Network file virtualization specialist Rainfinity has announced support for EMC’s network attached storage products, and EMC in turn will resell Rainfinity’s RainStorage platform.
RainStorage 4.5 can now be used with EMC’s NAS products, including EMC Celerra, EMC Celerra NS Series gateways, and EMC NetWin Windows-based file servers.
RainStorage is a suite of applications that dynamically manage active data for greater utilization and leveraging of storage tiers. RainStorage 4.5 also eases consolidation and migration from non-EMC storage devices to EMC NAS by supporting full read/write access to files that are being dynamically relocated.
“The addition of RainFinity’s RainStorage 4.5 in the EMC Select Program gives our customers additional resources to optimize data placement in their NAS environments,” stated Tom Joyce, EMC’s vice president of storage platforms marketing. “Simplified file management is becoming a key customer requirement.”
“Rainfinity makes EMC Celerra NAS solutions more competitive,” said Tony Asaro, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “RainStorage helps to simplify the management of file systems using network file virtualization. EMC has been making aggressive moves with its NAS business through its own internal developments and by partnering. The addition of Rainfinity’s RainStorage to the EMC Select Reseller Program has the potential to have a major impact on the NAS market.”
Rainfinity also expanded its underlying network file virtualization platform to include a namespace management service, which seamlessly integrates with existing environments and automatically updates standards-based namespaces such as Windows DFS and Unix Automount, and also simplifies updates to locally defined mappings such as login scripts and manual mounts. Administrators can use RainStorage to pool heterogeneous, distributed, NAS devices and provide end-to-end transparency during the relocation of data, file and security attributes, and namespace entries without disruption to end users and applications.
RainStorage 4.5 also includes expanded support for Windows environments, including the ability to collect and analyze capacity, performance and file usage statistics to help administrators better optimize storage across heterogeneous environments.
“Simplifying storage management requires a simple solution that plugs into the current environment, works with existing tools and does not introduce risk,” said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at the Taneja Group. “RainStorage raises the bar for network file management with the insight and ease of use of its virtualization application and its safe, scalable architecture that easily leverages existing environments.”
With EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Network Appliance and Veritas as strategic partners, Rainfinity supports much of the NAS market. Rainfinity marketing VP Jack Norris says NAS virtualization “is even more important than SAN virtualization.” With virtualization, administrators don’t have to worry about where files are located or whether resources are optimized.
Pricing for the RainStorage appliance is $80,000, according Norris.