EMC Upgrades Software Defined Storage Platform ViPR

At EMC World 2014 this week in Las Vegas EMC announced version 2.0 of its  ViPR software-defined storage platform, designed to simplify management of both existing and new storage infrastructure and provide new data services to underpin next-generation applications and big data analytics.

ViPR 2.0 builds a bridge to EMC's 3rd platform (built for cloud, mobility, social networking and big data). It also plugs into higher-level management and orchestration tools from VMware, OpenStack and Microsoft, so storage can be a part of broader data center workflows.

“ViPR is the cornerstone of EMC's software-defined storage portfolio," Amitabh Srivastava, president of EMC's Advanced Software division, said.

Support for commodity drives is added to the existing object and HDFS storage implementation along with block data services, based on EMC ScaleIO. Version 2.0 also adds multi-site support through new geo-scale storage capabilities which provide data access, integrity and protection.

ViPR Object Data Services can now span multiple locations and offer geo-replication and geo-distribution capabilities. ViPR 2.0 also adds ViPR Block Services, new data services based on EMC ScaleIO server-SAN software, which deliver block storage capabilities to any ViPR-managed commodity storage array, the company said.

ViPR now natively supports arrays from EMC, Hitachi Data Systems and NetApp, as well as commodity storage. Through the OpenStack Cinder plugin, it also supports Dell, HP and IBM arrays.

The management interface seeks to automate and standardize policy-driven management of existing and new storage infrastructure through a single "pane of glass."

EMC has tweaked its storage software suites, ViPR SRM and Service Assurance Suite for improved integration with ViPR and VPLEX, providing new chargeback capabilities and enhanced virtual storage management through the ViPR console. SAS 9.3 boasts integration with VMware NSX.