Broadcom Emulex SAN Manager In-Band Management Application

Broadcom Inc. announced the Emulex SAN Manager, lowering enterprise operational cost and complexity.

It enables server and storage administrators the ability to troubleshoot and resolve network issues in their environment through an easy to use interface. With it, administrators can now manage HBAs as pools of resources, improve operational efficiency by integrating HBA management into new datacenter management analytics, and gain visibility leading to actionable insights.

“By using Emulex SAN Manager, storage administrators benefit from a level of intelligence not found with other tools, helping to make the concept of an end-to-end autonomous SAN a reality,” said Jeff Hoogenboom, VP and GM, Emulex connectivity division. “Emulex SAN Manager coupled with Emulex HBAs and Brocade’s Fabric delivers a simplified SAN that has the performance and availability benefits of FC without the complexity.“

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SAN Manager provides storage administrators the ability to monitor and manage HBAs attached to the Fabric and enables Emulex HBAs and the Brocade Fabric to collaborate and address performance issues through an adaptive real-time algorithm.

“Broadcom’s Gen 7 autonomous SAN technology will transform the way storage networks are managed,” said Jack Rondoni, SVP and GM, Brocade storage networking division. “The combination of Brocade and Emulex technology will greatly simplify SAN management and enable unparalleled network performance and reliability. With the recent launch of the industry’s first end-to-end 64Gb portfolio, Broadcom continues to innovate and develop market-leading products for the world’s most trusted network for storage.“

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Identifies, minimizes, and mitigates application performance problems
SAN congestion dashboards present congestion and bandwidth graphs, enabling admins to quantify the health of their storage network. Adaptive congestion mitigation via SAN Manager automatically addresses congestion events, minimizing their impact on fabric performance.

“IT organizations need to reduce the time, effort, and specialized personnel devoted to problem resolution, so they can focus on addressing business needs. The Emulex SAN Manager application provides in-band HBA management, a SAN-wide view of all hosts, and adaptive congestion management to address all these issues,” said Tony Palmer, senior validation analyst, The Enterprise Strategy Group. “Organizations looking to increase availability, improve IT efficiency, and reduce the time required to resolve complex issues should take a serious look at Emulex SAN Manager.“

Lowers operational costs and improves IT agility
SAN Manager reduces storage administrative time and costs by providing centralized in-band HBA administration across the SAN. Administrators can access SAN-wide HBA optical transceiver statistics, gaining insight into transceiver health trends giving them the ability to proactively respond before transceivers fail.

“Broadcom has been a key driver of the recent robust growth in the FC HBA market,” said Seamus Crehan, president, Crehan Research. “This Emulex SAN Manager announcement is another example of Broadcom’s ongoing investment in FC hardware and software technologies that deliver increased customer value, by reducing network complexity, while simultaneously increasing management capabilities.“

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Simplifies SAN management
The Emulex SAN Manager also provides centralized visibility, capturing complete SAN HBA host inventory, host names, OS versions, software and firmware versions, identifying mis-configuration errors through its multi-path validation tool.

“In our 2020 IT Brand Leader Survey, IT pros selected Emulex HBAs by Broadcom as the leader in all six categories of brand leadership,” said Frank Berry, founder and senior analyst, IT Brand Pulse. “Emulex HBAs were selected as the Innovation Leader which indicates IT pros value Broadcom’s continued development of advanced capabilities, such as Emulex SAN Manager, which unify critical switch and HBA management functions.“

Easy to deploy
SAN Manager is a lightweight, agentless application that is easy to deploy, and can run in a VM or on a laptop. No Ethernet connection to individual servers is required and no dedicated server is needed. A scriptable interface enables integration into datacenter tools.

Emulex SAN Manager will be available starting September, 2.

Resource:
ESG Technical Review, Reducing Operational Complexity with Emulex SAN Manager, July 2020

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