Now to jump into V-Max……..read all blog posts from The Storage Anarchist, StorageZilla, Chuck Hollis, Chad Sakac, Powerlink and EMC V-Max page. Just amazing storage-techno stuff to read, I have committed to another 20 hours of faithful reading this week on the V-Max architecture and then write some blog post about it.
One thing I noticed with the V-Max blog post, every EMC blogger has been quite humble talking about the technology. On the other side, quite offensive stuff flying around from HDS and NetApp about the V-Max. Sorry I haven’t read any comments on any of the post, so can’t make a complete judgment.
I am sure you have read about the latest EMC announcement on V-Max, here is where you will find all the info…..
Technical Post / Articles
Technology
Some independent Bloggers have done a great job to overall summarize the Symmetrix V-Max announcement, here as referenced by Barry Burke.
Sometime in Feb 2009, I had written a blog post about expectations with EMC DMX next generation technology.
Did come quite close to predicting what the new set of architecture would look like, including Directors, Cache, IOPS, Drives types, Release dates, Cost offerings, GA enginuity code, Scalable Architectures, Controller Consolidation to include local memory, processor speed, EFD sizes, SMC console and associated Symapi, SMC friendless (templates, wizards), new conceptual design of mirror positions, virtual provisioning, power savings, Ethernet based connectivity to V-Max Service Processor, VMware Native Integration, Support for various RAID types that would enhance the product, policy based work flow automation, some support for FCOE in the future and a radical design change.
Things where I went wrong, the possible model numbers included DMX, Disk drive physical size (2.5 inch), PowerPC chip, no bin file, global memory, 8GB I/O interface, native support for Deduplication (I am sure you can stick a Celerra in front of a V-Max and achieve it).
Looking at the current GA Symmetrix V-Max product, I really did not expect the technology to go as far as EMC has managed to take it.
But that said a lot of hype has been around the V-Max architecture itself. One of the marketing buzz words is around scalability with hundreds of V-Max engines, 1000’s of TB’s of data, etc. At current GA, the product is scalable to 8 V-Max engines supporting 2 PB of storage and 2400 disk drives. EMC has been successful atleast in the first phase to sell the V-Max technology. With the current GA you are buying a future technology, not a technology that is currently in the product. Still not sure and haven’t been able to read on how the Virtual Matrix will connect the Physical V-Max Engines as they will span across geographies or even through larger datacenters.
Talking to various different customers over storage and storage technology, everyone feels pretty comfortable talking about HDS AMS, HDS USP-V, EMC Clariion, Compellent, Pillar Data and 3Par, but I still see customers struggling to talk about Symmetrix DMX, DMX-2, DMX-3 and the DMX-4 from a management and usability perspective. Will the V-Max change it all?
I would highly recommend a trip if you can to go to EMC World 2009. It will be great to see the V-Max in action along with the latest Celerra, CX4’s, Atmos, Cisco UCS and V-Sphere.
