The display of real-time, on-screen colour graphic representations of disk and tape usage are among the claims made by Sterling Software Inc for its new storage management utility. Designed for use on IBM MVS mainframes in conjunction with Sterling’s DMS/OS storage management system, the Sterling Space Monitor scans disk and tape volumes at user-specified intervals. Sterling says these can range from once a day, to every 30 seconds. Information is subsequently presented in the form of colour-coded bar graphs and pie charts, showing extents, total free space, and largest contiguous free space, to help in deciding allocation. Batch reporting of storage consumption trends is also provided, for better resource planning. The monitor also offers a number of automated functions, including the submission of archival, defragmentation and data set movement jobs, together with the issue of warnings and action messages, once allocation thresholds have been reached. According to Sterling, the monitor can be installed in less than two hours, and does not require an initial program load. It occupies ten cylinders of space on a 3380 disk drive. In addition to Sterling’s own storage management system, the monitor can work with a range of similar products including IBM’s Data Facility Heirarchical Storage Manager, DFHSM, Computer Associates’ Auxiliary Storage Manager, and Westinghouse Electric Corp’s Fast Dump Restore/Archive Backup Restore, FDR/ABR. The monitor is available from Sterling Software in the UK, at an introductory price of UKP5,000.