NT compatible CD Server software from Lynx

Lynx Technologies has released the Cheyenne CD Server and the Tracer optical storage software.

Cheyenne CD Server provides online access to a collection of CDs from a variety of clients on a LAN. It provides seamless integration of CD jukeboxes with Windows NT networks, enabling shared use of CDs, and administration accomplished through a graphical user interface (GUI) making use and management easy.

CD Server makes a collection of CDs appear as a drive letter, and each CD platter appears as a directory, and with an independent file system. Data on CDs can be transparently accessed, directly from applications or through File Manager or a DOS command prompt.

CDs in a jukebox can be simultaneously accessed by multiple users. By implementing sophisticated algorithms for I/O queuing and scheduling of requests to mount media, CD Server maximises data throughput, ensures fairness among different I/O requests and minimises the swapping of media.

Installation and configuration of CD Server is plug-and-play, and requires Windows NT 3.51 or higher. It does not require additional software such as database, a dedicated server, additional system memory or processor resources. UNIX clients can access the jukebox with additional connectivity software.

Tracer's optical storage software can also be mounted over the network as a single aggregate device. By extending the NFS standard, Tracer provides true transparent access to optical mass storage with unlimited expansion by allowing file systems up to 2TB, file sizes up to 2GB, and file systems spanning multiple disks and jukeboxes.

With Tracer's software, users on NFS, Novell or Microsoft networks see their files through their familiar Motif, File Manager or Windows 95 Explorer interface.

Tracer's software supports a full range of devices and media including WORM and rewritable drives and jukeboxes; CD-ROM, CD-Recorable and PD/CD stand-alone discs, towers, jukeboxes and autochangers. Management of offline media is also offered.

Tracer's design approach is to treat all optical media as primary storage with the metadata cached to magnetic disk. It also uses tunable magnetic disk caching to optimise performance by pre-fetching and staging data.

By employing self-describing media, the software permits full cross-platform interchangeability and a fully restorable system in the event of a hard disk crash.

Tracer's software runs on secure, high-performance UNIX platforms from Sun, DEC, HP, IBM and also supports Windows NT environments.