Calvin Zito over at his HP Around the Storage Block blog has posted some video and podcasts with snippets of information about what's coming in SAN/iQ 9.5, as revealed by HP at this years VMworld.
Main points I've gleaned so far:
Application Managed Snapshots for VMware
New feature, whereby triggering a P4000 snapshot will also cause your vCenter server to snap all the VM's in that datastore, in a quiesced state, in the hardware snap. So if you then attach that snapshot to your ESXi servers, you can see your VMware snapshot within, the VM's are all in a consistent state and you can restore using the VMware Snap Manager.
So if you set up a snapshot schedule in your P4000, it'll also at the same time be taking regular VMware snapshots. With the VMware snapshot it will ask the VMtools installed in the guest Windows VM's to use VSS to get a quiesced state snapshot, for application/database consistency.
CMC
Introduces a new 'SAN Status Homepage' which gives summary of multiple management groups rather then having to log in to each management group manually. Can put this homepage on a second monitor for easy view of your complete P4000 environment
Remote Copy
Improvements to performance, dramatic improvements in speed of volume scans, now down to seconds rather then minutes which means you can have aggressively scheduled snapshots and copy's to your remote site.
VSA
Zero to VSA: Now much easier to install VSA. Also adds the ability for scriptable configuration and installation of VSA's so you can deploy consistently to multiple branch offices in a shorter amount of time.
Peer Motion support
Adds support for HP's Peer Motion software which gives the ability to migrate data online between tiers of storage or to a completely new SAN without interruption in service.
SAN/iQ 9.5 is due for general availability in October. Fingers crossed!
