EMC ViPR Controller 2.2 Software-Defined Storage Announced

EMC ViPR Controller is storage automation software that centralizes and transforms storage into a simple, extensible and open platform. It abstracts and pools resources to deliver automated, policy-driven storage services on demand via a self-service catalog. The vendor neutral centralized storage management, helps in reducing costs, providing choice and delivering a path to the cloud. It also provides seamless integration with cloud stacks and supports an open API.

ViPR Controller automates repetitive storage provisioning and reclamation tasks in addition to providing self-service access to storage for customers. Its self-service catalog makes it as easy to consume enterprise storage as it is to consume a public cloud storage service - while maintaining all the best-of-breed features and capabilities of the underlying arrays.

BENEFITS OF ViPR 2.2

New features and capabilities for the ViPR Controller 2.2 release include:

·         VMAX3 Support - Enables administrators to leverage new SLO based provisioning in VMAX3 through ViPR Controller. This allows VMAX3 storage resources to be abstracted into policy-based virtual storage pools which can be delivered to end-users based on application response time needs. Customers can non-disruptively migrate data from one service level to another based on changing application needs as well as ensure application data is protected leveraging TimeFinder.

·         VNXe Support - Administrators can now bring VNXe block and file storage under ViPR Controller management.

·         IBM XIV Support - ViPR Controller now supports management of IBM XIV storage natively vs. previous support which was available via the OpenStack Cinder Driver.

·         Vblock System Infrastructure Provisioning - Administrators can now provision the supporting infrastructure (both storage and compute) for an ESX or bare metal cluster on a Vblock System 3x0 and 7x0 and Specialized Systems (VMAX or VNX based).

·         Data Domain - The complexity of manually provisioning protection storage has been eliminated by automating the provisioning process for Data Domain systems. In this release Data Domain can be provisioned as NAS protection storage supporting both NFS and CIFS, the primary use case being for archiving.

·         Management of Pre-Existing Environments - VMAX and VNX pre-provisioned block volumes can now be ingested to enable existing and new environments to be brought under ViPR Controller management.

·         Name Customization - Administrators have the option of viewing and modifying ViPR Controller standard naming convention via naming templates. Administrators can customize zone names for Cisco and Brocade switches, as well as entity names for VMAX, VNX, VPLEX, HDS and XtremIO.

·         Performance-Based Allocation Intelligence - When ViPR Controller provisions new volumes on an array it will now take into account the current load on existing ports and intelligently select the most ideal ports based on redundancy and lowest port usage metrics.

·         XtremIO with VPLEX and RecoverPoint - ViPR Controller now simplifies and automates management of VPLEX Local and VPLEX Metro volumes protected by RecoverPoint with XtremIO as the back-end storage.

·         VPLEX MetroPoint Support - Administrators can now use ViPR Controller to automate protection of their most critical applications with MetroPoint topology using VPLEX Metro continuous availability and RecoverPoint CDP for both metro sites and remote replication for the third DR site.

·         VPLEX Enhancements - ViPR Controller can now take continuous copies or a mirror for VPLEX distributed volumes (with VMAX or VNX) on one or both legs, enabling administrators to protect their environment from a single failure at either high availability site. It now supports crash consistent snapshots for a set of volumes within a consistency group leveraging array-based snapshot technology.

·         File Management Enhancements - Administrators can now automate exporting of file systems for all supported filers through ViPR Controller and set multiple permissions and security types.  Additionally, it enables administrators to create and set tree quotas for capacity consumption.

·         Hitachi Advanced Features - Administrators can now use ViPR Controller to automate management of Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (similar to FAST in VMAX/VNX) as well as local replication at the volume or consistency group level on Hitachi arrays.

·         AIX VIO Support - Administrators can now use ViPR Controller to automate storage management for their AIX VIO servers, LPAR clients and standalone AIX systems.

·         Task API/UI - Administrators can make better maintenance and upgrade decisions because they are now able to see the system tasks and user driven tasks that are running on ViPR Controller.