Automated Virtualization and Replication Management Integral to Delivering on the Full Promise of SRM
Gone are the days when the sole purpose of storage resource management (SRM) software was to report on file ages and sizes, storage utilization and server-to-storage LUN assignments. Those functions are still important but not nearly enough to meet the demands of today's progressive enterprise data centers. These organizations are demanding faster, easier deployments of SRM software that grant them more insight into their increasingly virtualized environments as well as better reporting and management of their replication processes that are becoming so critical in today's data centers. It is this void that APTARE StorageConsole 7.0 seeks to fill.
APTARE has come a long way since its early days of being only a backup reporting tool. In addition to its StorageConsole: Backup Manager software that it started with in 2003 and its Capacity Manager which it added in 2007, as of Q109 it now brings Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager to its product portfolio.
The introduction of Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager addresses two critical infrastructure needs of organizations. First, there is not an enterprise organization that is not enticed by the cost savings that virtualization offers. Whether it is in the form of reduced hardware costs (servers, storage and cabling), smaller data center footprints, or reduced cooling, heating and power costs, enterprises see virtualization as THE ticket to achieving these cost savings. But what can hold them back from moving virtualized servers from test and development into actual production environments is their inability to clearly see what virtualized application is assigned to what virtualized data store and then manage performance in the virtualized environment.
Virtualization Manager does the following to help organizations address this issue. First, it identifies what storage resources are associated with each VM. Using StorageConsole's agentless technology, it communicates directly with either the VMware ESX hypervisor or VMware's vCenter Server to discover what virtual machines (VMs) are hosted on each ESX server as well as with the storage arrays themselves. It then uses the information to connect the dots, so to speak, by mapping what VM is assigned to what physical storage.
Once that mapping is made, StorageConsole leverages its agentless technology to gather information about the virtual environment - such as performance characteristics on the VMs, the ESX hypervisor and the underlying storage system. It then correlates that information to reclaim disk space by identifying orphaned VMs or outdated snapshots as well as analyze resources allocated to each VM and identify contention between them on the ESX server.
The other issue that organizations are grappling with is how to better manage their replication software. As disk prices continue to drop and backup windows and application recovery requirements (both local and remote) shorten, organizations are turning to replication software to address these issues. But using replication software is not without its problems. Organizations can lack visibility into the status of a replicated data store (i.e. what percentage of the data store is replicated), how the replication is performing (i.e. - why is it replicating so slowly) or fail to recognize and reclaim storage capacity of replicated data stores that are no longer needed or expired.
Again, these are the types of problems that Replication Manager is designed to address. To improve the reliability and performance of replication pairs, it reviews the duration and throughput metrics of remote mirroring to identify performance bottlenecks. To maximize resource utilization, it provides transaction, performance and capacity-based reporting and to help organizations control costs, it ensures that replication volumes are on the correct tiers of storage and does chargeback reporting.
However neither Virtualization Manager nor Replication Manager should be yet confused as the "end-all" or "be-all" for solving the problems associated with virtualization or replication. Virtualization Manager currently only supports VMWare and while APTARE tells me it is ambitiously pursuing support for Microsoft Hyper-V, organizations are, for now, out of luck if they are using virtualization platforms such as Hyper-V or Citrix XenServer.
Replication Manager is also still representative of a 1.0 release in that you had better be using NetApp's SnapMirror, SnapVault or FlexClone features or else it will not be of much use in your environment. Granted, I would not expect support for replication on other storage systems products to not be far behind as StorageConsole's existing Capacity Manager software already interfaces with both high end and midrange storage systems from multiple vendors including EMC, IBM, HDS, HP and others. APTARE tells me it plans to offer support for HDS Shadow Image and True Copy later this year but, for now, only NetApp users can leverage or use Replication Manager in their environment.
The release of APTARE StorageConsole 7.0 clearly positions APTARE as an enterprise SRM play. This is evidenced by the claim of Rick Clark, APTARE's CEO, that APTARE is having great success in competing against legacy SRM tools and is replacing them as fast as it can find them which, I'm sure, is facilitated by its enterprise relationship with HDS. APTARE's agentless architecture, its ability to leverage its existing code base that communicates with multiple vendors' storage systems and its introduction of its new Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager products should make it a desirable to more organizations to serve as their anchor to manage infrastructures So while its new features are clearly not totally mature, StorageCentral is well positioned to meet the physical and virtual needs of both today's and tomorrow's enterprise data centers.
APTARE has come a long way since its early days of being only a backup reporting tool. In addition to its StorageConsole: Backup Manager software that it started with in 2003 and its Capacity Manager which it added in 2007, as of Q109 it now brings Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager to its product portfolio.
The introduction of Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager addresses two critical infrastructure needs of organizations. First, there is not an enterprise organization that is not enticed by the cost savings that virtualization offers. Whether it is in the form of reduced hardware costs (servers, storage and cabling), smaller data center footprints, or reduced cooling, heating and power costs, enterprises see virtualization as THE ticket to achieving these cost savings. But what can hold them back from moving virtualized servers from test and development into actual production environments is their inability to clearly see what virtualized application is assigned to what virtualized data store and then manage performance in the virtualized environment.
Virtualization Manager does the following to help organizations address this issue. First, it identifies what storage resources are associated with each VM. Using StorageConsole's agentless technology, it communicates directly with either the VMware ESX hypervisor or VMware's vCenter Server to discover what virtual machines (VMs) are hosted on each ESX server as well as with the storage arrays themselves. It then uses the information to connect the dots, so to speak, by mapping what VM is assigned to what physical storage.
Once that mapping is made, StorageConsole leverages its agentless technology to gather information about the virtual environment - such as performance characteristics on the VMs, the ESX hypervisor and the underlying storage system. It then correlates that information to reclaim disk space by identifying orphaned VMs or outdated snapshots as well as analyze resources allocated to each VM and identify contention between them on the ESX server.
The other issue that organizations are grappling with is how to better manage their replication software. As disk prices continue to drop and backup windows and application recovery requirements (both local and remote) shorten, organizations are turning to replication software to address these issues. But using replication software is not without its problems. Organizations can lack visibility into the status of a replicated data store (i.e. what percentage of the data store is replicated), how the replication is performing (i.e. - why is it replicating so slowly) or fail to recognize and reclaim storage capacity of replicated data stores that are no longer needed or expired.
Again, these are the types of problems that Replication Manager is designed to address. To improve the reliability and performance of replication pairs, it reviews the duration and throughput metrics of remote mirroring to identify performance bottlenecks. To maximize resource utilization, it provides transaction, performance and capacity-based reporting and to help organizations control costs, it ensures that replication volumes are on the correct tiers of storage and does chargeback reporting.
However neither Virtualization Manager nor Replication Manager should be yet confused as the "end-all" or "be-all" for solving the problems associated with virtualization or replication. Virtualization Manager currently only supports VMWare and while APTARE tells me it is ambitiously pursuing support for Microsoft Hyper-V, organizations are, for now, out of luck if they are using virtualization platforms such as Hyper-V or Citrix XenServer.
Replication Manager is also still representative of a 1.0 release in that you had better be using NetApp's SnapMirror, SnapVault or FlexClone features or else it will not be of much use in your environment. Granted, I would not expect support for replication on other storage systems products to not be far behind as StorageConsole's existing Capacity Manager software already interfaces with both high end and midrange storage systems from multiple vendors including EMC, IBM, HDS, HP and others. APTARE tells me it plans to offer support for HDS Shadow Image and True Copy later this year but, for now, only NetApp users can leverage or use Replication Manager in their environment.
The release of APTARE StorageConsole 7.0 clearly positions APTARE as an enterprise SRM play. This is evidenced by the claim of Rick Clark, APTARE's CEO, that APTARE is having great success in competing against legacy SRM tools and is replacing them as fast as it can find them which, I'm sure, is facilitated by its enterprise relationship with HDS. APTARE's agentless architecture, its ability to leverage its existing code base that communicates with multiple vendors' storage systems and its introduction of its new Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager products should make it a desirable to more organizations to serve as their anchor to manage infrastructures So while its new features are clearly not totally mature, StorageCentral is well positioned to meet the physical and virtual needs of both today's and tomorrow's enterprise data centers.
Newsletter Signup
Leave a comment