Features - Storage Innovations:

EMC UNVEILS POWERFUL NEW OPEN MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

EMC Corporation, a world leader in information storage systems, software and services, announced the availability of its new EMC VisualSRM and EMC VisualSAN mid-tier storage mtanagement software, architected to help small and medium-sized organizations simplify and automate their networked storage environments.

Easy to install and simple to use, the Visual family of open software enables administrators to get more out of their storage assets by centralizing management, improving capacity utilization and automating previously burdensome storage resource management (SRM) and storage area network (SAN) management tasks.

Mark Lewis, EMC's executive vice president of open software operations and chief technology officer, said, "Similar to today's large enterprises, mid-sized companies are charged with the task of managing their rapidly growing storage assets while also maintaining relatively flat budgets and headcount. But unlike large enterprises, these companies often lack storage expertise and therefore require solutions where simplicity is at the core of their design. EMC's VisualSRM and VisualSAN solutions are extremely powerful and simple-to-use tools that will help our customers lower their management costs."

Nancy Marrone-Hurley, a senior analyst at Enterprise Storage Group, said, "Today's announcements show that EMC is dedicated to providing comprehensive storage management solutions to the mid-tier market. Mid-tier customers have the same management problems as enterprise organizations, just on a different scale. Through a strong combination of internal development and acquisitions, EMC is able to offer solutions that enable mid-tier customers to manage their heterogeneous storage environments as their enterprise counterparts do, but at a much lower price point."

VisualSRM

Designed to improve capacity utilization and availability, VisualSRM is storage-agnostic open management software that offers file-level reporting and centralized storage resource management across all of an organization's major storage and server platforms. VisualSRM supports a wide range of applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, Sybase and SQL Server databases. VisualSRM also integrates with other storage management applications from backup and framework vendors such as IBM, VERITAS, HP, CA and BMC.

VisualSRM provides organizations with a powerful solution to efficiently manage their information throughout its lifecycle, empowering administrators to:

• Track system and individual storage consumption and enforce capacity utilization thresholds, ensuring capacity is available when and where needed
• Set policies for moving, deleting, compressing, and archiving files based on the age of the information, the time since the file was last accessed, and predefined capacity thresholds
• Categorize data and define category-based storage management policies that match the most appropriate and cost-effective storage media to the information stored on it.

Kevin Harris, AmeriVault's chief technology officer, said, "VisualSRM is absolutely mission critical to the service we provide. The software enables us to centrally and cost-efficiently track storage capacity even though it is spread out in two data centers located hundreds of miles apart. We use it to perform automated load balancing for our Dell servers to guarantee that we always have available storage. This is especially important because our storage needs are always in flux, with new clients coming on board or existing clients suddenly needing more storage capacity. VisualSRM prompts us when thresholds are reached, so we can proactively accommodate these new demands without a hitch.

"VisualSRM generates detailed weekly reports that give me a snapshot of what my storage world looks like on a volume-by-volume basis," he added. "Its trends analysis and forecasting capabilities let me look at past storage levels and effectively project future growth."

VisualSAN

Reducing the complexity and cost of mid-size SAN environments, VisualSAN provides administrators with a single view of all devices across their storage networks and delivers advanced network, performance and configuration management capabilities.

The VisualSAN management suite includes three modules:

• VisualSAN Network Manager is the base VisualSAN application for monitoring independent SAN devices. It serves as a common interface for integration of other modules.
• VisualSAN Configuration Manager allows administrators to capture the state of a SAN configuration at a point in time for comparison, historical reference, change management, asset management, and replication of a specific SAN topology.
• VisualSAN Performance Manager provides live and historical analysis of link statistics across a SAN.

Architected for open SAN management, EMC VisualSAN currently supports EMC CLARiiON networked storage systems and will extend support for additional mid-tier storage platforms upon finalization of the Storage Management Initiative-Specification (SMI-S).

Acuity Brands , one of the leading commercial- and industrial-lighting fixture manufacturers in the world, has deployed a Dell/EMC SAN for a database that supports more than 1,500 concurrent users. The company purchased EMC VisualSAN from Dell and now uses it to manage four CLARiiON CX systems and one CLARiiON FC storage system, as well as two Fibre Channel switches.

Jim Draughn, manager of network operations for Acuity Brands Lighting, said, "VisualSAN is a powerful tool that helps us better manage the performance and configuration of our storage devices. The centralized view we gain with VisualSAN allows us to accurately monitor the health of storage devices and manage any changes in a very cost-efficient way. For example, we can take a snapshot of our SAN to identify and analyze any changes that have been made, and compare them to a proven configuration. This allows us to quickly resolve issues created by the changes."

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing automated networked storage solutions for organizations across the globe. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.