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The new SAN Advisor module for EMC Corp.s EMC ControlCenter is a powerful management tool that lets IT managers accurately plan storage area network deployments and upgrades.
Click here to read the full review of ControlCenter SAN Advisor 5.2.
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The new SAN Advisor module for EMC Corp.s EMC ControlCenter is a powerful management tool that lets IT managers accurately plan storage area network deployments and upgrades.
eWEEK Labs exclusive tests of SAN Advisor 5.2, slated for release this month, show that the product is a solid addition to the EMC ControlCenter line of storage management products. (This is the first version of SAN Advisor—previously, the product was called SAN Architect.)
SAN Advisor 5.2 has a starting price of $5,000, and prices increase according to the amount of storage managed. EMC currently offers bundle pricing for its ControlCenter SRM Planning and Provisioning suite—which includes SAN Advisor, SAN Manager and ARM (Automated Resource Manager)—for a starting price of $22,000 for 1TB of managed storage. Discounts are available for larger enterprises.
With SANs getting larger and more complex, design tools such as SAN Advisor 5.2 and its primary competitor, Computer Associates International Inc.s $720 BrightStor SAN Designer, will become more important.
Considering that SANs are becoming more and more complex by the day and that most companies dont have the time and resources to train all their IT staff on SAN technologies, tools such as SAN Advisor 5.2 will become increasingly attractive because they allow low-level staff to do more SAN management tasks.
Our tests show that SAN Advisor 5.2, a Web-based application, will be a valuable tool for mapping SAN resources, planning SANs and managing SAN changes in any company that has large SAN installations.
Given the early state of the SAN design software tools market, however, we believe EMC should make a concerted effort to reach out to non-EMC shops by including discovery functionality with SAN Advisor 5.2.
The most interesting aspect of SAN Advisor 5.2 is its best-practices and interoperability knowledge. At sites that already have EMC ControlCenter, SAN Advisor 5.2 can take discovery information from the repository to create information-rich snapshot files that contain the topology, firmware and driver revisions and hardware inventory of the SAN.
On its own, SAN Advisor 5.2 does not have discovery capabilities, so it would be difficult for IT managers who dont have EMC ControlCenter 5.2 to get full use of the product. As we said earlier, EMC will need to include discovery in future versions of SAN Advisor to stay competitive with rivals.
Without discovery capabilities, administrators must manually input all inventory data. CAs competing BrightStor SAN Designer is ahead of EMC in this regard, because CAs offering supports discovery of Cisco Systems Inc., Computer Network Technology Corp., McData Corp. and Qlogic Corp. environments.
SAN Advisor 5.2 snapshots can be made on demand, or they can be scheduled, which make them a useful way to track changes made to the SAN. After importing discovery information from an eWEEK Labs test SAN, SAN Advisor 5.2 discovered several potential problems in it right out of the gate.
SAN Advisor 5.2 found problems that ranged from trivial things, such as hard drives that were approaching end-of-life status in the test array, to major mistakes such as multipath host bus adapters that were accidentally plugged into the same server director switch—which could have left us with a single point of failure at the director switch. In addition to finding these problems, SAN Advisor 5.2 also did a good job of recommending corrective actions to eliminate them.
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As a planning tool, san advisor 5.2 is easy to use, and it let us create design files that simulated what would happen if we made additions or changes to our SAN. In the simulated environment, it took only a few clicks of the mouse to add equipment to our SAN. When adding equipment such as switches or arrays, SAN Advisor 5.2 helped us determine the right specifications and configuration for new hardware.
For example, when we tried to add a new array to our test SAN, SAN Advisor 5.2 walked us through basic configuration decisions, including how many disks to install and what types of disks to use. In addition, SAN Advisor 5.2 warned us when new components werent configured correctly or if our design changes did not meet industry best practices.
After wed created a simulated storage array, SAN Advisor 5.2s connection tool helped us figure out the best way to connect the array to the SAN, telling us the switches and ports to use.
Using SAN Advisor 5.2s design comparison tool, we quickly generated checklists that described in detail the necessary steps for upgrading a current design to a new one. This comparison functionality is extremely important because it makes it easy for high-level storage administrators to create task lists for lower-level staffers to implement.
The comparison tool can be used to validate implementation changes to the SAN. After an implementation is done, the senior IT manager can use the comparison tool to make sure the snapshot of the new SAN configuration matches its design correctly.
SAN Advisor 5.2 is linked to EMCs Auto Update service. When new interoperability guidelines or best-practice recommendations become available, that information can be added to the software quickly. Using this information, IT managers can rapidly identify outdated hardware, firmware and drivers on their SAN.
SAN Advisor 5.2 does not import performance data into its design files or snapshots. We believe EMC should add this information in future revisions of SAN Advisor because it will enable IT managers to plan upgrades and avoid creating bottlenecks. Competing products do not yet offer this capability, but this is something we expect to see in most products in this space during the next few years.
SAN Advisor 5.2 can export data in the form of PDF and spreadsheet files, which should make it easy for IT managers to e-mail or print out their SAN designs.
Next page: Evaluation Shortlist: Related Products.
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Evaluation Shortlist
CAs BrightStor SAN Designer A powerful tool for SAN planning and design (www.ca.com)
Onaro Inc.s SANscreen Focuses on SAN change management and requires no host agents, making it a good choice for shops that dont use ControlCenter (www.onaro.com)
Senior Analyst Henry Baltazar can be reached at henry_baltazar@ziffdavis.com.
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