You’re at the final installment of my blog series detailing the “story behind the story” of EMC’s new VNXe.
In part 1, I described the context of the project, and what specific challenges EMC is addressing.
In part 2, I touched briefly on some of the rather unique design assumptions that went into the product and its ecosystem.
In part 3, I explored how the expanded notion of “system” fundamentally changed just about everything we did around the product: how it was sold, supported, upgraded, etc.
And in this post, I’d like to come back on some of the bigger ideas in the product, and how they will likely impact storage array thinking going forward.
Big Ideas Can Come In Small Packages
Although most disinterested observers will perceive the VNXe as just another mid-market storage array, there will be those that recognize some important new ideas – ones that will likely impact future storage products – not only from EMC, but other vendors as well.
Designing For The IT Generalist
Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the VNXe is that it’s a storage product designed for people who don’t really want to know anything about storage.
Stepping back, I consider this broadly reflective of more powerful themes in IT today – from the “consumerization of IT” to pre-integrated infrastructure and appliances that work the way people work, rather than the other way around.
Focusing on Unisphere for a moment, it’d be easy to dismiss it as just another storage element manager. Get close to it, though, and you’ll see an extensible management architecture that has much room to run in terms of handling larger environments, more sophisticated use cases, etc. – while still preserving that utter simplicity and elegance.
You can see some of that in today’s products: Unisphere on CLARiiON, Celerra and VNX exposes much more functionality near the surface, simply because it’s aimed at a more specialized IT role. The same Unisphere (on a VNXe) exposes far less functionality near the surface because it’s aimed at an IT generalist role.
Same storage element manager, two distinct roles. And maybe more over time :-)
My prediction is that Unisphere becomes the new design standard for storage element management in this category. There will always be a need for products that are both simpler and smarter.
Storage Is Really Software
In an earlier post, I described how the VNXe storage software reflects a new line of thinking: a storage software integration framework that allows the rapid encapsulation and integration of new storage functionality assets from a variety of sources: EMC’s proven portfolio, current and future acquisitions, as well as the profoundly growing library of open source assets.
Going further, the ability to deploy this software stack on a potentially dizzying variety of physical and/or virtual hardware platforms means that – not only can the stack quickly take advantage of the latest Intel hardware – but a very wide array of storage platforms can be easily fashioned out of a single code base.
Just like application software vendors are well served by code that can move quickly to new architectures, storage vendors will be well served by having the same capabilities.
Ultimately, it may evolve to the point where IT buyers select their storage functionality much like they’d consider an operating system or hypervisor today – choosing that first and foremost, and then deciding on what sort of hardware they’d like to run it on.
Personally, I think it’d be great if – in few years – we enthusiastically debate the relative merits of different storage software stacks, vs. arguing over hardware details :-)
Application Integration Rules
The majority of storage in IT settings is used to support specific applications vs. generic capacity. To the extent that arrays have built-in intelligence around popular application use cases, this will be a win.
Although the set of initial “application aware” options in the VNXe is non-trivial today, it’s easy to see how this framework is extensible to having the array make smart choices around more hypervisors, operating systems, databases, email environments, repositories, etc.
Ideally, you’d simply specify the application you’re using the storage for (and a few other options), and that would be that. No need to consider RAID settings, flash/cache/disk mix, thin provisioning options, etc. unless you really, really want to.
Ideally, storage provisioning is more about declaring what you’d like to use it for vs. specifying exactly how things should get done.
Just-In-Time Help And Advice
Let’s face it – getting on the phone, grinding through manuals, searching on-line forums, etc. – all of that isn’t the most efficient model for getting help when you need it.
If the array has a problem, it should tell you what choices you have to solve the problem – from do-it-yourself to call-for-professional-help. If you’ve got a question that doesn’t have a simple answer, you should have easy access to a community of people who are using the same products as you are.
If you need a quick lesson on something you don’t do frequently (e.g. change a drive), you should be able to get a quick video tutorial on it without much fuss.
More importantly, those “just-in-time” support mechanisms ought to be integrated with the product, and not a standalone set of places to go. That’s what you’ll see on the VNXe and Unisphere.
I’m just hoping – for all of our sakes – that we see this sort of support/help/advice model proliferate across EMC and the industry. We were fortunate to get amazing collaboration across the various disciplines to achieve this.
Making Things Incredibly Easy For Partners, Too
Behind the scenes, about as much forethought and planning went into the partner experience as did the user experience. Unless partners find these products substantially more easy – and profitable – to sell and support than existing alternatives, we haven’t really moved the needle, have we?
From my perspective, that’s been done. What I’ve seen exceeds anything that EMC has done in the past – and, to the best of my knowledge – exceeds what other vendors have done as well.
Of course, the final proof will be when our partners – existing and new – tell us “yep, you’ve nailed making it easy to do business with EMC”. Early indications are very good, but we won’t really know how well we’ve done here until mid-year or so.
This attention-to-partner-needs design philosophy can be extended to other parts of the EMC portfolio as well. Hopefully, the new standards we’ve set here will proliferate to other products and other vendors.
Innovation Comes In Many Forms
When many people think of innovation, they tend to think of a gee-whiz technology silver bullet. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll find a few of those in the VNXe, but nothing to rock your world.
From my perspective, the real innovation here comes from taking existing capabilities, and using them in entirely new ways to meet the growing needs of an important new market.
On behalf of EMC, I'd like to thank the hundreds of customers and partners who gave us very specific feedback as to what they needed, and why. Your fingerprints are all over this product.
My personal congratulations to Doug and the many teams who brought the VNXe to market. It’s an impressive piece of work, one that is likely to change many aspects of the storage industry going forward.
Job well done!
Comments