EMC ASD (Advanced Software Division) is announcing its software-defined storage platform EMC ViPR which operates on existing storage to help manage the robust data growth experienced in the enterprise. EMC ViPR can manage both the storage infrastructure and the data that exists within the storage using policy-based automation. Additionally, EMC ViPR enables administrators to view objects as files and provides file access performance without the latency users typically experience in object storage. Coupled with all of this functionality, EMC ViPR is all software-based meaning that it will run both on EMC and non-EMC hardware and can be setup in just a matter of minutes as opposed to lengthier setups with more traditional deployments.
EMC ASD (Advanced Software Division) is announcing its software-defined storage platform EMC ViPR which operates on existing storage to help manage the robust data growth experienced in the enterprise. EMC ViPR can manage both the storage infrastructure and the data that exists within the storage using policy-based automation. Additionally, EMC ViPR enables administrators to view objects as files and provides file access performance without the latency users typically experience in object storage. Coupled with all of this functionality, EMC ViPR is all software-based meaning that it will run both on EMC and non-EMC hardware and can be setup in just a matter of minutes as opposed to lengthier setups with more traditional deployments.
The EMC ViPR Controller is the Control Plane that manages the storage infrastructure. It virtualizes the infrastructure so that it can be managed as a single pool of virtual storage. Instead of needing to handle several different management interfaces, administrators are now tasked with working with just one interface for all of their storage arrays. Within that single pool of virtual storage, users can allocate individual pools of storage for different applications to most efficiently provision resources. All of this accounted for, EMC ViPR has complex yet comprehensible functions: it finds the storage, creates virtual storage pools and provisions them by application, and then it’s done.
EMC ViPR Data Services is there for the Data Plane, the data stored within the storage arrays, for workloads that utilize file and block. ViPR leverages this special ability to view objects as files to avoid latency. Additionally, ViPR HDFS Data Service enables users to perform analytics across the entire storage environment as opposed to spending time individually on each array. Since new protocols such as HDFS are joining ranks with NFS and iSCSI, EMC ViPR is offering Object Data Services. ViPR Object Data Services provides Amazon S3 and OpenStack Swift compatible REST APIs and HDFS access methods. Additionally, ViPR Object Data Services will support EMC Atmos, EMC VNX and EMC Isilon arrays as well as a qualified list of third-party hardware.
The goal of EMC ViPR is to do for storage what VMware has done for servers by pooling and automating the existing infrastructure. Furthermore, EMC ViPR will utilize VMware APIs to appear as an array within VMware vSphere. The ViPR controller will also integrate with the VMware SDDC management and orchestration tool vCloud Automation Center on top of vCenter Operations Manager. This enables ViPR to be integrated as part of a VMware Software-Defined Data Center or on its own.
Availability
General availability of EMC ViPR will occur in 2H 2013 and pricing will be announced closer to the release.
