Onaro Extends Datacenter Automation to Networked Storage
Capacity Manager 1.0, Provisioning Manager 1.0, and updated SANscreen Service Assurance help integrate storage into data-center operations
Onaro, Inc. released SANscreen Capacity Manager 1.0, SANscreen Provisioning Manager 1.0, and updates to SANscreen Service Assurance. The trio of products enables enterprises to extend IT service management and IT automation to networked storage and help accelerate application delivery, reduce operating costs, and trim capital spending on storage (by up to 20 percent, according to Onaro).
Although datacenter automation has aided server and network management, it has largely bypassed networked storage, Onaro says, which notes that storage resource managers focus on data management and classic datacenter automation solutions remain tightly focused on network and server automation.
Driving the need for integration of storage and datacenter operations are these trends, according to the company:
Storage resources can consume up to 45 percent of the infrastructure budget in large enterprises; networked storage is part of this figure
Utilization, availability, planning, and power present cross-domain operational issues, which can be solved using network and server management processes
Virtual machine technology offers benefits but increases the risk for both physical and virtual infrastructures. To be successful, virtual machine implementations will need a cross-domain approach.
Extending datacenter automation to networked storage requires a foundation built on real time, cross vendor infrastructure configuration information that can be transformed into a true service level view of storage. This service level view serves as the baseline of information to coordinate the building, management, optimization and audit of storage services.
"Storage management must become integrated into mainstream datacenter operations for organizations to get to the next level of efficiencies and cost reduction,” said Dave Russell, vice president, Gartner, Inc., in a statement. "There is significant low-hanging fruit that can be captured around cost reduction, operational efficiencies, and service-quality improvements for IT groups that can successfully integrate these two parts of the datacenter.”
Onaro's SANscreen extends datacenter automation to storage by providing real-time, heterogeneous, service-level views of the storage environment and provides actionable service-level information for both storage teams and non-technical storage users.
Application Dashboard, a new feature of SANscreen Service Assurance, offers visibility into the service-level performance of their storage environment. With Application Dashboard, users can view the status of their storage service delivery's health.
New Capacity Manager 1.0 Increases Asset Utilization
Managers of large, distributed data-centers must understand how resources are allocated -- all complicated by the assortment of switches, arrays, and hosts within an environment. Manually tracking asset utilization is time consuming and prone to problems. SANscreen Capacity Manager 1.provides:
Real-time global allocation information by data center, tier, or business unit to improve capacity planning
Global chargeback information, reducing capital costs and increasing utilization
Automated tiering-assignment rules for managing manage complex service-tiering schemes
The company says early users of SANscreen Capacity Manager have increased asset utilization by 10 percent or more by improving the visibility of resource allocation.
New Provisioning Manager 1.0 Reduces Storage Provisioning Time, Reduces Standby Capacity
Understanding storage resource availability to provision new applications is complex and tedious. SANscreen Provisioning Manager 1.0 accelerates application provisioning time and reduces standby capacity by:
Enabling application owners to reserve new storage space directly
Creating an accurate service-tier reservation forecast (one based on actual demand)
Implementing a repeatable, simplified process for creating provisioning plans
Integrating with a customer's provisioning system
The company claims that early users of Provisioning Manager reduced storage provisioning time by 20 percent and reduced standby capacity by as much as 30 percent.
Capacity Manager 1.0, Provisioning Manager 1.0 and Service Assurance 4.0 are available today. Capacity Manager 1.0 and Provisioning Manager 1.0 are priced starting at $250 per TB. Service Assurance 4.0 pricing starts at $185 per port.
More information can be found at http://www.onaro.com.