FAST: Features, Drawbacks, Applications and some Questions

FAST (FULLY AUTOMATED STORAGE TIERING). FAST made a debut in the storage market yesterday (12/08/09). Finally after the market buzz we got a preview of the product in terms of its features, functionality, characteristics, possible shortcomings and use cases. This blog post focuses on the features, the drawbacks and some applications around FAST. By no means is this a comprehensive or an exhaustive list of the above.

After all, FAST makes a debut

Truly this was one of the most awaited products of 2009 from EMC after the initial announcement by EMC back in April 2009 along with the release of Symmetrix V-Max. Along with FAST, EMC has also introduced some new enhancements to the EMC Symmetrix V-Max, Clariion CX4 and Celerra NS platforms. Currently FAST will be available on the above 3 platforms at debut and will provide automated storage tiering “in-the-box” for Symmetrix V-Max, “in-the-box” for Clariion CX4 and “out-of-box” for Celerra NS platforms.

EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and Symmetrix V-Max: Basic Differences

In this post we will cover some important aspects / properties / characteristics / differences between the EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 and EMC Symmetrix V-Max. It seems like a lot of users are searching on blog posts about this information. From a high level, I have tried to cover the differences in terms of performance and [...]

EMC Symmetrix V-Max: Supported drive type

With the release of EMC Symmetrix V-Max systems, EMC introduced higher density EFD’s (Enterprise Flash Disks) than being supported on its predecessor, the EMC Symmetrix DMX-4.

EMC Symmetrix V-Max: Enginuity 5874

EMC Symmetrix V-Max systems were introduced back in the month of April 2009. With this new generation of Symmetrix came a new name V-Max and a new Enginuity family of microcode 5874.