Simon Seagrave (http://www.techhead.co.uk/) asked, “How long do you think it’ll be before SSD will overtake SCSI as primary tier 1 SAN storage? Giving a new SSD and SATA tiered mix.”
Short answer: Yes, it will be SSDs + SAS and within 2 years.
The real quesion is when 15K RPM highspeed drives will be replaced with SSDs [...]

EMC’s Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) was one of the most welcome annoucements made during the Symmetrix V-Max introduction. It would be a significant modernization of EMC’s Symmetrix line, and would be one of the first unique features of the Symmetrix V-Max line. But many, including me, were disappointed to learn in May that FAST [...]

In this post, we will discuss all requirements and limitations that are associated with EMC Clariion RAID-6 Implementation.

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.

In this blog post we will discuss the supported drive models for EMC Symmetrix DMX-4. Right before the release of Symmetrix V-Max systems, in early Feb 2009 we saw some added support for EFD’s (Enterprise Flash Disk) on the Symmetrix DMX-4 platform. The additions were denser 200GB and 400GB EFD’s.

EMC caused a major stir on April 14 as they announced the next-generation Symmetrix enterprise storage array, the V-Max. Since that time, many of the features have been discussed and dissected on various blogs at the same time as EMC moves forward with sales of the new system. But one question remains: When can end-users actually purchase and use the V-Max system as described? And in particular, When does the V-Max get the most desirable and hyped Fully-Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) and scale-out features?

EMC has been a pioneer it its Flash Drive (EFD) Technology. With the V-Max Systems EMC has taken another leap in the Flash Drive technology to support larger and denser drives. Typically with EMC Symmetrix V-Max systems you will see support for 73GB, 146GB, 200GB and 400GB EFD’s.

We all agree that EFDs have a place in the storage infrastructure of the future but we also have to ask ourselves what is this infrastructure is going to look like? If we look at some of the press releases and comments with regards to Fusion-IO, you would probably believe that the SAN was on the way out or actually shared storage in general would die.

EMC today announced its next generation Celerra NAS. EMC is pushing the technology towards unified storage, deduplication and virtual provisioning giving away some bells and whistles at no cost.

The third rail of enterprise IT is the shockingly opaque and flexible pricing schemes applied to hardware, software, and services. How much does a high-end switch or storage array cost? Are you getting ripped off on your maintenance contracts? Which bundled software modules are required and which are pure profit? You’ll get no help in answering these questions from mainstream sources like technical media, trade shows, or corporate blogs.