BANGALORE, INDIA: EMC Corporation, a storage vendor, unveiled new virtualization-aware features for EMC Clariion CX4 networked storage systems.

New feature include:
Virtualization-aware EMC Navisphere Manager software

10Gb/s iSCSI and 8Gb/s fibre channel (FC) native UltraFlex connectivity options

Data protection and replication capabilities with EMC RecoverPoint and EMC Replication Manager software

Virtualization-aware Navisphere Manager simplifies the toughest and most time consuming storage administration tasks by integrating with VMware vCenter APIs and correlating virtual machines and their storage resources—a first among native storage platform management interfaces. It enables customers to:

EMC is delivering 10Gb/s iSCSI and 8Gb/s FC UltraFlex connectivity options on  Clariion CX4 storage systems.

EMC also increased scalability for VMware environments, enabling customers to attach up to eight-times more virtual machines to a single Clariion storage system—providing unmatched scalability and flexibility. The powerful combination of added bandwidth, ease-of-use, and the ability to support thousands of virtual servers is especially important to VMware customers because it significantly increases efficiencies by driving higher levels of consolidation onto a single array.

As customers move toward virtualizing their critical applications, their need for robust disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) solutions for site and system level protection become critical.

Today, EMC also introduced an EMC Proven Solution that is enabled by Clariion CX4 and VMware vSphere 4 to help customers take full advantage of these new capabilities. A Solution Blueprint is now available to provide a detailed technical overview and best practice for consolidating mission critical applications through virtualization.  This solution leverages the virtualization-aware capabilities of Navisphere Manager for improved usability, identifying the intersection of physical and virtual assets.  This solution satisfies the demanding performance requirements of critical applications leveraging the load-balancing of PowerPath/Virtual Edition. Overall, this solution enables the consolidation of these mission critical applications for a better return on investment for IT infrastructure.

Organizations worldwide are using Clariion CX4 storage systems in VMware environments with the new virtualization-aware management, data protection and replication technologies, as well as advanced energy efficiency technologies such as automated disk spin-down and virtual provisioning (also known as thin provisioning) to lower their costs and improve service levels.

The new offerings will be showcased at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco from August 31 to Sept. 3, 2009.

EMC offers 8Gb/s FC from Tuesday, and will offer 10Gb/s iSCSI on CLARiiON networked storage systems in the third quarter of 2009 (this is in addition to the current offering of  8Gb/s FC and 10Gb/s iSCSI on Celerra unified storage systems).