Emulex Gives Enterprises A Break

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Storage vendors have spent much of the last year making their products easier to install and manage for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), so it was just a matter of time until someone tried to do the same for enterprise-class customers.

Emulex has done just that with its new Enterprise AutoPilot Installer software for Windows-based storage environments.

Emulex said its Enterprise AutoPilot Installer has automation capabilities that make it easier for end users to deploy and upgrade the company’s host bus adapters (HBAs). The installer integrates with Emulex’s HBAnyware centralized management utility and is available for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server users.

The installer is modeled after Emulex’s LP101 HBA that’s appeared in SMB offerings like the Dell/EMC AX100.

Even enterprise storage users need a break sometimes.

“End users are clamoring for solutions that ease the administrative burden and are easier to implement,” Enterprise Strategy Group senior analyst Nancy Hurley told Enterprise Storage Forum. “In a recent survey conducted by ESG, we found that regardless of company size, these were the two top problems that end users would like addressed in their storage environment. Actually, larger organizations have a great deal more administrative burden, so any solution that reduces the complexity of installation and configuration is welcome.”

Emulex said large and mid-range enterprise storage users want drivers and utilities that are easy to install, but they also need more extensive configuration and installation options and capabilities. Emulex said its wizard-based installation lets users install or upgrade an unlimited number of HBAs with just few mouse clicks, including driver and utility installation, without rebooting.

“Emulex has taken the same principles of simplicity and automation we delivered in our latest products for small-to-medium-sized businesses and migrated them to the enterprise environment,” said Mike Smith, Emulex’s executive vice president of worldwide marketing. “Enterprise storage environments are inherently more complex, so the simplification of the HBA installation process and the ability to script parameters once and then leverage the work across hundreds of installations — even before the HBA hardware is installed — is a tremendous value proposition for enterprise storage managers.”

Enterprise AutoPilot Installer-enabled driver kits are available free for current Emulex customers from the download section of the Emulex Web site at www.emulex.com.

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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