Insight, analytics, and rapid search functions for NetApp and VMware environments

Syncsort has announced the availability of a brand new data management solution, ECX Enterprise Catalog. ECX Enterprise Catalog provides a centralised, scalable, and easy way to catalogue and search the NetApp ONTAP® and VMware landscape, delivering valuable information that empowers IT to increase storage efficiency, accelerate the use of snapshot technology for efficient data protection, and ensure compliance.
ECX software users gain needed visibility into their file and virtual machine environment across all tiers, helping them achieve a new level of operational efficiency to control costs, identify unprotected data, or indicate where protection may have failed due to an errant configuration, change, or other issues.

“The ECX Enterprise Catalog opens a new era of opportunities for customers to gain critical and rapid insight into their environments as they deal with explosive data growth,” said Flavio Santoni, CEO, Syncsort data protection business. “This insight will enable significant opportunities for improving storage efficiency and reducing costs, as well as accelerating the use of snapshot technology as a high-performance and efficient form of data protection.”

ECX’s powerful search and reporting capabilities are easy to deploy, easy to learn and use, and ready to scale to very large data environments.

Highlights include:
· Co-exists with any data protection solution that customers use – no need for rip-and-replace
· Can be deployed and operational in 15 minutes as a VM appliance, and can scale to handle billions of objects
· Provides deep insights into the NetApp ONTAP environment by cataloguing all existing Snapshots, SnapVault™ and SnapMirror™ volumes and the files contained in them, and numerous other NetApp system objects including nodes, LUNs, aggregates, qtrees, volumes, CIFS and NFS shares, and vFilers
· Catalogues the presence and location of VMware objects, including virtual machines, data stores, and LUNs, allowing rapid location of objects as well as detailed efficiency reporting.
· Delivers timely, useful information by finding files quickly and reliably across both primary disk and all tiers of snapshot copies, resulting in the ability to enable higher levels of efficiency by dramatically increasing insight into an organisation’s storage and VM infrastructure
· Assures data is properly protected at all times by identifying unprotected volumes or data on unsecured storage, so corrective measures can be taken rapidly and efficiently
· Saves time and resources with a powerful search capability that returns rich information in seconds and with reports that can be generated automatically and sent via email in multiple formats including PDFs, Excel, and Word
· Bolsters performance and efficiency by identifying volumes that may have more snapshot retention then they require, snapshots that are taking up an excessive percentage of space, or virtual machines that are no longer used

"Increasingly, customers seek to utilise snapshots as a way to manage and protect their data, particularly in virtual environments," said Robert Amatruda, research director, data protection and recovery, IDC. "Syncsort's ECX Enterprise Catalog gives VMware and NetApp customers the ability to discover, search, navigate, and query information resident inside snapshots for expanded use-cases, providing greater value in maximising operational efficiency, data protection, and compliance."

ECX’s powerful file reporting and analytics can also be used to quickly pinpoint areas of inefficient use of storage, identifying old files that have not been accessed for a set amount of time, extremely large files, file types that may violate storage policies (video, music), and unused virtual machines.
“Disk-to-disk backup without indexing is not enough to eliminate traditional tape backup. ECX addresses this need,” said Mark O’Pella, senior staff, systems architect, Rosetta Resources, a Houston, Texas-based oil and gas company. “ECX’s SnapVault indexing capabilities provided what I needed to eliminate tape backup in my environment.”

ECX cataloging is not dependent on any specific tool or bound to any specific time period. It catalogues snapshots created by PowerShell, NetApp OnCommand®, SnapCreator, SnapManager®, OSSV, SnapProtect®, etc. ECX does not interfere with or replace traditional backup technologies. It catalogs an organisation’s entire existing file history on disk, not only new data added after it is installed. Even if IT has stored years of snapshots on disk, ECX will catalogue all of them and give a complete view of the NetApp environment.