EMC Gives ViPR’s Bite To Open Source Community

EMC has dipped its toe into the open source community, announcing Project CoprHD, its upcoming open source project based on EMC ViPR Controller.

It will be EMC’s first open source project based on one of its commercial software products. The project will make the code for ViPR Controller – the storage automation and control functionality – open for community-driven development. Source code is planned be available on GitHub shortly in June 2015.

Project CoprHD is set to be licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) to enable customers, partners, developers and other storage vendors to access, expand and contribute to Project CoprHD’s breadth and depth of features and functionality. All storage vendors are encouraged to contribute to Project CoprHD, further expanding the ecosystem and embracing open and standard APIs.

CJ Desai, president, EMC emerging technologies division, said: “ViPR Controller was the perfect candidate for open source contribution. As fully transparent software focusing on storage automation, both the software and its users will benefit from community contributions. It’s an exciting time at EMC, and we’re looking forward to seeing the new ways Project CoprHD will evolve in the open source community.”

Project CoprHD APIs are engineered to provide developers a single, vendor-neutral control point for storage automation. Just as with the EMC ViPR Controller, with the commercial version of Project CoprHD, customers, partners, service providers and system integrators can develop new service catalog offerings with automated workflows to meet their customers’ specific needs. Positioned in the data center as a single, open control plane for multivendor storage, Project CoprHD offers the same level of flexibility, choice, security and transparency as ViPR Controller, while adding the ability to create new services and applications.

ViPR Controller was created to provide simple storage management for both EMC and third-party arrays, and EMC will continue selling ViPR Controller as a commercial offering. ViPR Controller and Project CoprHD share the same core features and functionality. ViPR Controller customers benefit from access to EMC’s world-class support and professional services.

Customers value plug-and-play architectures driven by software-defined solutions and standardised infrastructure, EMC said. In the modern data centre, storage vendors compete on the merits of their solutions to deliver compelling customer experiences.

Dr. Dietmar Reinelt, vice president of infrastructure services, foundation services, SAP SE, said: “ViPR Controller is a proven, critical solution for our business, and opening it up to community collaboration is an interesting way to help it grow and continue to benefit users like us. The ability to automate delivery of policy-based storage services ensures best practices are followed each and every time, eliminating risk and freeing up manpower, to help us become more efficient‹lowering costs and allowing us to apply our resources more strategically.”

As Project CoprHD and ViPR Controller expand to support more features and more storage platforms, EMC said benefits include:

– In open source software projects, customers typically realise the benefits of vendor neutrality, flexibility, better and more frequent enhancements, and more choice.

– EMC partners can develop and deliver new service offerings for their customers and expand storage coverage to offer more choice for their customers and additional revenue opportunities.

– Storage vendors are invited to plug into Software-Defined Storage frameworks where they can gain access to a growing Project CoprHD ecosystem and participate in helping to drive the overall increased adoption of Software-Defined Storage.

Project CoprHD will be available on GitHub in June. EMC continues to offer and support the commercial version of EMC ViPR Controller.

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