Itzikr's Blog

Management interfaces & ecosystem support

In the previous three blogs on the XtremIO Management System we focused on the unique XtremIO architecture that simplifies Storage Management, and the new XtremIO WebUI that brings UX innovation to the Storage Management arena.

In this blog we will focus on the additional interfaces and ecosystem support by XtremIO.

Out-of-the-box interfaces

There are multiple use cases in which the Storage Admin will need to run management queries and operations:

• In daily monitoring, the Admin will likely open the WebUI application to visually review if all is “Normal” with his XtremIO array.
  
• In more indepth troubleshooting scenarios, the Admin may wish to pull up his sleeves, and run direct CLI commands.
  
• In other cases, the Admin may wish to integrate the XtremIO array statistics and reports to an IT Dashboard that displays statuses of all deployed IT equipment.
  

For each one of the above Use Cases, a different Management interface may be needed. To support these Use Cases, XtremIO offers 3 internal out-of-the-box interfaces.

XtremIO REST API

GET, POST, PUT, DELETE – these are the commands used by any REST API interface:

• GET commands – request to show statistics
  
• POST commands – create new resources
  
• PUT commands – update resource attributes
  
• DELETE commands – delete a resource from the system
  

The XtremIO REST API interface supports ALL admin level commands. The REST API is the recommended scripting interface. XtremIO maintains Backward Compatibility (BC) between the different XtremIO versions. This commitment to Backward Compatibility allows a customer to perform an XtremIO version upgrade, without “breaking” any management scripts or integrated applications. XtremIO is committed to Backward Compatibility for 2 consecutive REST API versions. At a certain point, as a customer adopts newer versions of the XtremIO REST API, we may ask the customer to update his REST API scripts.

All the ecosystem product developed by EMC and 3^rd Party integrating products leverage the REST API interface.

XtremIO CLI

XMCLI is the CLI interface of XtremIO. This interface has been supported with XtremIO from day one. Storage admin who want to run ad-hoc specific queries, often use the CLI interface. All XtremIO commands are supported by the CLI interface. These include advanced commands, used by XtremIO technicians.

With time, we have added advanced features to the XMCLI interface. These include Output Filtering options, Output Properties list definitions, Improved HELP/Usage etc.

XtremIO WebUI

As we have posted dedicated blog posts on the XtremIO WebUI, we won’t expand here more on the WebUI. However, we will emphasize that the WebUI offers the Admin optimal flows to both Monitor & Provision the XtremIO storage array.

For more details, please refer to the following blog posts:

Innovation in Storage Provisioning with the new WebUI application

Innovation in Storage Troubleshooting with the new WebUI application

DellEMC XtremIO X2/X1 Management, Part 3, Simplicity in the provisioning / repurposing workflows

XtremIO Rich Ecosystem Frameworks support

XtremIO offers a rich set of integrated management interfaces. These include:

• ViPR customers can integrate with XtremIO. ViPR SRM is already adopted by many customers wishing to consolidate their entire EMC storage array into a single view.
• VMWare customers can leverage our VSI and vRealize Automation plugins. This allows the Virtualization administrators to provision storage directly from their vCenter management applications.
• For Microsoft shops, XtremIO offers a range of integration options: ESI , ESA plugins. We support SMI-S and also PowerShell support.
• XtremIO is integrated with OpenStack Cinder driver since the Juno release. This enables customers adopting Openstack for their private/public clouds to integrate XtremIO arrays.
• XtremIO has also been integrated to the management consoles of leading applications running on XtremIO, such as Oracle and SAP.

Being able to integrate to the ecosystems of the thousands of deployed XtremIO arrays is strategic for XtremIO. Incorporating XtremIO management capabilities to existing management platforms, streamlines XtremIO monitoring and provisioning into customers’ existing processes.

Summary

XtremIO is a leading AFA in the market. Customers love the XtremIO array for various reasons. One of the reasons is the Simplicity and Extensibility of the XtremIO array. The Simplicity is derived from the underlying XtremIO architecture that automates and makes obsolete a wide range of daily tasks that need to be performed by the storage admin with other arrays.

Part of the XtremIO Engineering DNA is to innovate in all areas. This behavior resulted in a modern and innovative WebUI with differentiated features. We believe that these unique capabilities will add a lot of value to the XtremIO storage admins.

Many integrating products and ecosystems integrate with XtremIO leveraging the XtremIO REST API. XtremIO supports all administrative operations in multiple interfaces: CLI, REST, and GUI. In addition, XtremIO develop itself and supports a wide range of 3^rd party integrating platforms.

Below, you can see a demo of the new XtremIO Web UI