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EMC opened its technology summit at EMC World on April 24 by unveiling its newest resource management software and security offerings.
The products are the latest in EMCs efforts to remake its storage technology and product portfolio with the goal of focusing on information management.
At its annual user conference here, the company introduced EMC Smarts Storage Insight for Availability, EMC Smarts ADM (Application Discovery Manager), EMC Assessment Service for Storage Security and new digital rights management software based on technology from its recent acquisition of Authentica.
During the morning keynote sessions, EMC executives outlined the storage companys efforts to simplify usage and implementation of its products through a new EMC Centerra management console and new EMC eLab Configuration Consultant tool on the way in the third quarter of 2006.
Constructed to simplify management across Fibre Channel SAN (storage area network) and IP network deployments, EMC Smarts Storage Insight for Availability uses EMCs ControlCenter 5.2 storage management tool to automate fault management and discover network elements within the SAN and their interrelationships, said officials from EMC, in Hopkinton, Mass. Currently available, the model-based software product pinpoints where a failure occurs and immediately analyzes how these issues affect dependent interrelated network infrastructure components such as file systems, host devices and data pathways.
The root-cause notification system is built on EMCs model-mapping Smarts technology and can unearth Fibre Channel SAN availability glitches as root-cause problems within EMC Symmetrix unit, volume, front-end director and port link failures; EMC Clariion unit, volume, storage processor and port link failures; Fibre Channel SAN switch units supported by EMC and port links; and host bus adapter cards and port links.
The licensing cost of EMC Smarts Storage Insight for Availability ranges from $750 to $1,000 per terabyte.
For its part, EMC Smarts ADM presents a real-time interactive model of a customers application environment to help the customer push a greater degree of automation by understanding specific application behavior and how that directly relates to existing infrastructure investments. The appliance, which is currently available, is delivered in a 1U (1.75-inch) Intel server with preinstalled software. Pricing for ADM is more than $100 per node.
EMC is definitely looking at beefing up its current information security capabilities with future technology investments, said Joe Tucci, EMC president and CEO, during his morning keynote session. Other organic and outside acquisition technology areas on Tuccis shortlist include unified ILM (information lifecycle management), virtualization, “model-based” resource management and information grid.
Currently available, the new EMC Assessment Service for Storage Security examines the security capabilities of a customers SAN, NAS (network-attached storage) and CAS (content-addressed storage) deployments to keep processes on par with the National Security Agencys information methodology on which it is based.
Storage platforms, access controls, management systems, applications and networks are all placed under scrutiny for potential security pitfalls. Should any vulnerabilities or areas of high risk be uncovered, the service will recommend remediation steps.
EMC Documentum Digital Rights Management lets customers oversee and control access and usage of unstructured data within and outside the enterprise.
EMC Digs Into Networks
* EMC Smarts Storage Insight for Availability Discovers network elements within SANs to understand relationships
* EMC Smarts ADM Offers interactive model of application environment to understand application behavior and its impact on infrastructure
* EMC Assessment Service for Storage Security Tests storage environment for security capabilities