Implementation: Dell | EMC SAN

Software Components

The right information management software allows you to always know where your data resides and the status of the underlying storage systems. The Navisphere family of products enables you to monitor, configure, tune, and plan Dell | EMC storage from a single management workstation. Navisphere provides a powerful set of capabilities that meets the ease-of-management and security requirements of today's operating environments.

Navisphere software extends the capabilities of the Dell | EMC arrays by offering comprehensive data protection and availability through integrated and centralized control. Simplifying the management of Dell | EMC storage systems increases the productivity of your system administration staff and reduces overall storage management costs. The full Navisphere suite includes:

Navisphere Manager - complete configuration, management and event notification
Navisphere Event Monitor - automatically notifies administrators when failures or status changes occur on the Dell | EMC systems
Navisphere Analyzer - comprehensive performance, management and trends analysis
Navisphere Integrator - interprets incoming SNMP trap messages, identifies the problem array and locates the problem on the network map of HP OpenView or Tivoli TME
Navisphere Agent / CLI - issues commands to an array requesting array status, and recording commands and the resulting output
PowerPath - delivers automatic re-routing of SCSI or Fibre Channel I/O traffic in the event of a host-to-storage path failure. Replaces ATF.

Optional software for a Dell | EMC SAN includes:

CLARalert - early notification and remote diagnostics service program
Access Logix - data protection, shared storage access, and security for heterogeneous SAN resources
MirrorView - remote synchronous mirroring of data
SnapView - point-in-time view of information for non-disruptive backup
Database Tuner - monitors and tunes Oracle databases

Navisphere Manager

Navisphere Manager provides an easy way to configure and manage Dell | EMC arrays installed throughout an enterprise. Arrays can be seen and managed from a single window or multiple windows. Navisphere allows you to select your view preferences: a hardware-centric equipment view, which shows a "map" of the hardware configuration and can be quickly used to identify hardware faults, or a storage-centric view, which shows the logical components of storage and their relationships to each other.

Navisphere Agent

Navisphere Agent is the communication bridge between the Navisphere management software and the Dell | EMC system. The Agent software runs on the attached hosts (server) and communicates directly with the storage system. Navisphere Agent also contains a configuration GUI, which provides an easy tool for setting up the parameters of the Agent. Navisphere CLI provides a set of text-based commands that can be run in a non-graphical environment or from a remote location.

Application Transparent Failover

Application Transparent Failover (ATF) provides high availability I/O failover software that automatically re-routes I/O traffic during a host-to-storage path failure.

ATF helps ensure that users have continuous access to their data. It provides multi-pathing and dynamic load balancing for Windows NT/2000 servers. (Load balancing is only supported by Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers). It also supports simultaneous use of both servers' HBAs and both storage processors.

PowerPath

PowerPath is a host-based software that resides between the application and the disk device layers. It replaces ATF in currently-shipping Dell | EMC SAN solutions. Every I/O from the host to the Storage Array must pass through the PowerPath driver software. This allows PowerPath to work in conjunction with the Storage Array to provide intelligent I/O path management, including dynamically load balancing I/O requests and automatically detecting and recovering from host-to-Storage path failures.

PowerPath supports multichannel access to logical devices, the smallest addressable storage units. Also, PowerPath dynamically load balances I/O requests and automatically detects and recovers from path failures. PowerPath can be hosted by several operating systems. Data channels can be parallel SCSI or Fibre Channel. Several storage systems are supported.

Access Logix

Access Logix software enables multiple heterogeneous hosts to connect to the Dell | EMC storage arrays and ensures that servers receive appropriate volume access. Fibre Channel allows multiple servers to share a single storage port. Access Logix's volume access control enforces strict access rules on these shared storage ports. Because Access Logix protects volume access at the storage level, storage administrators control access from a single point, at the Dell | EMC array, rather than having to control access at every server.