
IBM Spectrum Discover Product Brief Includes:
- Overview
- Highlights
- Usage and Deployment
- EvaluScale Table
- Evaluator Group Opinion
Download the Product Brief now!
