iWave Software, a provider of storage automation software, has released a new version of its automation product that is intended to lower storage administration costs by allowing end users to provision, extend and reclaim enterprise storage, while enabling storage administrators to retain total control of the automated storage services through storage automation policies.
iWave Storage Automator v6.5 provides users such as VMware administrators, Linux administrators and Windows users with a comprehensive catalog of fully automated storage services accessible through a self-service web portal.
“The whole idea behind Storage Automator is to automate some of the mundane tasks associated with enterprise storage management and to empower end users to actually perform those tasks. It is really attempting to help companies and organizations deliver storage as a service to storage users,” Brent Rhymes, CEO of iWave Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The ability to offload these processes from storage administrators onto end users actually increases end user satisfaction, notes Rhymes, since users no longer have to wait for storage administrators to get around to servicing their requests.
The automated storage services are accessible through a RESTful API that lets Storage Automator integrate seamlessly with enterprise IT process orchestration platforms, cloud orchestration tools and IT system management (ITSM) applications.
iWave Software’s Storage Automator v6.5 expands upon the solution’s original benefits of helping storage administrators and their staffs meet high storage growth demands, easily integrate with private cloud orchestration solutions, reduce costs and leverage existing storage assets while maintaining complete control of multi-vendor storage environments.
With this release, iWave is the first vendor to go to market with a downloadable version of a storage automation product, says Rhymes. The solution is delivered as a virtual appliance and storage administrators can go to the iWave website and download the virtual appliance file. As long as they have a copy of one of VMware’s hypervisors or even a KVM hypervisor, they can get the appliance up and running and wizards will walk them through setting up and configuring the tool, he notes.
New features in iWave Storage Automator v6.5 include automated services for block and file storage. Users can provision, remove and extend block storage for Linux, VMware ESX Servers and VMware clusters, as well as CIFS (Windows) and NFS volumes. iWave Storage Automator v6.5 also now supports iSCSI-connected block storage, configures Windows Active Directory permissions on CIFS, and enforces quotas on provisioned storage.
“6.5 really brings storage automation to the masses, so anybody that wants to create their own Windows shared folder can now go out and do that through Storage Automator,” notes Rhymes.
Automator v6.5 also includes expanded multi-vendor support, supporting EMC VMAX, VNX and CLARiiON, Dell Compellent and NetApp FAS storage arrays. Enabling automated chargeback/showback functionality, the solution associates charge codes with any storage provisioned or reclaimed by the user with report data easily downloadable into existing chargeback or showback reporting systems. In addition, version 6.5 ships with a formal software development kit (SDK) so that any automated storage service that can be downloaded from the website can be extended and modified through the SDK.
For more information, visit www.iwavesoftware.com. Storage professionals can download a free, 30-day trial from the iWave Software website at www.iwavesoftware.com/download.