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To begin to address these challenges the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is endorsing the use of storage tiers and classes, data life-cycle strategies and new standards for managing structured data, such as the eXtensible Access Method (XAM). As Penn State began researching the XAM standard, implementation hurdles became apparent; hurdles such as integration with existing applications, working across heterogeneous data silos, and hitherto lack of application of metadata standards in the storage domain. In order to assess XAM's potential, Penn Penn State initiated an Archival Storage Prototype project in collaboration with the Penn State University Libraries, WPSU a unit of Outreach at Penn State, and Penn State ITS Emerging Technologieswhich entailed development of a Storage Services Gateway that resides between applications and storage. The prototype entailed the development of a Storage Services Gateway that resides between applications and storage,that consists of a policy engine and a metadata engine, and serves as a mechanism to access our storage pool via standards-based protocols including AJAX, SOAP, REST, HTTP, and FTP.
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