Hello Unisphere!

At last, the time has come for the combined user interface to manage EMC's mid Tier storage solution for NAS and SAN. Previously having to manage both aspects of the storage array called for the administrator to use two management tools, Navisphere for the backend (SAN) and Celerra Manager for the front end (NAS). I can honestly say that when I was first new to EMC storage management, this threw me off and caused me a few headaches. I also installed my first NS20 by myself without help from EMC professional services (not recommended by my sales rep at the time, thanks Joanna). Not having a combined management platform is also one of EMC's competitors biggest sale pitch slaps in the face. Well, those days are over.

Stated to be released in the third quarter 2010, Unisphere will come preloaded on all of EMC's mid Tier arrays. Also, existing customers will be able to get it as well, as soon as they upgrade to DART 6.0 (NAS) and FLARE 30 (SAN) coded levels.

I was lucky enough to go to EMC World 2010 last week. I attended several break out sessions that allowed me to get my hands on Unisphere. I apologize in advance for the shabby screen shots as they are scans off of my lab manuals. I don't have access to Unipshere to test in my own environment....yet.


This thing is slick! No longer are we dealing with an interface that looks like it was built in the early 90s. I found it quite easy to use as well. After one quick Hands on Lab I was able to carve out storage pools and raid groups, set my hot spare, define LUNs, expand and shrink those LUNs and then jump right into to defining my file systems for CIFs and NFS.


It also comes with nice graphs and snap like widget functionality that can be set by preference (a la google home page).










For those of you who are worried about learning a new interface, don't sweat it. There are similarities to the previous tool sets. Check out the pics below.

Look familiar?










I know I've seen this somewhere before...hmmmm.















Now its time to answer a few questions I have been getting.

Will I still be able to use Celerra Manger and Navisphere once I get to the latest DART and FLARE code levels?
Negative, once you get to DART 6.0 and FLARE 30 you will only use Unisphere.

Can I use Unisphere to manage more than one array?
Absolutely, you can manage multiple Celerras and Clariions from the same Unisphere UI. The Celerras must be at DART 6.0 but the Clariions can be as far back as FLARE 19.

Will there be a Unipshere simulator similar to the Celerra VSA?
I can only speculate on what I have heard via rumors, which is most likely YES!
If I were you I would ask the virtual geek Chad to confirm though.

~NAS Admin