EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM) v3.0–Hello World!

EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager has two parts – UIM Provisioning (UIM/P) and UIM Operations (UIM/O).  

What does UIM/P do?

• It turns all the elements in a Vblock into a single element – managed as one, single common API, single plane of glass.
• It changes the provisioning model from one of provisioning point physical elements, and into creating service catalogs of common templates – which accelerates deploying vSphere clusters and vCloud Director Provider Virtual Datacenter (pVDCs)

What does UIM/O do?

• Helps with Root Cause Analysis and correlation (impact on services of issues) in Vblocks.

Both are critical value propositions to customers who are choosing to focus higher up in the stack – and increasingly we’re finding this to be more and more the case.   In these cases, the same concepts that exist in the server/storage/network elements (create templates/profiles, deploy in “cookie cutter” fashion) simply need to be abstracted up one level – into the aggregate services that support virtualized use cases.

UIM has a strong roadmap – and is iterating furiously based on the continued demands of Vblock customers – and adoption continues to be fast and furious.  Both UIM/P 3.0 and the next UIM/O are being previewed at VMworld in Copenhagen, and the UIM/P 3.0 release is right around the corner.

What’s new in UIM/P 3.0?   A whackload – but here are the biggies:

• Elastic provisioning.  To be honest, this is a huge feature, and really bad on us that it took this long to introduce it.   This enables servers/VLANs/storage components to be decommissioned out of active, provisioned services (with deep integration with vCenter to ensure running workloads are not affected).  Until now, the only way to “shrink” was to decommission the full deployed service (think “vSphere cluster”)
• vSphere 5 and vCloud Director 5 integration.   There is broader automated configuration of the new services in vSphere 5, and also now completely automated creation of Provider VDCs in vCloud Director 1.5.    This means that all the steps required to create a pVDC are completely automated. You can imagine how much this simplifies things for customers and service provider customers.
• Simplified vApp deployment model.   The way UIM/P is deployed now is simple.  It’s a vApp.  Do you have any questions? :-)
• An awesome “demo mode”.  Very, very useful for EMCers, Cisco folks, and VMware folks – as well as all VCE partner/resellers.   UIM/P can operate completely standalone (including full API support for people who want to play with integration with things like Tidal, NewScale, BMC, vCO, and any other orchestration or other higher-level management tools) for a simple, turnkey way to play/learn/demo.

UIM/O will refresh soon also – and is AS impressive – we continue to deliver against the vision of simplifying the whole infrastructure proposition – which frankly is key so people can get on with the business of doing business, developing new apps, transforming their end-user experiences, and deploying their clouds.

Check it out below!

You can download this demonstration in high-rez offline MP4 and WMV versions.

Comments

[Did]

Hi Chad,

Thanks for giving us some insights on the new features of UIM. The elastic provisioning is most welcome! What about the support for multiple vSAN, is it included in this release?

Thanks,
Did

[Evan Unrue]

Hi Chad,

I know some of the vArchs had access to a vAPP UIM v 2.0 simulator. Do you know if there is anything out there for version 3 ?