Among the announcement are of a Virtual Storage Console, which is a plug-in module for VMware vCenter Server that lets storage administrators manage and monitor NetApp gear from within vSphere 4 environments.
NetApp unveils new virtualized storage software | NetworkWorld.com Community
This specific item and the other announcements from NetApp, quoted in this article, show their continued commitment to marketing themselves as the VMware storage solution. Competitors will need to move quickly to implement similar capabilities in the area of two way management integration.
This is important because even if servers, storage, applications, I/O and everything else is virtualized, the devices are still individual components with unique characteristics that need their own management tools. In a virtualized world though, changes to the hardware have affects on the virtual space and visa versa; so being able to manage the virtual from a physical device and the physical from a virtual device will become ever more critical.
It’s going to become a requirement that admins be able to manage any storage system from vCenter and vCenter from any storage management console. These capabilities are going to be a special challenge to IBM and HP as their focus has been on integrating within their own equipment stacks rather than bi-directional integration with management platforms for vendors such as VMware. Stories about a Cisco/EMC joint venture might, at least partially, be about this need for management capabilities across the whole hardware stack.
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