UNIFIED DATA PROTECTION FOR EFFICIENT DELIVERY OF DIFFERENTIATED SERVICE LEVELS

UNIFIED DATA PROTECTION FOR EFFICIENT DELIVERY OF DIFFERENTIATED SERVICE LEVELS Automating data protection with EMC ViPR improves IT efficiency and compliance ABSTRACT This white paper details how EMC ViPR abstracts multiple storage platforms and data protection solutions into a unified, fully automated environment to provide storage provisioning, data protection services, as well as management insights. With ViPR vastly simplifying provisioning and providing detailed infrastructure intelligence, IT organizations can dramatically reduce the number of steps to manage data protection, which results in lower storage provisioning costs. At the same time, they can more confidently and efficiently deliver differentiated service levels across their enterprises while ensuring compliance with best practices. May, 2015 EMC WHITE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... 4 INTRODUCTION... 5 MANAGING STORAGE WITH DATA PROTECTION AUTOMATION REDUCES COST AND COMPLEXITY... 6 A POWERFUL COMBINATION: AUTOMATED ACTION AND INSIGHT... 6 ViPR Controller Delivers Automation and Self Service... 6 Built-in Best Practices Improve Efficiency and Data Protection... 7 ViPR SRM Expands Visibility and Insight... 7 A Unified View at a Glance... 7 MATCH DATA PROTECTION WITH BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS AND SERVICE LEVELS... 8 Active-Active Storage Infrastructures... 8 Local and Remote Replication... 8 Protection Storage... 8 SIMPLIFY VPLEX PROVISIONING AND MANAGEMENT... 9 Streamlining Disaster Protection and Recovery... 9 Non-Disruptive Technology Refreshes... 9 Automated Workload Balancing Ensures SLAs... 10 AN EXPANDED VIEW OF VPLEX... 10 Greater Insight Means Greater Control... 10 Visualize Relationships and Topology From End to End... 10 Spot Performance Trends Early... 11 Reduce Capacity Reporting Costs by 99 Percent... 11 Demonstrate SLA Achievement... 12 MANAGE MULTIPLE REPLICATION TECHNOLOGIES WITH EASE... 13 PROTECT FAST-GROWING DATA ASSETS... 14 CONCLUSION... 15 3

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Protecting your company s most important asset, your data, is a critical concern, and can be a complex task for IT organizations. As technologies have become more closely aligned with specific data and file types, organizations are adopting sophisticated data protection strategies differentiated by service-level agreements (SLAs). IT is now able to pair highly specialized compute and storage environments with various replication technologies and high-availability infrastructures to deliver data protection as part of unified service offerings, with performance and protection characteristics for different classes of service that could be described as platinum, gold, and silver. The challenge is finding a unified and cost-efficient way to provision, manage and monitor all of the underlying infrastructure components supporting the business applications. With numerous technologies required to deliver differentiated services for business applications, IT also faces increased costs to hire or train staff with the correct skill sets. In addition, provisioning and managing all the individual technologies can be extremely time-consuming and prone to human error. Compounding the situation is the lack of visibility into the overall performance and health of the environment, making it difficult to verify compliance with service levels and best practices. EMC has solved this dilemma with EMC ViPR Controller and EMC ViPR SRM. ViPR Controller is storage automation software that centralizes and transforms multi-vendor storage and data protection solutions into a simple and extensible platform while EMC ViPR SRM delivers management insight across the storage infrastructure. This white paper documents how ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM automate, simplify and unify storage and data protection provisioning, management and monitoring of EMC VPLEX, EMC RecoverPoint, EMC SRDF, and EMC Data Domain as individual solutions. 4

INTRODUCTION Organizations have become highly adept at harnessing information to generate business value. A key factor has been the emergence of specialized storage systems such as EMC VPLEX EMC VMAX, EMC VNX, EMC XtremIO, and EMC Isilon that align more precisely to varying requirements of different data and file types. In addition, organizations are moving to differentiated data protection strategies based on service level agreements (SLAs) and sophisticated replication techniques. The challenge for IT is managing a more complex data protection environment that may require each specialized storage system and data protection SLA to use a different replication solution. For example, a silver-level SLA may offer local replication while gold provides both local and remote replication. As a result, organizations need to hire IT staff with a broader array of specialized skill sets. Another challenge is that managing data protection traditionally is a largely manual process that consumes significant staff time and works directly against efforts to reduce operating expenses. Manual interaction with the data protection environment also makes monitoring and reporting more difficult. Most organizations are lucky to get daily protection reports, let alone any real-time insight. This limits visibility, making it difficult to determine if data is successfully replicated and protected according to established policies. Administrators have an even harder time validating that the protected data is recoverable. Explosive data growth further compounds the problem. Since data protection imposes overhead on storage systems by creating copies of the data for replication, capital expenses may rise to accommodate additional capacity. As complexity and costs increase, business requirements and application criticality are turning up the pressure for zero recovery time objectives (RTOs) that include the ability to demonstrate compliance. Yet according to the EMC Global Data Protection Index, a survey of 3,300 IT decision makers in 24 countries, 71 percent of respondents were not confident they could fully recover data from all systems. This figure is especially alarming given that the same report revealed 64 percent of organizations surveyed suffered a disruption in the past 12 months involving data loss and/or downtime. These disruptions cost enterprises surveyed an estimated $1.7 trillion. (Figure 1) Figure 1. Estimated Annual Cost for Business Disruption EMC offers a set of solutions to resolve the cost and complexity of enterprise data protection. By unifying and automating data protection, these solutions help organizations improve application availability and IT efficiency. In addition, they provide real-time insight into protected environments to ensure recoverability and identify opportunities for enhancements to strengthen protection as organizations grow and business requirements change. 5

MANAGING STORAGE WITH DATA PROTECTION AUTOMATION REDUCES COST AND COMPLEXITY EMC recognizes that the key to reducing cost and complexity of enterprise data protection is unifying storage resources and replication technologies under a single, common management platform. First, administrators need to be able to create virtual storage pools spanning multiple, multi-vendor storage systems. Then, administrators require a way to define specific classes of data protection services and assign them as capabilities to each virtual storage pool. For example, an administrator would provision an application from a virtual storage pool with the desired performance and protection characteristics, such as enterprise storage with local and remote replication, without needing to know about the underlying storage or replication technologies. In this scenario, a variety of virtual storage pools would meet differentiated service levels of the business. In addition, the back-end complexities would be abstracted to present a simple point-and-click environment and automate the steps to provision storage and enable replication. This would not only save time and reduce operating expenses, but also would greatly reduce risk of human error. EMC also understands the importance of clear visibility and insight into the data protection environment. A complete solution must include real-time monitoring of the health, performance, and configuration of the environment to ensure compliance with protection policies. Administrators also need detailed reporting. For example, usage reports by service level enable IT to align cost of service delivery with business requirements. SLA reporting justifies chargeback and informs administrators of potential problems so they can be addressed proactively. Ultimately, a comprehensive enterprise data protection strategy will extend automation to provide the business with a public cloudlike experience while retaining control on premises. This will allow application owners to access storage and data protection services through a simple self-service portal. The result will greatly reduce service delivery time, enable more business agility, and further improve application availability. A POWERFUL COMBINATION: AUTOMATED ACTION AND INSIGHT EMC ViPR provides a simple, automated solution that brings action and insight to enterprise storage and data protection. The ViPR solution includes ViPR Controller, storage automation software, and ViPR SRM, storage resource management software (Figure 2). Figure 2. Automated Management and Reporting of Complex Infrastructures ViPR Controller Delivers Automation and Self Service ViPR Controller is storage automation software that centralizes and transforms storage into a simple and extensible platform. It abstracts and pools resources from virtually any storage, including VMAX, VNX, XtremIO, Isilon and Data Domain, as well as non- EMC arrays, to deliver automated, policy-driven storage and data protection services. For example, ViPR Controller supports EMC VPLEX continuous availability environments, including three-site EMC MetroPoint topologies (VPLEX Metro and RecoverPoint), for continuous availability with continuous disaster recovery. It also automates EMC SRDF, EMC RecoverPoint, and EMC MirrorView replication technologies, as well as EMC SnapView, EMC TimeFinder, and XtremIO snapshots. In addition, ViPR Controller manages provisioning of Data Domain systems for protection storage. Using any of these EMC data protection solutions individually or collectively, ViPR Controller provides administrators with control to define policy-based protection services from a single pane of glass, while retaining the capabilities and value of the underlying technologies. Administrators then can make these services available to the business on-demand via a self-service catalog. 6

Built-in Best Practices Improve Efficiency and Data Protection ViPR Controller s capabilities translate into several significant benefits for IT and business. It is the key to simplifying data protection and enforcing best practices to save time, reduce errors, decrease costs, and most importantly, increase data availability. With automated management across diverse storage and data protection solutions, ViPR Controller streamlines delivery of storage services with differentiated data protection strategies. For example, by abstracting complexities of underlying technologies, ViPR Controller reduces the steps involved in provisioning a data protection service using VPLEX and RecoverPoint from 47 steps, or 55 steps in a three-site EMC MetroPoint topology, to just five. On average, ViPR Controller reduces the number of steps required to provision and manage data protection by 89 percent. This not only saves time but also reduces the chance of errors associated with managing multiple technologies through graphical or command line interfaces (CLIs). Automation and self-service also deliver substantial cost savings for administration. According to a Principled Technologies report, organizations could see up to a 73 percent reduction in storage provisioning costs and 100 percent elimination of SAN zoning tasks with ViPR Controller 1. By streamlining administration, IT also can increase agility to quickly align infrastructure and protection services with changing business requirements. Abstraction also minimizes the need for administrators to learn details of individual data protection technologies. This not only saves time but also reduces training and development costs by as much as 75 percent 2 since administrators can focus on delivering the data protection requirements of the applications versus managing the underlying data protection technologies. Organizations do disaster recovery testing as part of their normal day to day operations. Traditionally, failover testing is a laborintensive task involving numerous manual steps. ViPR Controller reduces the process to a single click because all of the back-end processes are automated. This allows organizations to perform frequent disaster recovery testing and execute actual recoveries in a more efficient manner. Another important benefit is ViPR Controller incorporates best practices for each underlying data protection solution, such as the provisioning of VPLEX volumes and RecoverPoint journals. By implementing best practices, ViPR Controller avoids any deviation from EMC s recommendations and ensures reliable and optimally efficient protection services. ViPR SRM Expands Visibility and Insight ViPR SRM storage resource management solution provides a single view to centrally monitor and report on ViPR Controller-managed resources. It complements ViPR Controller by enabling administrators to analyze capacity utilization, historical performance trends, and relationship dependencies to continuously validate compliance with SLAs. A Unified View at a Glance ViPR SRM extends the benefits of ViPR Controller by providing greater visibility and insight into the entire protected environment. By giving administrators a better understanding of current and historical behavior, ViPR SRM helps simplify troubleshooting. In fact, it can reduce time to discover problems by as much as 88 percent 3 to avoid compromising data protection. The software provides an expansive view of complex VPLEX environments, integrates replication reports from RecoverPoint and SRDF, and consolidates data from EMC Data Protection Advisor (DPA) through a single pane of glass. This lets administrators see at a glance the status of all replication sets and ensure compliance with data protection policies. With a clear and unified view, ViPR SRM also makes it easy to monitor the impact of any infrastructure changes and validate compliance with best practices and the EMC Support Matrix to ensure systems are configured appropriately and meet SLAs. ViPR SRM also offers extensive visualization and reporting on system health, performance, configuration compliance, capacity consumption trends, and chargeback across the entire protected environment. This detailed insight helps IT organizations improve storage utilization up to 20 percent for a greater return on investment. Cost savings are substantial. Compared to manually collecting data from multiple storage systems and data protection solutions, ViPR SRM reduces operating expenses by up to 93 percent. 4 Organizations can use ViPR SRM to manage and analyze costs for data protection chargeback. The software provides reports that detail the amount and cost of replicated storage used by each customer. Administrators also can see individual chargebacks by service level, such as gold, silver, and bronze. 1 "Reducing Operating Expense with EMC ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM," Principled Technologies, December 2014. 2 "Reducing Operating Expense with EMC ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM," Principled Technologies, December 2014. 3 "Reducing Operating Expense with EMC ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM," Principled Technologies, December 2014. 4 "Reducing Operating Expense with EMC ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM," Principled Technologies, December 2014. 7

MATCH DATA PROTECTION WITH BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS AND SERVICE LEVELS ViPR Controller automates delivery of storage services and reports on a broad range of EMC data protection solutions such as VPLEX, RecoverPoint, SRDF, and Data Domain. This enables organizations to create multiple SLA-based protection packages to match different business requirements through a single solution. In fact, it enables administrators to centrally and simultaneously provision and manage high availability, disaster recovery, and operational data protection. (Figure 3) Figure 3. ViPR Controller Simultaneously Provisions and Protects Active-Active Storage Infrastructures VPLEX is a virtualized storage environment of active-active data centers for continuous operations and assured application availability. With VPLEX, applications continue to run through planned or unplanned outages, including total site failures. VPLEX also enables non-disruptive data mobility to support array technology refreshes or storage-workload balancing. In addition, VPLEX makes data and applications simultaneously available at multiple sites. It extends capabilities such as clustering, high availability/fault tolerance, and virtualization across geographically separated data centers, transforming them into a single managed data center. Local and Remote Replication EMC RecoverPoint provides continuous data replication for heterogeneous storage environments. It tracks every I/O written to storage to enable restore of applications instantly to any point in time. This provides protection from logical data corruption, human error, or malicious file destruction. In addition, RecoverPoint complements VPLEX by adding instant point-in-time recovery to an active-active infrastructure for local and remote data protection. Furthermore, RecoverPoint streamlines disaster recovery testing of an application environment while production replication continues unaffected. Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) provides the gold standard for remote replication in business-critical environments. Designed for industry-leading high-end EMC VMAX storage, the SDRF family of solutions offers deployment flexibility and massive scalability to deliver a wide range of distance replication capabilities. In addition to remote replication, organizations often implement local array-based copies to provide operational recovery of application data as part of a comprehensive recovery strategy. Protection Storage EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems strengthen any data protection environment with powerful capabilities for backup, archive, and disaster recovery. For example, Data Domain features high-speed, variable-length deduplication that reduces backup and archive storage requirements by 10 to 30 times. It ensures recovery and access to data with inline write and read verification, continuous fault detection, and selfhealing. With its excellent scalability, Data Domain enables organizations to consolidate backup and archive workloads on a single system. 8

SIMPLIFY VPLEX PROVISIONING AND MANAGEMENT Providing a single, intuitive service catalog, ViPR Controller enables application owners to easily select VPLEX tasks they wish to perform, dramatically reducing the time to deliver high-availability services. With automated de-provisioning enabled by ViPR Controller, storage teams can quickly reclaim storage capacity from anywhere in the VPLEX environment for reallocation to a central pool, improving utilization. And it automates data migrations and mobility jobs to simplify technology refreshes or changes to service levels. Streamlining Disaster Protection and Recovery As infrastructures scale, provisioning and managing VPLEX high-availability environments may require multiple manual tasks, which can introduce risk. Instead, ViPR Controller streamlines these process from end to end by automating pre-defined workflows that execute all of the necessary steps to provision VPLEX volumes, configure SAN fabrics, and set up RecoverPoint protection. As shown in Figure 4, provisioning a three-site EMC MetroPoint topology requires deploying VPLEX Metro to enable continuous availability between sites one and two. An active RecoverPoint link must then be built between sites two and three; along with an inactive RecoverPoint link between sites one and three. The process typically involves 55 manual steps. By automating the process, ViPR Controller completes provisioning of a MetroPoint topology in just five steps a 91 percent reduction. Rather than consuming hours of storage administrators time to provision a MetroPoint topology, work can be accomplished in minutes, improving operational efficiency. ViPR Controller automation also minimizes the chance of human errors that often occur with manual steps, ensuring consistent adherence to SLAs and best practices. In addition, ViPR Controller automates failover and failback scenarios for VPLEX active-active infrastructures and MetroPoint topologies, including enabling the inactive RecoverPoint link. The process is fast and easy, allowing lower risk and more frequent disaster recovery testing without excess burden on IT staff or disruption to the business. Figure 4. MetroPoint Topology Non-Disruptive Technology Refreshes Technology refreshes at the storage level typically impose extended application downtime and significant effort for the storage team depending on the technology being leveraged for the migration. ViPR Controller eliminates outages and orchestrates data movement through VPLEX from old to new storage non-disruptively, allowing staff to perform technology refreshes during business hours. This eliminates the inconvenience and extra cost of staff working on weekends. In a technology refresh, ViPR Controller discovers the new array and storage pools and automatically configures all the settings to make that storage part of the VPLEX environment. ViPR Controller then adds the newly available storage pools to the ViPR Controller virtual storage pool, making them available for provisioning. It then orchestrates a VPLEX mobility task which mirrors the data from the old storage array to the new storage array. 9

ViPR SRM also makes it easier to handle dependencies across multiple components during a technology refresh. It provides end-toend mapping from the application host, through the storage area network and VPLEX, and all the way to the back-end storage array. With ViPR SRM, administrators gain visibility to the complete migration path of the data. Instead of requiring administrators to log into four or five separate user interfaces, ViPR SRM provides complete insight via a single pane of glass. Automated Workload Balancing Ensures SLAs ViPR Controller orchestrates the data mobility capabilities in VPLEX to automate workload balancing. If a workload s characteristics change and no longer align with its storage service level, the administrator can use ViPR Controller to automate the workload migration through VPLEX to another array. This ensures organizations continually maintain service levels without needing to manage underlying complexity. In addition, administrators can use ViPR Controller to easily expand VPLEX virtual volumes and accommodate growing workloads with resources at either VPLEX site. AN EXPANDED VIEW OF VPLEX Active-active infrastructures built on VPLEX Metro incorporate numerous elements that must run in concert to ensure continuous availability and data protection. Administrators have traditionally relied on a limited view of end-to-end component relationships and topology in VPLEX environments. With restricted visibility, administrators cannot easily see how VPLEX is performing in relation to the application path. Performance issues with back-end storage or network connectivity problems are harder to spot. Planning is also difficult without historical performance and capacity trends. As such, administrators must either manually check the status of each switch, storage system, and other components in the VPLEX environment, or develop scripts to aggregate status information. Both options require significant time and are prone to human error. Consequently, such analysis and reporting may only be performed once every week or two, leaving gaps in intelligence on the health of the environment and trends that may affect key decisions. It is also extremely difficult to validate conformance with SLA policies or VPLEX best practices. And without complete, up-to-date details, chargeback is nearly impossible. Greater Insight Means Greater Control ViPR SRM is like a crystal ball for VPLEX. It provides actionable insight into end-to-end data path relationships and topology across the VPLEX environment. It displays detailed performance trends across data paths to understand the impact of storage on applications. ViPR SRM also continuously tracks changes and analyzes compliance with design best practices and the EMC Support Matrix to ensure VPLEX is configured to meet service levels. Finally, ViPR SRM analyzes capacity utilization and trends to help administrators understand who is using capacity, how much they're using, and when more capacity will be required all essential for chargeback. Visualize Relationships and Topology From End to End ViPR SRM topology maps offer a fast, easy way to understand VPLEX relationships from host to back-end storage, and quickly identify service dependencies. (Figure 5) This end-to-end visibility enables storage administrators to quickly isolate performance problems across data paths. They also can target any point along the data path for a detailed view to simplify troubleshooting, support change planning, or analyze performance, ultimately improving service levels. 10

Figure 5. VPLEX Relationship and Topology View in ViPR SRM Spot Performance Trends Early Performance reporting with ViPR SRM helps administrators spot trends across a broad set of parameters and timeframes. Figure 6 presents VPLEX front-end and back-end cluster throughput (IOPS), along with back-end bandwidth (KB/second). Figure 6. ViPR SRM Reports on Performance Trending for VPLEX ViPR SRM performance trending helps administrators quickly identify which VPLEX storage views are generating the highest workloads. Armed with such insight, administrators can use ViPR Controller to non-disruptively migrate workloads to a different storage tier in the VPLEX environment. This is a fast and efficient way to optimize resources and meet SLAs. Reduce Capacity Reporting Costs by 99 Percent Administrators gain additional capabilities to optimize utilization with ViPR SRM dashboards. The Enterprise Capacity Dashboard, for instance, shows consumption trends over time to help identify where and when capacity will be required. (Figure 7) With tools like this, ViPR SRM can reduce capacity-reporting costs by as much as 99 percent 5 compared to manual reporting processes. 5 "Reducing Operating Expense with EMC ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM," Principled Technologies, December 2014. 11

Figure 7. ViPR SRM Analyzes Historical Capacity Consumption Trends Demonstrate SLA Achievement ViPR SRM offers a flexible reporting engine to create a wide variety of dashboards and reports from the extremely simple to highly customized. Figure 8 shows two examples of custom reports created by ViPR SRM for a multi-tenant environment supported by VPLEX. Figure 8. ViPR SRM Offers Multitenant SLA Reporting The top report gives the storage team a view of utilization across platinum, gold, silver and bronze service levels for all tenant customers. The bottom report restricts visibility by individual tenants to their own SLA performance. Administrators can easily email these reports to application owners, lines of business, or tenants in a service provider setting. In addition, ViPR SRM can detect capacity utilization for each service level in a VPLEX environment to generate chargeback or showback reports. (Figure 9) 12

Figure 9. ViPR SRM Creates Chargeback Reports in VPLEX Environments ViPR SRM saves administrators significant time and eliminates manual errors when analyzing and reporting on VPLEX highavailability environments. With the comprehensive, detailed insight provided by ViPR SRM, administrators have the knowledge and awareness they need to deliver capabilities such as continuous availability, dynamic load balancing, and non-disruptive technology refreshes, and ultimately lower operational costs and enhance service levels. MANAGE MULTIPLE REPLICATION TECHNOLOGIES WITH EASE As a single interface for the entire data protection landscape, ViPR Controller enables IT administrators to manage multiple data protection solutions with ease. For example, RecoverPoint is often used with VPLEX for its data protection capabilities such as local operational recovery or remote disaster recovery, especially in three-site MetroPoint topologies. Traditionally, working with these technologies required switching back and forth between two separate interfaces. Not only was this tedious and time-consuming, but it also increased risk of human error. Administrators could inadvertently select the wrong volumes or make simple configuration mistakes. ViPR Controller orchestrates end-to-end provisioning for RecoverPoint stand alone or RecoverPoint and VPLEX together, all through a single interface. This includes setting up local and remote pairing, creating storage constructs, building replication sets, and provisioning journal volumes everything required for local or two- and three-site replication with strict adherence to VPLEX and RecoverPoint best practices. An administrator simply creates a virtual volume with the required performance and protection service characteristics and ViPR Controller will automatically provision the storage and apply RecoverPoint protection, eliminating numerous manual steps. (Figure 10) 13

Figure 10. ViPR Controller Automates RecoverPoint Data Protection Similarly, ViPR Controller streamlines the provisioning and management of SRDF two-site configurations with synchronous or asynchronous replication. SRDF typically requires deploying multiple components, defining component relationships, building consistency groups and additional tasks. Mistakes are more likely to occur when administrators perform these tasks manually. Again, ViPR Controller removes complexity and minimizes errors by providing easy-to-consume SRDF services in an automated environment. There is no need to have a deep technical understanding of all the technologies under ViPR Controller management. ViPR Controller also orchestrates the entire failover and failback process for RecoverPoint and SRDF. Instead of requiring administrators to manually set up the hosts, designate which hosts receive a replicated copy of the data, and then activate that copy, ViPR Controller does it all automatically. The failback process is just as easy. As a result, ViPR Controller greatly simplifies recovery with just a few steps, minimizing costly downtime and producing substantial operational savings. PROTECT FAST-GROWING DATA ASSETS Many industries, including healthcare and financial services, face enormous data growth with regulatory demands for long retention times. Protection storage such as Data Domain meets these demands with exceptional scalability, deduplication, and unparalleled reliability and security. As the protected storage environment continues to grow, provisioning and managing capacity and storage pools across numerous systems becomes more challenging. Data Domain System Manager (DDSM) enables administrators to set up individual Data Domain systems, and Data Domain Management Center (DDMC) aggregates control of DDSM to manage multiple Data Domain environments. Administrators must still use manual CLI commands to map Data Domain to primary storage and server hosts. This task involves moving from one tool to another and requires dozens of manual steps. ViPR Controller automates this entire process with a few clicks. It discovers Data Domain systems in the protected environment and maps to NFS and CIFS storage pools regardless of where they physically reside. To protect a storage pool with backup and archive, an administrator simply selects the appropriate option in ViPR Controller and that storage pool is automatically provisioned on Data Domain. Through a single, common interface, ViPR Controller makes it easy to configure and control protection storage with Data Domain. It reduces the effort to a few simple steps, saving significant time and operational expense. 14

CONCLUSION The introduction of a greater array of sophisticated, SLA-driven data protection solutions have created increased complexity for IT administration. To address such challenges, EMC ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM simplify these environments under one umbrella for management and control. With built-in intelligence out of the box and extensive automation capabilities, ViPR Controller makes it easy to provision and manage multiple data protection environments simultaneously. Through one pane of glass, administrators enable active-active data centers with or without replication, attach local or remote replication services to virtual storage pools, provision and manage protection storage, and much more. In addition, ViPR Controller reduces the number of steps to provision and manage these environments by an average of 89 percent compared to manual approaches. The resulting savings in time and cost are substantial, with the risk of human error virtually eliminated. ViPR Controller also automatically applies best practices, so organizations are assured of reliable, consistent performance to support their SLAs. ViPR SRM complements ViPR Controller with broad visibility and deep insight into protected environments. By using ViPR SRM dashboards and reports, administrators can easily see component relationships and topology from one end of the data path to the other. They can monitor performance and health of data protection services in real time, and gain historical data and uncover trends to preempt potential problems or assist with capacity planning. ViPR SRM also makes it easy to track compliance with best practices and the EMC Support Matrix to ensure the environment is always configured properly to meet SLAs. A powerful combination, ViPR Controller and ViPR SRM provide organizations with the automated action and insight needed to improve operational efficiency, enhance service levels, and optimize resources for an overall better return on investment. 15