IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center V5.2 offers cross-platform, automated storage, tier optimization, and improved data protection over IP networks. It provides more efficient virtualization management and data protection for heterogeneous storage environments. SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center V5.2 helps IT storage managers migrate to an agile cloud-based storage environment and manage it more effectively without having to replace existing storage systems.

This offering helps remove the physicality of storage, as well as the complexity associated with managing multivendor infrastructures. It ultimately helps businesses to optimize provisioning, capacity, availability, data protection, reporting, and management for virtualized storage.

SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center V5.2 offers both a storage virtualization platform and capabilities for storage virtualization management. Version 5.2 delivers to customers under one licensed software product, the complete set of advanced functions available in the IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Storage Analytics Engine, all of the functions available for virtualization, remote-mirroring and FlashCopy of the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC), and all the capabilities of the Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager.

SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center V5.2 offers the following advanced capabilities that help provide for:

• Automated optimization of the cross-platform, virtual storage environment with storage pool balancing and storage tier analysis, and virtual volume transformation
• A web-based user interface that helps provide improved device management, custom tags, and agent-less (unmanaged) server management
• Performance troubleshooting enhancements with a convenient performance monitor and health view, threshold violation views with charts, and more simplified views of performance information for all resources
• Replication management of SAN Volume Controller Change Volumes, the lower-bandwidth, remote mirroring
• Performance improvements for remote mirroring
• Volume provisioning with greater ease of use in the web-based user interface and influencing of the Storage Management API for Cloud (SMAC)
• Volume performance reports by server, unmanaged server, and hypervisor, and performance data exports to multi-tab Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
• Extension of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center benefits into the VMware vCenter through the web client extension
• Enhanced VMware support as a vSphere API for Storage Awareness (VASA) provider
• Extension of block-storage provisioning capabilities to the SmartCloud Storage Access web portal, which is available separately
• Optional separate licensing available for the integrated IBM real-time compression capability that enables use of compression for production data
• Optional separate licensing available for the SmartCloud Storage Access program product that provides a self-service portal to SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center provisioning functions

Find out more here.