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Finally got my hands on EMC Control Center 6.0, and so far, so good.  The installation goes *MUCH* more smoothly than it’s 5.x predecessors though it still needs some manual intervention.

For those looking to simply manage a Symmetrix, you might want to have a look at SMC, or the “Symmetrix Management Console”  It’s a very “ControlCenter-Like” interface, but *ONLY* provides for the management of the frame.  You can manage up to 6 frames per SMC host, but you can put multiple virtual SMC hosts into a VMware server and thereby multiply your ability to manage without similarly multiplying your hardware costs.

SMC requires a local copy of Solutions Enabler, as well as local GateKeeper devices to the host, but since it does all of it’s configuration changes via SYMCLI, it’s faster.  (ControlCenter does too much background processing and it slows it down)

I’ve not seen ControlCenter actually making configuration changes yet, so we’ll have to see on that.

What I always liked about ControlCenter is the reporting aspect of it.  It definitely makes getting a clear picture of your storage environment easy, especially if you have storage-scope installed and enabled.

I’m going to Wisconsin next week to do a Clariion/MirrorView implementation, which should be fun since I’ve not done MirrorView in years.