EMC tools pool data arrays

EMC last week released new management software to help firms deal with heterogeneous products from multiple vendors, and made a commitment to support key storage interoperability specifications.

The fact that the world's largest storage specialist is supporting a single software console to manage multiple systems from a number of vendors should result in significant time and cost savings for corporates.

EMC president and chief executive Joe Tucci said the new products under the Auto-IS brand would make it easier for organisations to monitor storage and view data across multiple drive arrays, as if it were one aggregated pool. The latest version of AutoIS can now be used to manage IBM, HP, HDS, Sun, Network Appliance and other storage systems.

Tucci added that the company was committed to open storage through swapping application programming interfaces (APIs) with storage rivals and by building in support for the Bluefin and Common Information Model (CIM) specifications, which were approved by storage standards body SNIA as part of its Storage Management Initiative.

Several other vendors support Bluefin and CIM, which are widely seen as necessary for storage software providers to monitor multiple systems. "We want to make your heterogeneous storage look like a data pool," Tucci said. "Everything we produce will be CIM- and Bluefin-compliant."

As well as complying with standardised platforms, EMC will continue to use other approaches to tighten interoperability. These will include reverse-engineering and enhancements to the WideSky middleware layer that some analysts have criticised for being too proprietary.

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