EMC World Redux

May 14, 2010 -- Just when you think you're out, I'm going to pull you back in. Here's a roundup of all of our EMC World coverage, including articles and lab reviews on VPLEX, Unisphere, Data Domain and a couple of Ionix and Atmos announcements that flew under the radar.

There's a clearinghouse of links with all of our articles and lab reviews related to the 10th annual EMC World conference below, but let's tackle the news we haven't covered. While sequestered in the hotel adjacent to the show, a couple of things went right by me.

First up, EMC built out its partner ecosystem for the EMC Atmos cloud storage platform with a new crop of service providers and ISVs.

The service providers – including AT&T, CBICI, Hosted Solutions, Peer1 and Unisys – are using Atmos technology to deliver cloud services to their customers, while the ISVs now pledging support for Atmos include Acuo Technologies, Atempo, Aspera, Cloudera, CommVault, Gladinet, Emulex, EnterpriseDB, Informatica, lifeIMAGE, Metalogix, MedCommons, Nasuni, RainStor, Riverbed Technology, Seven10 Storage, Signiant, StorSimple and TwinStrata.

EMC is also making a new edition of Atmos available in its efforts to entice more partners in the form of the EMC Atmos Virtual Edition.

EMC claims the Virtual Edition "extends the ability to deliver web-accessible, elastic cloud storage qualities to customers using EMC Symmetrix enterprise storage and EMC Celerra unified storage platforms. Running in a virtual environment, Symmetrix and Celerra customers can extend their platforms to address new workloads such as content-rich web applications, storage-as-a-service, cloud archiving and access to external Atmos-powered cloud services."

Secondly, EMC announced version 2.0 of the EMC Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor. The new software automates the validation of storage configuration best-practices in physical and virtual environments, utilizes agentless discovery to simplify storage deployment and management, and provides detailed reports and trend analysis that improve storage change and configuration management processes, according to EMC.

Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor 2.0 offers coverage of the storage infrastructure from the virtual guest, to the VMware vSphere host, and down through the storage array and detects infrastructure vulnerabilities.

It also provides an audit trail of SAN changes and rule violations, flagging potential service-affecting events as they occur.

Now for the recap.

EMC kicked off the show with the launch of VPLEX, a new appliance with a scale-out architecture that can "teleport" applications from one data center to another.

EMC unveils VPLEX appliance for global storage networks

EMC World: EMC takes the wraps off VPLEX

And here's a VPLEX/VMotion lab review from Enterprise Strategy Group…

EMC VPLEX Metro and VMware ESX: Enabling 100 km VMotion with New Distributed Storage Federation

After VPLEX, EMC made some moves in the unified fabric market with a pair of newly expanded partnerships with Brocade and Cisco:

EMC expands converged networking deals with Brocade, Cisco

Also of note was the introduction of Emulex's first hardware-based encryption HBAs, as well as its first design win for the adapters with EMC.

Emulex secures EMC design win for encryption HBAs

In the midrange, the rumors were right on. EMC unified the management of its Clariion and Celerra storage platforms and upgraded its FAST technology.

EMC debuts Unisphere, FAST for Clariion, Celerra

In disk-based backup/deduplication, EMC integrated its Data Domain products with NetWorker.

EMC boosts Data Domain deduplication

Finally, EMC added some SharePoint capabilities to its SourceOne family:

EMC launches SourceOne for SharePoint

Our sister site, Enterprise Storage Forum, also covered the news of the week. Check out their articles from the show:

EMC unveils VPLEX appliance for global storage networks

EMC boosts Data Domain deduplication

EMC World: Tucci focuses on clouds, virtualization

Deduplication, Storage Tiering and VPlex Star at EMC World

EMC World: EMC takes the wraps off VPLEX

May 10, 2010 -- Beam me up, Joe Tucci. EMC kicked off its "Journey to the Private Cloud" at its 10th annual EMC World conference in here in Boston with another offering upon the altar of virtual storage – EMC VPLEX, a new scale-out architecture that can "teleport" applications from one data center to another.

The VPLEX appliance creates scale-out clusters with up to 8 nodes (N+1 and N-1) that EMC says can be dropped into an existing data center, virtualize third-party storage arrays (even the ones made by the "bad guys") and non-disruptively move/relocate virtual machines (VMs), their applications and associated information.

For full coverage of the VPLEX product launch, see "EMC Claims Answer for Latency in Global Storage Networks" from sister site Enterprise Storage Forum.

I'd love to get some reactions from actual EMC users, but the media has been set up in a comfy ballroom in the hotel next to the convention center for our convenience, of course.

We're free to stroll over to the show floor, but that might be a bit tough to do and still make it back in time for the live video feed of the rest of the day's presentations.

Some tidbits from the show:

• There are two versions of the VPLEX appliance available today. 1.) A local configuration for "simplified mobility," meaning technology refreshes and rollovers inside the data center. 2.) The Metro version that connects synchronous data centers over distances of up to 100km.

• VPLEX only does block storage, no support for file or object-based storage.

• List prices start at $77,000 for a VPLEX local configuration and EMC is also offering a software subscription service for $26,000.

• EMC expects revenues for VPLEX to ramp in 2011, but expectations for 2010 are "quite modest."

• EMC also claims that their approach with VPLEX is to "really drive standards like SMI-S" – Brian Gallagher, president, EMC's storage virtualization product group…SMI-S? Really?

• Pat Gelsinger, president and COO, EMC information infrastructure products said a new version of EMC's FAST (fully automated storage tiering) technology is set to be announced tomorrow.

More to come. – KK

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