EMC Invista

EMC Invista is a software product, first introduced in 2005, which provides a storage virtualization solution that runs on "intelligent" storage area network switches (i.e. selected models of Cisco or Brocade switches). Main feature of Invista is dynamic seamless data migration between two storage devices. Additionally it features dynamic volume management, cloning and snapshot.

Invista relies on Split-Path Architecture (SPA) to manage data flows. The intelligent switch redirects all control commands (e.g. SCSI Inquiry, Read Capacity, or Report LUNs) to a pair of redundant external controllers called Control Path Cluster (CPC), while the stream of I/O transactions flows directly from the host to the appropriate physical storage array via the intelligent switch hardware. In the current release, CPC and the switch communicate using SNMP over an Ethernet connection. Further versions might allow in-band Fibre Channel communication.

Invista can be configured in a redundant and highly available fashion so it contains no single point of failure.

Invista's management tool is a Java-based GUI called Invista Element Manager (a CLI is also available).

See also

• IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC)

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