DATA S H E E T

EMC Ionix ControlCenter

Software Family
Part of the Ionix Storage Resource
Management Family
See, know, and do whats necessary to meet
service levelssimply, effectively
The Big Picture
Automates routine, labor-intensive tasks
such as reporting and provisioning so that
IT staff can better manage growth and
focus on business priorities
Provides end-to-end visibility and control
of virtual infrastructures
Simplifies management of complex,
multi-vendor environments
Drives down capital costs by reclaiming
valuable storage capacity and improving
capacity planning of networked storage
environments
Reduces the time and errors associated
with the provisioning process by bringing
new applications online faster
Accelerates time to value with
comprehensive planning, design,
and integration services delivered by
EMC Services storage management
experts

EMC IT management solutions help IT operations ensure the availability of critical IT services
through visibility and control across the information infrastructureincluding applications, servers,
networks, and storage.
These solutions, including the EMC Ionix ControlCenter (formerly EMC ControlCenter) and EMC
Ionix (formerly EMC Smarts) families, also shift the burden of managing complexity from users to the
system by automating some of the most difficult, error-prone, and time-consuming tasks to ensure
efficient delivery of IT services.
The EMC Ionix ControlCenter family of storage resource management (SRM) and device management
software enables you to simplify and automate common tasks such as reporting, planning, and
provisioning through a single, consistent information-centric approach. ControlCenter applications
enable you to implement an information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy by providing comprehensive management of your tiered, multi-vendor storage infrastructure.
With ControlCenter, you can see your entire network storage infrastructure (SAN, NAS, and host
storage resources, including VMware and Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning), know how
your infrastructure is performing, and do whats necessary to ensure that service levels are
metall from a single console. The end result is better performance, improved productivity, and
reduced costs.

Todays challenges
Today, doing more with less is business as usual. And maintaining the status quo is no longer
enoughnew applications, increasing complexity, and the pressures of 24x7 businessput
increasingly higher demands on the IT infrastructure. These challenges are compounded by a
myriad of multi-vendor platforms and software, each with their own proprietary management
tools. At times, these challenges can seem insurmountable.
There are several phases of storage resource management (SRM). First, you need to know what you
havereporting. This may sound easy, but in todays complex IT environments, its not. You also
need to do planningfor new and expanding applications or for areas of your infrastructure that
you may want to consolidate. You need to configure what needs to be implemented, all in the most
cost-efficient way, while meeting or exceeding businesses expectations. Thats provisioning. And
you need to monitor it all. When something needs attention youve got to be able to respond, isolate
the problem, and correct it before it affects the service levels youve agreed to deliver to the business. Finally, all of the components must work together to ensure you are achieving the maximum
performance from your investment.

Each aspect of storage management is tied to the next. For example, you cant efficiently manage if
you dont even know what you have. You need awareness of all the elements, and you may only have
some of these under control today. Your IT team may be doing its best, but only through their heroic
efforts are commitments being kept while additional business needs go unfulfilled.
Virtualization technologies like VMware and Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning provide substantial
operational benefits. However, they introduce abstraction levels that present new management
challenges. As the use of virtualization technologies becomes commonplace, resource management
tools must provide visibility and control across both physical and virtual environments. EMC Ionix
ControlCenter simplifies and automates tasks such as discovery, monitoring, reporting and
provisioning in large complex infrastructures. With strong support for VMware and Symmetrix
Virtual Provisioning, ControlCenter simplifies the task of managing storage resources.

Monitoring and reporting

There are many things IT organizations need to know about their infrastructure. What do they
have? Are assets underutilized or could they be used more efficiently? How well are those assets
performing?
The problem facing some organizations today is that the only way for their IT staffs to gather this
critical information is through a series of manual, labor-intensive reporting processes that dont
scale. Many sophisticated organizations today are using Excel spreadsheets to generate reports.
This is one of the major reasons its projected that no more than 10 percent of organizations have
detailed current data on their storage assets. Existing processes are error-prone and the information
they produce is already out-of-date by the time its reported. This limits ITs ability to ensure efficient
storage asset utilization in their current storage infrastructure and to do effective capacity planning
for the future. It also makes it virtually impossible for IT to attribute storage allocation and consumption to specific organizations.
EMC Ionix ControlCenter StorageScope simplifies
the tracking, usage, and reporting of your storage
assetsend to end.

To answer these challenges, ControlCenter enables you to easily know what you have in your storage
infrastructure. The information is always accurate, up to date, and can be delivered in the report
format you wantflexibly and on demand. Resources in your environment can be grouped by line of
business, application, or any grouping construct that enables you to manage your storage infrastructure from a business context. There are three modules in ControlCenter that provide this functionality:
StorageScope, StorageScope File Level Reporter, and Performance Manager.

EMC Ionix ControlCenter Performance Manager

collects data from the storage array, switches,
hosts, and database and correlates and displays
it to give you immediate feedback on how
changes and additions to your IT infrastructure
affect application performance, allowing you to
maximize productivity.

StorageScope has been optimized for use in VMware and Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning environments. StorageScope gives you enterprise-wide reports on current and historical storage utilization
and simplifies the tracking of your storage assetsend to endfrom the servers through the SAN
to the storage. This allows you to know what storage resources you have in your infrastructure, how
those resources are being used, and who is using them. You can then reallocate storage more efficiently and help facilitate the chargeback to business units for resource consumption.
If StorageScope identifies a problem host that is consuming storage at an alarming rate, StorageScope
File Level Reporter can be deployed to target aged or non-business-critical files, such as large MPEG
files, so administrators can reclaim valuable storage space for business-critical applications. This may
include staging the files to less expensive storage, compressing them into a local zip file, or deleting
them altogether.
StorageScope and StorageScope File Level Reporter are integrated with a single reporting interface,
single set of agents, and single data repository. Together, they provide multiple reporting methods
targeted at different end users (novice to expert). For novice users there are built-in views. These
views provide a web-based, dashboard-style interface that allows both executive-level top 10
lists, as well as detailed drill-down capabilities. For more advanced users the Query Builder allows
you to build custom reports without having to be an expert user. At the expert level, the DSS (decision support system) repository schema is completely open and fully documented. This allows users
to use whatever reporting or analysis tools they are comfortable with to query the data and combine
the StorageScope data with other data sources in their environment.
Performance Manager collects, correlates, and graphically presents performance information across
servers, SAN, and array infrastructure with a single, consistent viewto highlight performance
bottlenecks and to enable fast resolution of performance problems. Performance Manager, designed
to simplify the job of a storage or system administrator, displays detailed performance statistics for
both physically and virtually provisioned storage.

StorageScope, StorageScope File Level Reporter, and Performance Manager offer several key benefits:
Improve asset utilization: By identifying stranded and underutilized IT assets, you can reduce or
eliminate ad hoc purchases and intelligently plan future procurements.
Meet service levels: You can proactively track and monitor services you provide today (capacityand performance-based), charge appropriately for them, and leverage the information to help
meet service-level commitments.
Simplify management: The reporting process is automated, so you dont have to drop something
else in order to get this valuable work done. You can now quickly create reports that correlate and
summarize important needs in the most appropriate format.
Virtualization management: Monitor and manage performance of your VMware and Symmetrix
virtually provisioned storage environment.

Planning and provisioning

Knowing what you have is essential. If you know what you have today, then you can better plan for
change in the future. The next challenge is applying this to a planning process that accounts for both
short-term tactical requirements and a longer-term strategy.
To specifically help with the SAN validation and design process, EMC offers SAN Advisor. SAN
Advisor automatically validates existing and proposed SAN configurations against EMCs E-Lab
Interoperability Matrix and SAN availability best practices. SAN Advisor allows you to model changes
and understand potential effects prior to putting them into production. This enables you to avoid
costly configuration errors, SAN downtime, and scalability constraints.
The next challenge is provisioning. Here, the goal is simple: respond quickly to business needs.
The problem, however, lies in the complexity of that multi-vendor infrastructure. To provision storage,
each device (server, SAN, and storage) has its own tool to configure storage, so the burden rests
with your IT staff. They may have one goalprovision storagebut to them, the goal consists of
many manual tasks. They must coordinate all of these various steps, using different tools, in order to
accomplish a routine task like allocating storage. As a result of this manual coordination, allocating
storage is anything but routineits time consuming and error prone.
EMC delivers solutions that simplify and automate provisioning. EMC Ionix ControlCenter provisioning
productsSAN Manager and Automated Resource Managerare enabled through the same user
interface, whether you have EMC Symmetrix or CLARiiON arrays, HP arrays, or some of each.
SAN Manager provides a common methodology to monitor and manage heterogeneous arrays and
switches. It also supports virtual environments including VMware, Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning,
and virtual SANs. It allows customers to manage SAN zones and LUN masking consistently across
multi-vendor SAN arrays and switchesin a single operation.
For complete rules-based automation, Automated Resource Manager works with SAN Manager
software to automate end-to-end storage provisioning based on your business rules. For example,
one policy could be set up for OLTP applications that require platinum-level storage and another for
bronze-level storage for less mission-critical servers. Once you select the appropriate policy for an
application, Automated Resource Manager does the restit finds storage that matches your criteria
and will automatically perform the necessary configuration tasks on the storage array, SAN, and host.
SAN Manager and Automated Resource Manager offer several key benefits:
Centralize SAN management: You can build an accurate topology of your multi-vendor SAN
environment, proactively monitor its performance and health, and easily manage it through a
consistent way to perform multi-vendor SAN configuration tasks.
Meet time-to-provision service levels: You can automate the provisioning of storage resources
so that your staff can respond more quickly to end-user requests for additional storage.
Accelerate SAN validation and design: By validating your proposed SAN configurations, you can
bring new storage networksor changes to existing onesonline faster.

A new standard in storage resource management security

Security needs to be an integral part to how storage resource management is performed. It cannot be
an afterthought. ControlCenter sets the standard among storage resource management applications
for protecting administrative access to storage resources.
ControlCenter was designed and developed with security in mind. It leverages industry standards
and technology from RSA, The Security Division of EMC, to secure communications and protect passwords. It offers fine-grained access controls to limit access to authorized users. It provides logging of
commands executed within the ControlCenter environment to facilitate security audits. ControlCenter
meets the requirements for Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation and has
been Common Criteria certified.
With a comprehensive security-focused product development process and a host of security features
that make it easier for you to integrate ControlCenter into your security infrastructure, ControlCenter
offers you the ability to confidently meet your organizations security policies.

Maximize EMC Ionix ControlCenter benefits with EMC services

EMC provides expert services to ensure your ControlCenter solution performs optimally in your environment to align your business and technical objectives. EMC offers high-quality services through our
Global Delivery Model which ensures that we deliver rapid, flawless implementation services to every
customer in every engagement worldwide. ControlCenter customers have leveraged these services to
increase their return on their investment.

Assessment and design

EMC assessment and design service offerings for ControlCenter ensure your environment is
prepared for your installation. The first step of any assessment service is an inventory of your data
center assets and applications. EMC reviews these thoroughly to have a complete view of the dayto-day operations. Through this intensive analysis, EMC identifies opportunities for automation,
improved reporting, and better management of service-level agreements.

Implementation and integration

EMC implementation service offering introduce ControlCenter into your environment with minimal
disruption. All implementation services include a design phase where EMC meets with your team to
determine what your storage resource management needs are and evaluate your current environment. EMC implements and configures ControlCenter to help you realize your information management goals. At the conclusion of the implementation, EMC reviews the architecture with
you, ensuring you are familiar with the implementation and have an opportunity to ask questions.

HealthCheck
ControlCenter HealthCheck ensures your environment is fine-tuned and running smoothly just
as it was once your first implementation was complete. Over time, you introduce new applications,
storage arrays, switches, and other assets. Through HealthCheck services, your architecture is
re-aligned to your business goals and technical objectives to help you maintain your productivity
levels.

EMC Designated Support Engineer for ControlCenter

Technical support is a key component of your EMC software solution. Our onsite or remote Designated
Support Engineer for ControlCenter provides the expertise, assistance, proactive IT planning activities, and support infrastructure to help ensure your ability to meet todays demanding requirements
as well as keep business-critical applications up and running. The Designated Support Engineer
augments your IT staff and brings a deep technical skill level to your environment that is fully focused
on your ControlCenter solution. Additional benefits include an in-depth understanding of your environment, increased productivity of your IT staff, and priority access to EMC Product Engineering staff
as needed.

EMC Managed Services

EMC can help you maintain and enhance the performance, utilization, efficiency, and capacity of your
ControlCenter solution as your business and IT infrastructure changes and grows. EMC Residency
Services provide the information infrastructure management resources and expertise you needfrom
day-to-day technical support to specific operational advice and improvements. For comprehensive
management of your storage operations and assets, EMC offers Storage Managed Servicesonsite,
fixed-term solutions based on ITIL process framework and governed by SLAs.
EMC offers comprehensive services to enable the
seamless implementation, customization, and
management of your integrated ControlCenter
storage environment.

Broad industry support

EMC supports industry-standard management interfaces, including SMI-S. Our offerings support the
broadest set of vendors and integrate with the technologies that youve probably standardized on
and are prevalent throughout the industry.
With the Ionix ControlCenter family, you can adopt one viewone wayto manage your heterogeneous storage environment. Whats the value? With ControlCenter you can lower your operating
and training costs by standardizing on one integrated tool that masks the complexity of the infrastructureone tool to use, regardless of the underpinning technology. More than likely, elements
will phase in and out of your IT infrastructure. The ControlCenter familys agility ensures investment
protection no matter what.

About EMC
EMC Corporation is the worlds leading developer and provider of information infrastructure
technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete
and create value from their information. Information about EMCs products and services can be
found at www.EMC.com.

EMC Corporation
Hopkinton
Massachusetts
01748-9103
1-508-435-1000
In North America 1-866-464-7381
www.EMC.com

Take the next step

The EMC Ionix ControlCenter family of products, although tightly integrated, can be implemented
in a modular fashion. For more information on how EMC Ionix ControlCenter storage management
solutions can bring added benefits to your business, contact your EMC sales representative or
authorized EMC value-added systems integrator. Or visit our website at www.EMC.com.

EMC2, EMC, EMC ControlCenter, Automated Resource Manager, E-Lab, Ionix, SAN Advisor, SAN Manager, Smarts, StorageScope, Symmetrix, and where information lives are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in
the United States and other countries. RSA is a registered trademark of RSA Security Inc. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Copyright
2003, 2009 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 05/09 Data Sheet H1082.6