SAN Management + ViPR

New integration for the EMC ViPR platform combines Fibre Channel routing and logical SAN (LSAN) zoning with Brocade Network Advisor SAN management software to enable policy-based automation for managing and provisioning both EMC and non-EMC storage infrastructure within medium to large enterprise SANs using the industry-standard Storage Management Initiative (SMI) interface.

Integrating Fibre Channel routing and LSAN zoning with Brocade Network Advisor will help reduce data centre costs and complexity for both current and future application deployments in larger SANs by taking advantage of Brocade Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN solutions enhanced with Brocade Fabric Vision™ technology. Brocade Network Advisor is sold by EMC as Connectrix® Manager Converged Network Edition (CMCNE).

As a result of the joint efforts, EMC and Brocade’s largest SAN customers can now utilise the EMC ViPR platform to leverage existing storage infrastructures for traditional data centre workloads. This complete spectrum of capabilities can be run with enterprise storage, including the EMC VMAX®, VPLEX®, VNX®, Atmos® and Isilon® families, as well as commodity storage.

EMC ViPR is the world’s first software-defined storage platform that is designed to provide the ability to manage both storage infrastructure (called the Control Plane) and the data stored within that infrastructure (called the Data Plane). It masks the complexity behind configuring and managing storage infrastructure, providing single point-and-click management for complex, heterogeneous storage functions.

“Expanding the scale of SANs supported by EMC ViPR furthers our joint efforts to make Fibre Channel an essential element of the software-defined data centre and protects the investment our 50,000 joint customers have made in their storage infrastructures,” said Jack Rondoni, vice president, Data Centre Storage and Solutions, at Brocade. “Together, we are enabling new use cases built on top of the most reliable and highest-performing storage network.”

"We are delighted to continue our long-term relationship with Brocade and to work together to ensure seamless integration of the networking stack with the ViPR Software-Defined Storage platform," said Christopher Ratcliffe, Vice President of Marketing, Advanced Software Division, EMC Corporation. "Our joint focus on reducing data centre costs and complexity in even the largest environments has resulted in the rapid adoption of EMC ViPR across our installed base."