EMC Corporation, the world leader in information management and storage, today unveiled the market's first management solution that brings automated root-cause and impact analysis to network-attached storage (NAS) – EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager for NAS. The solution automates real-time root-cause analysis of all critical network availability problems – including NAS IP connectivity – and identifies the service impact of these problems.

EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager for NAS auto-discovers NAS system elements as IP devices and supports EMC Celerra systems and NetApp filers. The software is an extension of EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager, which automates real-time root-cause analysis of critical IP network availability problems at all layers and calculates the impact of connectivity failures on related infrastructure elements. Both solutions leverage the patented EMC Smarts Common Information Model? (ICIM) and Codebook Correlation Technology™ to automatically model and analyze the IP infrastructure.

"Today's complex IP networks comprise thousands of interconnected devices, including NAS elements. Any outage in any part of this infrastructure can cause a flood of alarms on the console screen – leaving operators trying to distinguish root-cause problems from their symptoms," said Chris Gahagan, Senior Vice President, Resource Management, EMC Software Group.

He continued, "EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager for NAS is the market's first solution to automate root-cause and impact analysis across IP networks – including NAS elements – pinpointing in real-time the service-affecting problems. By leveraging this automated root-cause analysis, operators can reduce the number of alarms they need to address, dramatically speeding mean-time-to-repair and improving overall IP network and NAS system availability."

EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager for NAS is built upon the Smarts common data model that maps devices, relationships, behaviors and interactions across all layers of the IP network, revealing the relationships between network and NAS devices. This model updates automatically as the environment changes, resulting in a dramatically lower total cost of ownership. When used in conjunction with other EMC Smarts solutions, the data model can extend across networks, systems and applications to the business service level. Also key is Smarts' cross-domain correlation capabilities – enabling Smarts solutions to reveal the root cause of a problem in one domain that may originate in another domain.

"Because network and NAS administrators typically focus on separate operation silos, they have little or no visibility into how network or NAS outages impact related devices," said Rich Ptak, Senior Analyst, Ptak, Noel & Associates. "Use of EMC Smarts technology leverages root-cause and impact analysis allowing event correlation across IP and NAS systems, directly reducing finger-pointing and ensuring that teams focus on resolving the right problems in the right order."

Smarts IP Availability Manager for NAS is driven by information lifecycle management (ILM) – a powerful IT customer strategy based on the fact that not all information is created equal. This strategy enables enterprises to more effectively manage their growing volumes of information – from creation to disposal – according to the information's changing value to the business. EMC information infrastructure solutions such as EMC Smarts software are at the heart of this mission, helping organizations manage, use, protect and share their information assets more efficiently and cost effectively.

EMC Smarts IP Availability Manager for NAS is available now in the IP AM 6.2 Smart Pack 3.