EMC Offers ‘New Onramp’ for Building Private Storage Clouds

You’d think data storage nowadays would be as simple as loading it all on an on-site disk, uploading it to a cloud site or other location in the network, making sure all the chaff is removed, and getting a receipt for it. Well, it can sometimes be like that, but not most of the time.

At its annual conference May 11 in Boston, EMC introduced a new version of its storage configuration package. Laboriously enough, it is called EMC Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor 2.0.

This one, EMC says, automates “the validation of storage configuration best practices in physical and virtual environments, utilizes agentless discovery to simplify storage deployment and management, and provides detailed reports and trend analysis that improve storage change and configuration management processes.”

The Station couldn’t have phrased all that marketspeak any better himself.

Here’s our take: This thing makes sure no corners are cut, discovers all appropriate storage nodes, and spits out reports and analysis as needed on the whole system.

The Station enjoys turning marketspeak into plain English without losing anything super-important in the process.

EMC is pitching this as an onramp to building enterprise-level private cloud systems, since the Configuration Advisor sets the table for virtualizing a system’s storage [of course, a hypervisor is needed in there, too], then provides the recurring monitoring and reporting that one needs to keep a close eye on it all.

“Visibility into the SAN (storage area network) has always been challenging, but this dynamic is accentuated in virtualized environments where applications, virtual machines, and server resources are engaged in a continuous game of hide-and-seek with the storage environment,” Enterprise Strategy Group Senior Analyst Bob Laliberte said.

“EMC Ionix [has the] ability to provide end-to-end visibility, change management, and policy control.”

More information is available on this PDF.