The new EMC Celerra Plug-Ins for VMware Environments dramatically reduces virtual machine storage capacity requirements by up to 50-percent through thin provisioning, deduplication and improved management. It accelerate the cloning of virtual machine data 2-to-3 times faster than existing solutions using the processing power of the Celerra systems. And it fully automates the failback process for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager software in NFS environments--unique to the industry.

The new EMC Celerra Plug-In for VMware Environments enables VMware administrators to more effectively and easily provision, manage and extend these VMware data stores--all from the VMware vCenter console. The new EMC software also enables VMware administrators to perform snapshot or clone operations of individual virtual machines from the VMware vCenter Server console, which are hardware-accelerated within the Celerra unified storage system. In addition, Celerra Data Deduplication software enables compression of VMware Virtual Machine Disk files, which significantly reduces the storage capacity required for virtual machines in addition to more efficient use of capacity through thin provisioning.

Additionally, EMC is extending its failover and failback capabilities to NFS environments with EMC Failback Plug-In for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager software . The integration with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager helps ensure rapid, reliable, manageable and affordable business continuity in VMware environments. Extending automation of failover and failback capabilities to NFS deployments with EMC Failback Plug-In for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager mitigates risks and maximizes existing IT investments for affordable business continuity. All of these capabilities are available for download at no additional charge to EMC Celerra customers with current maintenance arrangements.

"Customers choose VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, and ensure business continuity--paving the way for customers on the journey to cloud computing," said Hatem Naguib, Vice President, Alliances, VMware. "These new capabilities from EMC greatly increase the ease-of-use and resource optimization for mutual customers, integrating with VMware vSphere through common deployment interfaces. Now VMware administrators have enhanced control to reduce storage consumption, maintain service levels for performance-sensitive applications, and simplify storage management and data recovery tasks."

The EMC Celerra Plug-Ins for VMware Environments announced today are available for download to EMC Celerra customers with current maintenance arrangements. Both plug-ins are available from EMC, Dell and its authorized partners.