EMC XtremIO Application Integration and Management Features for VMs

EMC Corporation announced a application integration and management features in the XtremIO all-flash storage platform for VMware, Inc. and Microsoft Corp. virtualized environments.

This XtremIO features offer a set of workflow automation integrations that enable application and infrastructure teams to take advantage of simplified resource provisioning and management workflows, automation and orchestration in virtualized environments. Integrated Copy Data Management (iCDM) functionality also helps reduce the need to purchase separate dedicated hardware and software to manage copy data sprawl^.

Among more than dozen updates to XtremIO XIOS OS,
highlighted features include:

• The company and VMware product integrations between XtremIO, AppSync, VSI and VMware vCenter Web UI. This integration enables the vCenter administrator to locally recover and restore VMs and datastores, and perform file-level restores from within the VM. This also enables iCDM workflows from the vCenter native user interface, allowing users to create and repurpose functional copies using XtremIO’s virtual copy technology.

• XtremIO vRealize Orchestrator plug-in, which acts on its own or as a part of the VMware vRealize Automation workflow. This vRealize Orchestrator plug-in allows infrastructure teams to build a self-service catalog of automated, end-to-end, infrastructure workflows for virtualization administrators, DBAs, and application owners. The company will enable VMware users to leverage XtremIO with VMware vRealize Automation to automate and orchestrate storage management and provisioning tasks, such as compute and storage provisioning and iCDM capabilities natively within the VMware interface.

• Native support for Microsoft PowerShell version 4.0 and 5.0 via the XtremIO Management Server. As a result, administrators can benefit from a supported scripting environment, using PowerShell and VMware PowerCLI from XtremIO to automate and orchestrate any operation in a virtualized environment.

• XtremIO support for the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), allowing users to manage and provision XtremIO storage natively in their SMI-S user-interface of choice. SMI-S enables broad interoperable management and provisioning of heterogeneous multi-vendor storage systems from a variety of SMI-S enabled applications. For example, XtremIO includes support for Hyper-V virtualized environments via the System Center VM Manager (SCVMM) SMI-S profile. Going forward, the company will continue adding support for other SMI-S client profiles in XtremIO.

The firm also released a beta version of XtremIO’s web-based HTML5 GUI. This web-based user interface is designed to help provide XMS users with a simple, lightweight option for XtremIO reporting, monitoring and management – and supports access via mobile devices.

The set of application integration and storage workflow automation features built into XtremIO are designed to help simplify storage management and provisioning processes within major applications that are critical to both IT and business users. The company will continue developing XtremIO to support integration and workflow automation capabilities for additional applications to help reduce the complexity of managing and provisioning storage and application copies.

XtremIO at VMworld 2016
For the third consecutive year, XtremIO all-flash storage arrays have been chosen to power the VMworld 2016 Hands-on Labs, a demanding, IO-intensive instructional environment built for testing and demonstration of a variety of virtual and cloud-based workloads with hundreds of users in more than 100 sessions over four days. XtremIO all-flash storage is part of the foundational infrastructure of the VMworld Hands-on Labs that powers the hybrid cloud, end-user computing and software-defined data center environments that are built on top of the VMware software stack. XtremIO delivers high IO/s and predictable sub-millisecond latencies while providing 100% storage uptime and maximum storage capacity efficiency (upwards of 12:1), to ensure an user experience against the high performance and reliability demands of the Hands-on Labs environment.

Availability

• These features within the latest release of the XtremIO OS are available as a free software update for customers with current support agreements.

• The XtremIO vRealize Orchestrator plug-in will be available later this year.

Raghu Raghuram, EVP and GM, software-defined data center division, VMware, said: “The XtremIO integrations with VMware vRealize Orchestrator empowers customers to perform critical tasks such as backup, replication and file-level restores for VMs natively in the VMware vCenter or the vRealize Orchestrator user interface. These integrations offer customers new features to help accelerate productivity, while protecting business-critical applications and data in a simple and efficient manner.“

David Goulden, CEO, information infrastructure, EMC, said: “As the clear market share leader for all-flash storage, XtremIO also carries the mantle as EMC’s fastest-growing product ever. Apart from its world-class performance and ease of use, which we’re enhancing today, XtremIO is recognized for the continuous innovation being poured into the platform to make it even more valuable to our customers. XtremIO is core to EMC’s modern data center strategy and we look forward to sharing exciting news on even more XtremIO innovation in the near future.“