August 25, 2010 | eWeek.com | By: Chris Preimesberger
EMC announces an update of its Unisphere management software which the company claims enables storage administrators to perform common tasks from drop-down menus using far fewer clicks.
EMC is “dumbing down” the management of some of its storage systems, primarily for midrange and small businesses.
Recognizing that large enterprises with large IT staffs aren’t the only ones investing in new, more efficient virtualized systems, EMC on Aug. 24 announced an update of its Unisphere management software which the company claims enables storage administrators to perform common tasks from drop-down menus using far fewer clicks.
Simplification of storage and server administration has been a trend for a couple of years, but EMC appears to be taking this to new levels. In fact, EMC claims that a trained employee — not necessarily an IT expert — can provision storage from a VMware vCenter Server in only two clicks.
This reflects a natural evolution within the industry, Mark Sorenson, EMC Senior Vice President at EMC Computer Systems said in a video interview.
“Up until recently, there really haven’t been the software tools and technologies that could exploit it [simplification of administrative tasks],” Sorenson said. “Fast, fully automated storage begins to exploit those, putting the information on the right device — whether it’s SATA for cost or flash for performance. FAST Cache takes advantage of flash devices to extend the size of caches.”
EMC’s FAST [Fully Automated Storage Tiering] cache is performance optimization software that enables applications to run about twice as fast as usual. It is fully automated with no administrator intervention required.