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Revision Date: February 2013

Revision Number: MR-1WN-CENTERAFUN

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 1

 This course covers the features and capabilities of the Centera product and solution.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 2

 This lesson covers the fundamentals of Centera, including platforms, architecture,
components and terminology.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 3

 Centera is a purpose-built disk based archive that has a single flat address space.
Data is self-addressing through the creation of digital fingerprints (content addresses) and
there is no file system management.
A good analogy is you go to a nice restaurant or hotel and you give your car to the valet. They
give you back a claim check. You don’t know if your car was parked in a garage or on the
street and as long as you get it back in its original shape you don’t care.
You don’t have to worry about who manages building the directory structure of the file
system. You don’t have to worry about avoiding too many files/directories or about load
balancing.
You don’t have to worry about when a file system fills up and you must introduce a new one
(and configure the applications to recognize this).

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 4

 For day-to-day use, internal governance, or regulatory requirements, organizations
worldwide are being asked to retain many different types of content. New information forms
are being created that compound the retention challenge information, such as webcasts,
podcasts, RFID tags, and call detail records. Unknowingly or without an ability to stop, they
find that they store many copies of the same information.
To create the lowest total cost of ownership and to leverage an archive as an extension of
primary storage, the archive needs to be smart.
Traditionally, the majority of fixed content has been stored on tape or optical technologies.
While these technologies can store this content, they, along with traditional magnetic disk
solutions, were not built to handle the very unique requirements for storing final form
content. CAS can:
• Provide online access with assured content authenticity
• Efficiently store the content by eliminating the storage of duplicate content
• Scale easily and seamlessly to hundreds of terabytes
• Provide low administration costs by having self-configuring, self-healing, and self-
managing functionality
When looking for optimum solutions for fixed content, tape and optical solutions are
inadequate. They are too slow. There have been too many in-technology changes that have
resulted in lost or unusable content, and reliability is questionable (a tape concern), as is the
industry’s commitment to the technologies (a point specific to optical).
Common storage alternatives have not been designed with the storage management
capabilities found in Centera. These typically do not scale beyond a few terabytes (and/or
individual devices) before the operational complexities (and costs) become a significant
barrier.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 5

 In this section, we briefly define what Content Addressed Storage (CAS) is and discuss the
hardware platform that supports it, namely, Centera.
Traditional disk storage systems use block or file access schemes that are well-suited to
transaction-oriented, update-intensive, data storage solutions. In a fixed content environment,
it becomes a challenge to manage the logistics of data placement and capacity scaling, while
also assuring authenticity of the content over its lifetime.
Requirements to store and retrieve fixed content items are much different and, in many ways,
more taxing, than those of transactional data (which is traditionally handled by SAN and NAS
storage solutions). Organizations need new ways to manage the increasing amount of reference
information, which is typically unchanged once it is created, and may need to remain online for
many years due to regulatory or consumer access requirements. Centera fulfills these
requirements by providing faster record retrieval than traditional backups, single instance
storage, guaranteed content authenticity, and self-healing, as well as numerous industry
regulatory standards.
EMC offers networked storage solutions for every business need: SAN for business and
technical applications requiring optimized transaction performance; NAS for high-availability file
sharing and collaboration; and CAS for storage and retrieval of fixed content. Whether you need
SAN, NAS, CAS, or a combination, only EMC can deliver and integrate all three to work together
seamlessly in your environment.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 6

 CAS terminology used in this module is detailed here.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 7

 The Centera is offered in three different models, dependent on the needs of the individual
customer. These needs are based on the data being stored and the stringency of the customer’s
regulatory needs.
• The Centera Basic model is the least restrictive of the models and does not provide any
enforcement of retention periods or data shredding.
• The Centera Governance Edition is suitable for most regulatory needs and does control
retention and deletion of data.
• Centera Compliance Edition Plus is the most secure model and follows the strictest
regulation requirements demanded by the SEC.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 8

 DRP refers to Default Retention Period. ARM refers to Advanced Retention Management.
This table lists various features as they apply to the three modes of operation. Some features
not listed, such as SNMP, apply to traps only and are supported at all 3 compliance levels;
however, are set to “off” by default.
The term MOPI refers to the Monitoring API. This is used by external applications to view
Centera management information. Tools such as Centera Monitor use MOPI. It is also
supported at all three compliance levels and is “on” by default.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 9

 Centera uses RAIN (Redundant Array of Independent Nodes) architecture. Each node has a
1.66 GHz Intel dual core processor, memory, and four 1 TB, 2 TB or 3 TB disk drives. Centera
scales performance as it scales capacity so it can deliver sub-second response time whether
you are storing one piece of content or a billion.
Start small to meet your current needs and expand capacity as you grow. It’s easy to scale a
Centera—just install additional nodes. CentraStar, Centera’s operating software, will
recognize the additional capacity. Centera is EMC’s first and still only offering that self-
configures, self-heals, and self-manages.
As shown in this slide, the initial building block is a Centera 4-node; a Centera rack supports
32 nodes; four racks can be configured in one cluster; clusters can be federated into a
Centera Virtual Archive.
New generations of nodes will work with prior generations for investment protection. In
addition, information can be non-disruptively migrated from prior nodes to higher-capacity,
more energy-efficient nodes for additional savings.
Centera’s RAIN architecture and content addressing protects you from the impact of
technology obsolescence. You don’t have to worry about incompatible tape or optical
generational formats or having to re-lay down file systems because drive capacities change.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 10

 This lesson covers Centera operations, features, and functions

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 11

 Here is a high-level view of how EMC Centera works.
Step 1: An object is created by a user or application.
Step 2: The application sends the object to EMC Centera for storing.
Step 3: EMC Centera calculates the object’s Content Address or “fingerprint,” an identifier
unique to the object itself.
Step 4: EMC Centera then sends the Content Address back to the application.
Step 5: The application stores the Content Address—not the object—for future reference.
When an application wants to recall the object, it sends the Content Address to EMC
Centera, and EMC Centera retrieves the object. There is no file system or logical unit for
the application to manage.
As a simple explanation, an EMC Centera-capable application requests that EMC Centera
store a piece of content. A Content Address is calculated for the content, from the content
itself. This Content Address is returned to the application as the reference point for future
retrievals of that content.
• EMC Centera’s Content Address is a derived address. It is the result of a hashing
algorithm run across the binary representation of the object. It takes into account all
aspects of the content, even file type. And what it returns to a user’s application is a
content fingerprint unique to that content.
• The Content Address is a digital fingerprint for the content—it never changes.
• The Content Address ensures data mobility because it is globally unique. Content can
move as needed without concern on the part of the user. Applications present EMC
Centera with a Content Address and they get their content. It’s that simple.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 12

 Using Content addresses to access information within a storage platform represents a major
paradigm shift from traditional ways of storing and locating information. In the upcoming
slides, we see how this clever concept is used to overcome shortcomings of traditional
archive solutions. Tape and optical solutions left significant functional and operational gaps
that CAS systems have improved upon; data integrity, deduplication, reliability, performance,
compliance, and ease of management are all results of using content addresses to locate
data in an archive.
The content address is produced after a file is calculated against a hashing algorithm. The
result of this is a 53 byte (or 27 byte in older implementations) string of what looks like
arbitrary numbers and letters. The string of characters provides two major functions in the
system. It identifies where the object is stored in cases where the user wants to read the file
and it also describes the precise content of the file which is why the term “fingerprint” is
often used.
Organic or background processes run continually to ensure content has not changed by
recalculating file content against the hash then comparing that new hash to the hash that
was used to originally store the file. It is also very easy for the system to verify whether the
object already exists. In this case, the system will not store a second copy. Rather, it creates a
new pointer (CDF) that points to this common object. Finally, because CAS systems do not
use file systems to organize data, traditional management and administrative tasks are
significantly diminished saving considerable expenditures on administrative staff.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 13

 That was the simplified explanation of how EMC Centera uses a Content Address to store an
object. Here is the explanation in greater depth.
• An application that is integrated to the EMC Centera API sends an object to EMC
Centera for storage. For this content object, EMC Centera calculates a Content
Address. That Content Address goes onto a metadata file specific to that request to
store the content.
• The metadata file, an .XML file called a C-Clip Descriptor File (CDF), contains time
stamps, user information, and the Content Address for the stored data object.
Optionally, the CDF stores comments about the object, tags, and business logic to be
read when the content is accessed.
• The CDF then has a Content Address calculated for it, the result of a hashing
algorithm run across the binary representation of the CDF. It is this Content Address
that is returned to the application for future reference to the date stored on Centera.
The CDF is the mechanism by which a single data object can be referenced by multiple
individuals—and what allows a user to delete his or her pointer to the object without
affecting other users’ access to that object.
Note: If a user decides to delete a data object, the link between their CDF and the object is
removed and deleted (in other words , the CDF is deleted) but all other users’ CDFs still point
to the common, single-instance stored object. The CDF is a mechanism that works in
conjunction with a Content Address; it allows EMC Centera to store only one copy of a
unique content object, no matter how many times it is referenced.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 14

 Next we cover data protection options, self healing features, ease of management, content
authenticity, single instance storage, and security model.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 15

 Content Protection Mirroring (CPM) is the mirroring of an object on two different nodes that
reside in two different mirror groups which correspond to the original physical layout on two
different power rails.
The Centera system uses intelligent object distribution. This feature strategically distributes
stored objects between nodes to help protect against data loss in the case of a multi-node
failure.
The animation in this slide shows how the system attempts to store mirrored copies on
nodes on the opposite power rail (rails corresponding to mirror groups).
In Centera Gen3 hardware, a single ATS (A/C Transfer Switch) managed the distribution of
power to the two rails. Although the ATS was reliable, it was a potential single point of failure
and has been replaced in Gen4 hardware by power supplies in each node, which have built-in
ATS functionality. In Gen4 hardware, each power supply has two power connections, one to
each of the two independent external power sources.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 16

 Another form of data protection is Content Protection parity or CPP. CPP or parity is the
process whereby each stored object is split into 6 fragments. Each fragment will be stored on
a different node in the same cluster. CPP calculates a parity fragment from the stored
fragments and stores that as the 7th data fragment on yet another node. This provides the
ability to reconstruct the object in the event of data loss of any one of the 7 fragments.
Content Protection Parity (CPP) is a more space-efficient way to store data at the cost of
lower performance.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 17

 Regeneration prevents data loss by disk and node failures, and provides self-healing
functionality. It relies on the existence of mirrored copies (CPM) or fragmented segments
(CPP) of the data on different nodes in the cluster.
Regeneration levels: There are two levels of regeneration and two mechanisms to trigger
regeneration tasks.
• Disk regeneration occurs when a node detects a disk failure. The node informs the
other nodes in the cluster. This triggers an alert and a regeneration task on every
node that has a copy of the objects stored on the failed disk.
• Node-level regeneration is triggered when the system cannot reach a node for a
certain period of time. This triggers an alert and a regeneration task on every node
that has a copy of the objects stored on the unreachable node.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 18

 When traditional storage solutions are applied to fixed content, file systems and content placement
become more complex to manage as the quantity of fixed content grows. Thus, management/people
resources grow almost linearly with the fixed content.
But not with EMC Centera. EMC Centera delivers on the customer requirement: “If I’m not going to
touch the content all the time, don’t make me have to manage it all the time.” It’s an optimum fixed-
content solution for organizations that cannot afford the linear cost curve associated with managing
transactional information-storage solutions.
Again, the Content Address is tied to the content, not to its location. This eliminates resource
management, because the Content Address is not a place in a hierarchy (file system), nor a place in a
disk array (logical volume). This dramatically increases the quantity of content that can be
administered per full-time employee because it requires no interaction with a file system or with
logical volumes.
EMC Centera management is:
• Self-configuring
 Configures IP addresses, node types, and notification mechanisms
 Completely manages the internal LAN
 Adds extra storage non-disruptively
• Self-managing
 No physical-media management
 No file system management
 No LUN or RAID Group management
 No SAN management
 Simple replication
 Simple GUI and CLI tools for managing clusters

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 19

 The Content Address is a digital fingerprint for each object stored on Centera.
Because a Content Address is globally unique, it ensures data mobility. Content can move as
needed without concern on the part of the user. Applications present Centera with a Content
Address and get the specific content in return.
In addition, the Content Address assures content authenticity. A change to content generates a
new copy of that content with a new, unique Content Address and stored as a separate object.
Identical objects are only stored once, dramatically improving storage efficiency by eliminating
redundant copies of content. An object’s Content Address is derived from the content itself.
This results in no more than one instance of identical content stored in a cluster.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 20

 How the Centera and the concept of Content Addressed Storage assist businesses is discussed
next.
To address both the business need of minimizing data growth and the IT need to consolidate
data, this concept of single instance storage is one of the key factors in the deployment of a
Centera solution.
Rather than accessing a data object by its file name at a physical location, a CAS device uses a
handle that is derived from each object's unique binary representation to store and retrieve the
object. This is accomplished using C-Clip technology, where subsequent access of the data
object is made by simply giving the handle (that uniquely identifies the object) back to the
repository. The data object is then returned. Content addressing greatly simplifies the storage
resource management tasks, especially when handling hundreds of terabytes of static objects.
Also, this content-derived address is unique to ensure that only one protected (mirror or RAID)
copy of the content is stored (single instance storage), no matter how many times applications
store the same information. This significantly reduces the total number of copies of information
stored, and is a key factor in lowering the cost of storing and managing content.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 21

 This lesson covers Centera management and monitoring tools as well as security options.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 22

 Some tools that are available for administration of the solution are described here.
System Administrators do not need to worry about volume creation or management, file
system structure or maintenance, or data location. The Centera controls all of these functions.
They do need to be able to monitor the Centera’s capacity and performance. EMC personnel
and partners need to maintain the Centera and to enable and disable its features as needed.
A group of tools is provided, to the customers as well as the service personnel. The most
commonly used tool is the Centera Viewer. It is a GUI, shown on this slide, that is loaded onto a
Windows PC with network access to the Centera. It provides a simple means of displaying
capacity utilization and operational performance of the Centera. It enables the system
administrator to change any site-specific information such as the public network information
and end-user contact information. It is a tool commonly used by EMC personnel and partners to
troubleshoot failures and upgrade the CentraStar code. The Command Line Interface (CLI) can
be used with the GUI or as a standalone tool in a UNIX environment.
Other tools available are Centera Monitor, which allows the customer to monitor a CE+ Centera.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to alert an enterprise network
management system to any faults that might occur within a Centera. Centera can also be
monitored with the EMC ControlCenter v5.2 or higher through sensor agents built into the
CentraStar code.
Centera Console is a web-based storage management tool that allows customer system
operators to view detailed information on multiple Centera clusters regarding alerts,
configurations, performance, and relationship between clusters. It replaces the current Sysop
Centera Viewer and complements the CLI tool. This Windows-based customer tool allows
Centera clusters to be monitored from any workstation within the intranet and maintain
archived history of data gathered over time.
Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 23
 The System Health Report is an automatic email message that a Centera cluster periodically
sends to the EMC Customer Support Center with a list of predefined recipients. It reports on the
current status of the Centera cluster. The report is sent to the EMC Customer Support Center in
an XML format. EMC is then able to monitor the Centera cluster remotely and detect any
hardware or software problems.
When it is sent to other recipients, it is converted into an HTML format for easy reading of its
data (as shown in the slide).

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 24

 Centera Console is a web-based front end to the Centera. Centera Console provides the
ability to graphically see one or more Centera Clusters and view current or historical data.
This is a windows-based installation procedure which makes Centera Console “customer
installable”.
Some key features include a universal look and feel very similar to ECC and, because it is a
web-based application, can be viewed from any computer within the intranet. The creation
and management of Centera Domains allow storage administrators to define groups of
clusters which can be viewed from a single Console Client window.
Customer storage administrators can use Centera Console to see more detailed information
about the behavior of their Centera.
This includes, but is not limited to, capacity information at the cluster, cabinet, and node
level, performance information for both current and historic data, cluster properties, and
cluster alerts.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 25

 In the left hand (navigation) pane, the Centera Universe is displayed with a plus sign (+) to its
left until expanded. Expand this to display domains and clusters.
You can highlight one of these clusters and more detail is displayed in the Summary pane.
The type of information displayed in the Summary pane depends on which tabs are selected.
In this example, the Cluster Leuven is highlighted, the Properties view and Sub-View “Nodes”
are selected.
Once the nodes are displayed, the General tab is selected from the Detail pane which shows
even more information about the node.
Panes can be re-sized by moving the cursor to the edge of the panes.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 26

 Centera security is implemented at different levels. The Centera cluster has environmental
requirements that are typically provided in a computer room. Different organizations impose
varying levels of authorized access to labs and computer rooms based on external
requirements or internal rules and governance. Physical access restriction is the first and
most important step to secure the Centera cluster.
The introduction of virtual pools in CentraStar v3.0 provides the first line of logical security.
Virtual pools segment data based on certain criteria such as restricting access by an
application to only data that is associated with that pool. Before version 3.0, data written to
Centera existed in the same pool. This meant that sophisticated users could write or use pre-
existing tools to query for C-Clips, and then perform reads on the data. This capability was
granted through their access profile. Virtual pools now ensure that users only have visibility
into the specific pool to which they are connected, that is, the administrator can grant rights
to profiles on a case by case basis to determine which applications can access a given pool or
pools. A single application can have capabilities granted to perform many different functions
on many different pools, however, an application can only write to the pool designated as its
home pool.
Profiles serve different roles, depending on which version of the CentraStar OS is used.
Before version 3.0, profiles established authentication and capabilities. Release 3.X profiles
establish authentication only and leave the granting of capabilities up to the pool being
accessed (Access Control List). Access profiles should be set up for each application accessing
Centera.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 27

 Access (or application) profiles control who and what are able to access Centera. The model
is a very simple, two-step process to authenticate a person or application, then authorize
what capabilities the user or application can perform while connected to the Centera cluster.
Here is a simple overview of how an application server connects to Centera.
Step 1: When the application server receives a request from the client, it will attempt to
connect to Centera. This connection string includes the “pool open” request along
with a comma separated list of IP addresses of nodes configured with the “access”
role. The connection string will also include an authentication string. This string can
be the actual key or it can be the location of the key.
Step 2: If Centera is able to read and verify the credential against a preconfigured profile, a
connection is granted to the server and a list of capabilities is returned to the
application.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 28

 The Centera uses Virtual Pools to store the data. Clips can be written to a specific pool where
access can be granted to some applications but not others. With Virtual Pools, a Cluster can
have multiple pools (up to 98 application pools). Access to the Virtual Pool is granted to the
Access Profile, which is used by the applications to gain access to the clips contained in a
particular pool. This provides better security, flexibility, and control of the data on the Centera.
Replication, Restore, Seek, and Chargeback can now also be performed on a Virtual Pool basis.
Virtual Pools, coupled with Centera’s existing capabilities for searching storage-based metadata,
allow for management of an archive as broad or as granular as desired.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 29

 Backup of Centera is not required because Centera uses globally unique objects and is not tied
to a filesystem or block-based architecture. If an object gets corrupted, the corruption does not
propagate throughout the entire system. If customers have a requirement to have their
archived information offsite for either regulatory or disaster recovery purposes, Centera can
asynchronously replicate the information to a secondary site. Available as a layered product,
Centera Remote Replication replicates content from a local repository to a remote repository.
When an object is initially stored in the local Centera, the object is asynchronously and
automatically replicated to the remote site over a wide area network (WAN), which means the
content is stored both locally and remotely. If a piece of requested content cannot be found on
the primary Centera via the Centera API, it is sought on the remote Centera.
Centera replication can be implemented with the following topologies:
• Unidirectional
• Bidirectional
• Chain
• Inward Star (many to one)
Selective replication of data objects could be done using Replicate Pools configuration.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 30

 Centera has added advanced replication topologies to the existing unidirectional and
bidirectional topologies:
• Star – allows up to three clusters to replicate to a single, central Centera.
• Chain – Replication to a third Centera (e.g., A to B to C) to provide additional
redundancy.
Long recognized as the industry-leading storage solution for fixed content and application-
specific active archiving, Centera’s Virtual Pooling and advanced replication topologies meet the
needs of a new set of fixed-content users—specifically, those people and functions concerned
about their organizations’ “total” archiving needs and management. Whether it is the CIO, Legal
Counsel/Department, Corporate Records Manager, or Archivist (a title found in Government
entities), these functions are chartered with implementing a flexible organization-wide strategy
to standardize policy management, address eDiscovery, simplify management, and constantly
improve content protection.
Note:
• Star-topology replication is not bi-directional. This creates an outgoing star-replication
configuration that is not supported.
• Individual Virtual Pools within the same Centera cluster must replicate to the same pool
in the target cluster.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 31

 EMC Centera™ Universal Access is a networked software appliance that enables enterprise
applications to work with Centera using industry-standard file system protocols such as NFS (for
UNIX and Linux applications) and CIFS (for Windows applications), plus Internet protocols such
as FTP and HTTP. With the Centera Universal Access, any enterprise application that can mount
a network drive or use FTP and HTTP can immediately capture many of Centera’s unique
benefits such as long-term retention and assured, long-term content integrity. From home-
grown applications to nonintegrated versions of applications, Centera Universal Access makes it
possible to utilize Centera in customer environments with no change to the existing application,
greatly simplifying and accelerating deployment.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 32

 As noted earlier, there are many different uses for archiving. Currently 275 software partners
use Centera as part of their solutions:
• 95 percent of the enterprise content management ISVs are integrated to Centera.
• The same percentage of e-mail archiving software providers leverage Centera.
• Centera is the de facto standard for medical imaging with partners such as GE,
McKesson, and others.
Centera works with non-integrated applications through its support of CIFS, NFS, FTP, and
HTTP access methods. It can also store information through IBM Mainframe HSM, which is
used more than 40 percent of the time by mainframe customers for archiving. Through
EMC’s work with partners, Centera can emulate an IBM tape or optical device and System i
systems can talk IFS to NFS, and store information to Centera.
Centera can be used by any application from virtually any platform.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 33

 This lesson covers Centera solutions and use cases.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 34

 This leading on-campus provider of private, for-profit post secondary education has a rapidly
growing presence in online education.
The company implemented Centera with e-mail archiving software to address its e-mail
management needs and compliance requirements, and has been successfully archiving and
journaling its Exchange environment.
The organization has realized the lowest total cost of ownership from Centera. It has
dramatically lowered its storage acquisition costs, significantly reduced its backup window,
and had nearly zero management expense since archiving with Centera.
The company has also enhanced end-user satisfaction through rapid, online access to
archived information with EMC Centera and SourceOne.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 35

 The Boston Red Sox scouting organization stores footage of entire games in files averaging
over 500 MB each. They archive from EMC Celerra to Centera to lower the total cost of
ownership for their large video library.
Centera can recall a 500+ MB file in a matter of seconds.
By archiving with Centera, the Red Sox have been able to free up Tier 1 storage capacity and
reduce its backup window while keeping all files on primary storage or in the archive online.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 36

 This large healthcare provider has been committed to advancing medical care since its
inception over a century ago.
The healthcare organization replaced an optical solution with a Centera-based solution. The
slow performance of optical impacted retrieval of important images and records. Centera
delivers a faster, easier, and more reliable way for accessing archived records. Centera put an
end to complaints about the length of time it took to retrieve archived medical records.
The archive solution is easy to manage and significantly lowers system management
activities and cost. If there is an issue, it is quickly identified and resolved.
Centera was initially introduced for medical imaging archives, but was expanded to patient
folder archives and historical studies as well. The institution spends less time managing its
Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS), Electronic Medical Record (EMR),
Computerized Provider Entry Form (CPOE), and Health Information System (HIS).
They are able to leverage clinical information for improved patient care and maximize the
value of their healthcare information assets.
Centera fully protects the authenticity and security of archived information. Images and files
cannot be rewritten or erased prior to an expiration date. There is no way to alter the
archived file. The customer stated, “When you are talking about a legal medical record that
contains someone’s PACS image, Centera is an excellent way to archive.”

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 37

 This large manufacturing company had 27 SAP systems and JDE, all on IBM. Their goal was to
architect and implement a robust SAP infrastructure while…
• Consolidating on SAP and migrating from DB2 to Oracle
• Optimizing their infrastructure, reducing management costs, and lowering IT costs
overall
Leveraging Centera resulted in:
• Reducing the quantity of primary storage required for SAP while expanding to handle
email, images, and reports
• Improved system performance
• Ensured content authenticity
• A secure, scalable platform for automated archiving of all SAP archive objects

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 38

 This major European telecommunications company uses Centera to meet the 2006 EU Data
Retention Directive, which requires all European telecommunication and Internet service
providers to retain all call detail records confidentially and securely for a period of up to two
years and to be able to retrieve them “without undue delay.” The information is used for
tracing contact patterns and other forensics.
With Centera, the company has an archive that scales at the lowest total cost of ownership
possible. Centera ensures content authenticity and because the call detail records’
application is tightly integrated with Centera, they have complete information security.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 39

 This course covered an overview of Centera, including features, management options,
security, and positioning.
This concludes the training. Proceed to the course assessment on the next slide.

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 40

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Centera Fundamentals 41