Chuck's Blog

Introducing VMAX Cloud Edition

To this day, too many people still get hung up over the word "cloud" -- they dismiss it as merely marketing fluff, or an unpleasant flavor of vendor hype.  To each their own, I say.

However, if you're closer to the topic, you'd probably agree it's a fundamental restructuring of how IT services are produced, managed, delivered and consumed.

Collectively, we've thankfully moved beyond debating definitions, and started on the more challenging work of embracing the new models.

But just because the model changes doesn't mean the core requirements change.

Critical IT services still need to be highly available, performant, secure, recoverable, efficient, etc. -- irregardless of whether we're talking about cloud or a more traditional IT delivery model.  And that discussion applies to enterprise-class storage as well.

That's the core essence of the new VMAX Cloud Edition.

It still delivers on the core values a VMAX is known for -- but it now fully embraces the newer as-a-service model behind cloud.  And I think it's clear proof that an even an older dog can learn some impressive new tricks -- if it's smart enough!

Enterprise Storage Heats Up – Again!

Once you spend any time inside the storage marketplace, you'll come to appreciate there are many segments and subsegments. 

The need to store information is ubiquitous -- the approaches are not.

Sit down and attempt to segment the storage marketplace, and you'll quickly end up with a fairly complicated model.

One familiar category is what is imprecisely called "enterprise storage" or sometimes "tier 1" -- the storage that supports the enterprise's most critical applications. 

These are no-compromise environments that demand the best in predictability: performance, availability, recoverability and so on.

A subsegment of this market appears to be heating up very quickly: the entry-level enterprise-class storage array.

EMC has its very successful VMAX 10K.  Hitachi has recently offered the HUS VM.  And HP has invested heavily in enhancing 3PAR in this segment.  IBM, NetApp, et. al. really don't play in this game, despite what their aspirational marketing might say.

So -- one has to ask -- why is this particular subsegment of a rather familiar storage landscape becoming popular all at once?

And -- of course -- what is EMC doing about it?

Oracle and EMC Help Protect Against Silent Data Corruption

One of the painful realities in the enterprise storage world is silent data corruption. 

An application sends a perfectly formed write to the storage array, but the bits get scrambled along the way.  The array isn't aware of the problem, and dutifully writes the malformed data to disk.

All appears well until sometime later when the data is retrieved and found incorrect, which typically kicks off a lengthy sequence of very unpleasant and disruptive activities: forensics around what happened, a quick restore and roll forward, and so on. 

It doesn't happen very often, but -- when it does -- it's a painful experience.

And, as part of Oracle Open World, Oracle, Emulex and EMC are announcing the first availability of the joint work we're doing to further minimize this sort of problem.

EMC MegaLaunch II Overview

This morning, EMC is announcing 42 new or updated storage products.  That's a lot to consider.

Why 42?  

Other than the obvious reference from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it's one more than the 41 products we announced at our last MegaLaunch event in early 2011.

I've done my best to look at each group of new or improved products, and share the highlights (as I see them) in an extended series of posts linked below.

I thought in this post I'd share what I think are the big trends motivating all this new R&D.

Delivering Storage As A Managed Service: VMAX SP

One of the more interesting EMC announcements in the run up to EMC World 2012 came out today with little fanfare, but probably deserves more attention.

It's the VMAX SP: a specific, enhanced edition of the VMAX targeted at IT service providers. 

For one thing, it includes all the software components needed to provision, meter and bill enterprise-class "high QoS" storage services.  

All in one box.

It's also notable because it creates the option of transferring all the operational heavy lifting of running an enterprise-class storage farm back to EMC -- which we then deliver as a service to owners of the VMAX SP.

It's interesting to me because it shows what happens when you starting thinking about technology as a service vs. simply as a product.  

And -- please pay attention -- you'll probably see more variations on this theme going forward from EMC and other vendors.

VMAX: Charting The Changes

When I came to EMC in 1994, Symmetrix was the company's flagship product. 

As I started my employment, EMC had just announced a three-bay mainframe storage array with a whopping ONE TERABYTE of raw capacity -- half that when mirrored.  Whoa!

Back in the day, it was a really big deal.

Here we are in 2012, and the Symmetrix platform (now VMAX) continues to be just as fascinating and compelling to me as it was back in the day. 

With the most recent announcements, it's pretty clear that -- yes -- Symmetrix VMAX is *still* the company's flagship product.

If you're not familiar with VMAX, this post won't cover that for you.  The platform has continually evolved advanced functionality and capabilities over a time span now approaching two decades.  If I tried, the result wouldn't be a blog post, it'd be a textbook.

With these most recent announcements, it's crystal clear that VMAX continues to earn the leadership position it has historically enjoyed: capacity, performance, functionality, availability, simplicity -- and efficiency.

The frustrating part for me is that a significant number of people think the VMAX is for "someone else".  Recent enhancements have made the platform smaller and far easier to use, so if you haven't considered a VMAX recently, maybe you should ...

Big News In A Smaller Package: Introducing the New VMAXe

Yes, EMC did a Megalaunch at the beginning of this year with over 40 new storage products.

And, yes, at EMC World we announced even more new products and technologies.  

Surprise -- there's still much more new product goodness to talk about in 2011 -- a lot more.  

That should give you a good idea of the accelerated pace of R&D (not to mention M&A) here at EMC.

Today, we're announcing a vastly simpler, easier-to-use "starter" version of the legendary Symmetrix VMAX high-end enterprise storage array.  

And at a lower price, naturally.

If you're interested in storage, you'll probably want to take a few moments to understand what EMC is doing here, and what it means for the overall storage market in general.  

It's not inconsequential.

Of VMAX and VNX

A recent tweet from a customer sparked an interesting discussion earlier this week.

@chuckhollis What decision making factors do you think are most important for a client deciding between mid-tier and enterprise storage?

Great question.  

I struggled to provide a meaningful answer in 140 characters or less, but probably didn't do a good job. 

In EMC's case, the reference is to VMAX (usually described as enterprise storage) and VNX (usually described as mid-tier).  Please keep in mind that the category descriptors are imprecise and often vigorously debated and spun by vendors -- so that's not my goal here.

So let me try again ... this time, with a bit more room to stretch out.

Symmetrix VMAX Gets Even Smarter

As part of EMC's "megalaunch", the respected Symmetrix VMAX got a very healthy upgrade of new features and functionality through software -- specifically Enginuity 5785.

Although others will probably do a better job on the deep dive specifics, I thought I'd use this post to share -- at a high level -- what the VMAX is all about, and -- more importantly -- what's new with this important release.

The World of High-End Enterprise Storage

Not everyone is familiar with this part of the storage landscape.  A while back, I attempted to write a post around what made this part of the market very different from all others.  If you're not familiar with high-end storage context, it's worth reading.

In this particular category, I think that most of the data shows that EMC has been the market leader for over 15 years.  More recently, traditional high-end storage market shares have shifted significantly in our direction, which is promising to say the least.

In this post, I thought I'd take you through the Big Picture, using the exact same intro deck we use with customers.  Along the way, you'll see many of the new features that were announced today, but in context.  

If you're keeping score at home, much of this content was initially discussed publicly (although not by EMC!) when we shipped Enginuity 5785 to customers in December 2010.  Indeed, many bloggers saw this as a big deal -- and were curious as to why we weren't making more noise about it.  

Well, we're "making the big noise" today :-)