Include innovative, flexible management software
EMC this week on Tuesday unveiled one of its biggest software launches and the introduction of a new storage infrastructure that consolidates its Clariion and Celerra storage.
EMC on Tuesday unveiled one of its biggest software launches and the introduction of a new storage infrastructure that consolidates its Clariion and Celerra storage.
The launch of the VNX family of mid-range storage arrays, which offer both file- and block-level storage, will also include two entry-level arrays for small businesses and remote offices — the VNXe series.
The Clariion and Celerra arrays will eventually be replaced by the VNX family, which consists of seven models ranging in capacity from six to 1,000 drives of serial-attached SCSI (SAS) and solid state drives (SSD).
What’s most important is that all the arrays can be managed with the same management interface — the Unisphere interface. Unisphere is built using the Adobe Flex open source web interface development tool, which allows a number of user roles (such as IT administrator or server administrator) to be super-imposed on the same set of management code, allowing the management software to be viewed in their own terms. For instance, a server admin may view the storage environment by virtual machines and the storage they are connected to rather than the unfamiliar LUNs and zones. Unisphere was introduced at EMC World in May of 2010.
In accordance with the trend, EMC is dispensing with Fibre Channel drives, instead support SAS and SSD. The VNX arrays also support iSCSI, Fibre Channel over Ethernet and CIFS and NFS.
