Still, BladeLogic has partnered with EMC and Onaro to orchestrate those vendors' storage management wares into automation workflows. If a customer wants to activate an SRM tool as part of a disaster recovery or provisioning routine, BladeLogic can make that happen. "We can invoke tools from the process perspective today," Vaishnavi asserts.
BladeLogic plans a tighter integration of storage into its wares, so that storage would be included in the broader range of automated management tools, but there's no rush to do so, and no plan to ever replace SRM. "We are moving toward greater visibility and orchestration, but this would be a value-add to what our partners [like EMC and Onaro] do," Vaishnavi says. As to timeframe, he'll say only that it's not imminent.
At least one storage manager thinks there's value in at least drawing storage into the automation loop at the workflow level. "Many DBAs and system admins dont know what goes into storage provisioning, and I think there is a breakdown in telling them where the provision request is and who is handling it," says Michael R. Passe, storage architect with CareGroup Healthcare System in Boston. "Essentially, providing some work flow for both [DBAs and sys admins] and the storage team is something that is long overdue. It will ease relations on both sides."
Passe's organization, which has an ILM system of several tiers across EMC Symmetrix and Clariion systems at two large sites, is currently evaluating an automation solution from BladeLogic. But Passe says the IT group is mainly intent on better server management. Eventually, he concedes, some aspects of storage management, such as disaster recovery, might benefit from automation. "We try to do it wherever it makes sense, here and there."
Shops like Passe's may not be pushing hard enough for big vendors to close IT automation/storage gap. And, indeed, some of the large suppliers are focused on adding automation to storage in organizations where the storage functions are pigeonholed.
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