EMC has expanded its midrange storage offerings by unveiling new virtualization-aware capabilities to its CLARiiON CX4 networked storage systems.
According to EMC, the new offerings include, virtualization-aware Navisphere Manager software, 10Gb/s iSCSI and 8Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) native UltraFlex connectivity options, and data protection and replication capabilities with RecoverPoint and Replication Manager software.
The company claims that the virtualization-aware Navisphere Manager simplifies the toughest and most time consuming storage administration tasks by integrating with VMware vCenter APIs and correlating virtual machines and their storage resources. It allows customers to make common task orders of magnitude faster, such as identifying root cause of virtual machine performance problems and optimising capacity utilisation.
This capability coupled with EMC Storage Viewer for CLARiiON, a free downloadable VMware vCenter software plug-in gives virtual machine and storage administrators, a common language when it comes to solving the storage challenges in VMware environments, the company said.
According to EMC, the 10Gb/s iSCSI and 8Gb/s FC UltraFlex connectivity options on CLARiiON CX4 storage systems enables VMware customers to meet the connectivity requirements. Its allows customers to mix 1Gb/s iSCSI, 4Gb/s FC, 8Gb/s FC and 10Gb/s iSCSI in a single system.
The company said that the new virtualization-aware RecoverPoint enables customers to manage replicated storage for virtualized and physical servers from a single view; identify unprotected virtual machines, while improving proactive management of the environment via automatic alerts; and maintain performance and protection without the need for additional bandwidth with both synchronous and asynchronous remote replication.
EMC increased scalability for VMware environments, enabling customers to attach up to eight-times more virtual machines to a single CLARiiON storage system. In addition, a new version of Replication Manager provides image-level recovery of virtual machines for stronger data protection and tighter recovery objectives.
Barbara Robidoux, vice president of enterprise storage division at EMC, said: “Customers with virtual server environments consistently tell us they have three main requirements – reduce costs, simplify management, and maximise existing investments. The dynamic nature of server virtualization has changed the IT infrastructure. The tools customers use to manage these infrastructures must also change so that customers can achieve maximum impact and benefit of virtualization.”
