3PAR Re-Architectes its Management Console

3PAR announced the 3PAR InForm Management Console, a new management interface that provides greater visibility, control, and management of 3PAR InServ Storage Servers. In addition, 3PAR announced enhancements to its Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) provider designed to enable heterogeneous enterprise management. 3PAR’s SMI-S provider is an open application programming interface (API) based on specifications set by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

InForm Management Console
The 3PAR InForm Management Console is a completely re-architected replacement for the InForm Graphical User Interface (GUI) previously used for point-and-click management of 3PAR InServ Storage Servers. The InForm Management Console includes new features to enable smarter management of all InServ models and is so easy to use that it requires only a handful of intuitive, well-supported actions for complete functionality and system administration. It also provides rich instrumentation of all physical and logical objects for one or more InServs.

"3PAR Utility Storage is easy to manage, letting us focus on our business, not our storage," said Rob Frase, Senior Director, Information Technology and Data Center Services at MedeFinance, a leading healthcare analytics company. "The new InForm Management Console is designed to make managing 3PAR InServs even easier."

The new InForm Management Console includes the following features:

• Quick Filter—Easy filtering of tabular data for quick access to vital system information
• Wizards—New wizards require fewer mouse clicks to configure volumes
• 3PAR Virtual Domains Management—Complete view of all Virtual Domains including user management and details on all connected systems for consolidated control of Virtual Domains
• Charting Functions—Enhanced charting functions enabling specified objects to be graphed separately or in aggregate (where data from multiple systems can be graphed on the same chart) and offering preservation of chart settings for later use
• Data Export—Flexible export of InForm Management Console data in CSV or HTML file formats

SMI-S Enhancements
3PAR supports SNIA’s efforts to develop SMI-S, a common, open storage management interface supported by heterogeneous networked storage devices and management applications. 3PAR has developed the discovery, monitoring, and management capabilities of the SMI-S specification. 3PAR’s latest SMI-S enhancements, which are certified by SNIA’s Conformance Testing Program (SNIA-CTP) suite for compliance with SNIA’s SMI-S v1.1 specifications, include the following:

• Volume Provisioning—In addition to discovering and monitoring storage volumes, enables users to actively create and provision 3PAR base volumes using SMI-S clients.
• Performance Statistics—Gives users the ability to retrieve performance statistics for ports, virtual capacity, and physical capacity.
• LUN Masking and Mapping—Enables users to see which storage volumes are visible to which hosts, whether connected via Fibre Channel or iSCSI.

3PAR’s SMI-S provider has been designed to SNIA specifications to integrate with management applications from leading SMI-S client vendors including HP, Onaro, Symantec, and Tek-Tools Software. "3PAR’s SMI-S integration with Tek-Tools and latest enhancements provide us with simple, more comprehensive storage management capabilities," said Ryan Bonnett, IT Administrator for The Generations Network, parent company of leading online family history resource Ancestry.com. "The visibility provided by Tek-Tools Profiler into our 3PAR InServ Storage Servers offers valuable information to optimize our storage investment without sacrificing performance."

"Customers want storage that is easy to manage," said Jeffrey Hill, Senior Research Analyst, Data Management and Storage Practice at Aberdeen. "3PAR has developed a reputation for simple storage management. Its new InForm Management Console as well as enhancements to SMI-S are examples of 3PAR building on a strong lead in simplifying data center storage."

"A number of our customers have already reported 10x administrative efficiency gains from 3PAR Utility Storage—a smart, thin, and ready tiered-storage array for resilient utility computing," said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. "3PAR’s InForm Management Console and our new enhancements to SMI-S are designed to further enhance our customers’ visibility, control, and administrative efficiency in managing their 3PAR InServs."

Both the 3PAR Inform Management Console and the 3PAR enhancements to SMI-S are available now.