EMC Debuts SAN Management Tool

EMC Corporation has launched a new storage area network (SAN) management application designed to help enterprises reduce storage downtime during maintenance and upgrades.

According to EMC, the ControlCenter SAN Advisor can help enterprises plan and model their network infrastructures to manage SAN growth and maintenance, and support long-term management strategies. According to EMC, the software features a straightforward change management functions that lead users through the process and automatically imports and validates existing configurations. SAN Advisor's design simulation features can help forecast the impact of changes to an enterprise's SAN environment, and can be used to detail implementation plans and verify that they were completed correctly.

The application's features are built around an automated data import engine that downloads SAN environment data for analysis, modeling and predictive change management testing. The software validates the network against EMC's best practices database and proactively tests the compatibility of firmware and driver updates.

"Designing and maintaining a complex, heterogeneous SAN is a time- consuming and often error-prone task," EMC's senior vice president for storage management software Chris Gahagan said in a statement. "SAN Advisor allows users to automate and simplify this task by leveraging the EMC E-Lab's unrivaled expertise in device interoperability and SAN design, built on an investment of more than 10 years in research, development and testing."