EMC Corporation has released what it said is a major new version of its EMC ESN Manager software, bringing EMC’s networked storage management software to both EMC and non-EMC storage environments.
Leveraging EMC’s WideSky storage management middleware, EMC said ESN Manager is an important element of the company’s Automated Information Storage (AutoIS) strategy and provides automation, simplification and openness for multi-vendor Storage Area Networks (SANs).
Jim Rothnie, EMC Chief Technology Officer, said, “The rapid surge of networked storage environments is confronting customers with multiple applications running on multiple storage devices being managed by multiple software tools. As a result, these environments have become breeding grounds for complexity and inefficiency. ESN Manager solves this problem with a single, intuitive and automated software management solution — allowing customers to realize the cost savings and productivity-enhancing benefits that networked storage should deliver.”
Commenting on today’s announcement, Randy Kerns of the Evaluator Group said: “With the integration of additional third-party storage array support, it’s clear EMC is committed to delivering on their promise of AutoIS. This is a very positive step for customers interested in centralizing the management of increasingly complex, multi-vendor fabric environments.”
EMC said ESN Manager has added support for Compaq StorageWorks Arrays, EMC CLARiiON Storage Systems and single-view, multi-vendor switch management. In addition to the new capabilities mentioned above, EMC said ESN Manager continues to support discovery, zoning, device masking and reporting among other functions on EMC Symmetrix storage systems, as well as support for hundreds of server-based storage resources and host bus adapters.
EMC said it also previously qualified a wide range of non-EMC storage devices, including IBM ESS “Shark”, Hewlett-Packard XP 512, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) Lightning 9900, and SUN StorEdge 9900 arrays and Storage Technology (STK) tape devices — to coexist in mixed-vendor SANs managed by ESN Manager. This qualification ensures the side-by-side operation of these platforms in the same centrally managed SAN, and enables users to quickly and easily manage groups, or zones, of logically networked storage devices.