So we have VPLEX and despite some scratching of heads as to what it is; it is really quite simple, “storage access is further decoupled from storage physicality.” And this really is nothing especially new; decoupling the storage access from storage physicality has been going on for some time.
Enterprise Storage?
Myself and Tony Asaro have had a bit of snit over the uniqueness of the USP-V; he opines that it is unique and I am right that it is not unique. In many ways, this comes down to Tony’s opinion that the USP-V is unique because it is the only external storage virtualisation array which is Enterprise Storage. In his opinion neither the v-Series or the SVC are Enterprise Storage and hence do not compete with the USP, DMX and DS8K range. Also in SVC’s case because it does not have it’s own disk and simply virtualises external arrays; it is not a storage device (I’ll leave that comment alone).
HDS High Availability Manager: How It Works

It has been two days since HDS introduced High Availability Manager (“HAM” to us), disappointing some and confusing others. Now that the dust has settled some, it has become clearer just what HAM is and how it works, and we come away more impressed. HDS has taken simple, proven technologies (path management, clustering, synchronous replication) and remixed them into a super-high-availability solution for the largest enterprises. Perhaps this is not what many expected, but it’s certainly a worthwhile addition to the company’s family of products.
HDS’ HAM-Fisted Announcement Can’t Be All
HDS telegraphed that a big announcement was coming today. They even made it fun, with a (literally) cryptic blog entry to make sure we were all watching. But the announcement of High Availability Manager, a software product to manage existing HDS USP-V and USP-VM arrays, underwhelmed. It isn’t HDS’ answer to the EMC Symmetrix V-Max and it’s forthcoming FAST technology.