EMC World 2011: Google Search Appliance comes to VNX storage systems

LAS VEGAS: EMC is to integrate the Google Search Appliance (GSA) into its VNX storage systems to offer faster searching and indexing capabilities.

The GSA plug-in will return relevant and more up-to-date search results up to 10 times faster, according to Rich Napolitano, president of unified storage at EMC.

The storage system automatically publishes a notification to the GSA every time a file is edited, copied or deleted, updating the index and increasing the accuracy of any search results.

Advanced enterprise search features through the GSA include user added results, people search and Cloud Connect features.

"What previously took you minutes or hours now happens in seconds [with the GSA]," said Napolitano.

"The infrastructure for the GSA is an optional piece of software and works only with VNX systems. This will be available in the second half of 2011."

EMC also announced a Cloud Tiering Appliance that integrates with the VNX system and aims to allow storage administrators to manage unstructured data more effectively.

The Cloud Tiering Appliance enables EMC VNX to automatically tier data to the cloud based on IT policies, the firm said.

EMC claimed that enterprises can reduce expenditure by moving inactive data to lower cost storage tiers or to the cloud. The firm also touted reduced backup times as inactive files are removed from this process.

"Optimising performance, operational expenses and capital expenses continue to be top of mind for customers. There's no better way to achieve all three than tiering data," explained Napolitano.

The EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance is available now. An additional feature that allows customers to migrate data from NetApp to Isilon storage using the EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance will be released later this year.