Chuck's Blog

A Private Cloud For Higher Education

One of my Twitter filters is set up for any VCE-related news.  Today, Claremont McKenna College announced that they were getting a Vblock.

"Nice", I thought, "but what was it about the whole private cloud Vblock thing that could be so compelling to a highly-selective undergraduate liberal arts institution?". 

And then the answer struck me -- it helps their IT team support their real mission.

Catching My Breath

January has been an absolute whirlwind for those of us at EMC, as well as our partners and -- to a certain extent -- our customers.

I find myself needing a few days just to catch up with myself.  No deep or mystical revelations in this post, just a bunch of snapshots and snippets perhaps worth reflecting on.

VNXe: The Soul Of A New Array – Part 4

You’re at the final installment of my blog series detailing the “story behind the story” of EMC’s new VNXe.

In part 1, I described the context of the project, and what specific challenges EMC is addressing.

In part 2, I touched briefly on some of the rather unique design assumptions that went into the product and its ecosystem.

In part 3, I explored how the expanded notion of “system” fundamentally changed just about everything we did around the product: how it was sold, supported, upgraded, etc.

And in this post, I’d like to come back on some of the bigger ideas in the product, and how they will likely impact storage array thinking going forward.

VNXe: The Soul Of A New Array – Part 3

You’re now deep into a multi-part blog series on the background behind an entirely new storage product from EMC: the VNXe, code named “Neo”.

In part 1, I described the context of the project, and what specific problems we were trying to solve.

In part 2, I touched briefly on some of the rather unique design assumptions that went into the product and its ecosystem.

And in this post, I’d like to explore how the expanded notion of “system” fundamentally changed just about everything we did around the product: how it was sold, supported, upgraded, etc.

VNXe: The Soul Of A New Array -- Part 2

You're midway through a series of posts that share the "story behind the story" for EMC's new VNXe storage arrays.

In part 1, I attempted to set the stage with the goals of the Neo project, and some of the inherent difficulties involved.

In this post, we get into the meat of it -- what were the fundamental product design assumptions, and -- more importantly -- how were they different than what came before?

VNXe: The Soul Of A New Array -- Part 1

This week, EMC is announcing an astounding variety of new storage offerings -- some that are extensions of areas where we're already strong, and others that represent entirely new offerings for new use cases.

For me, the most interesting part of the announcement is the new VNXe, internally code-named "Neo".  Based on the industry coverage, it seems I wasn't the only one who saw that.

Many people will perceive this as merely a new array from EMC.  But those who dig deeper will be rewarded – the Neo project reflects several powerful, new themes in the storage industry that we’ll undoubtedly see more of in the future.  

Early on, I felt obligated to tell the story of Neo -- now officially the VNXe -- how it came to be, how it is different than what came before, and why it represents some very fresh thinking in the storage world.

The title of this series references Tracy Kidder's famous novel "The Soul Of A New Machine", detailing how Data General brought an entirely new minicomputer to market in the early days of computing.

The analogy shouldn't be lost on anyone -- EMC's investment in Neo was done largely in ex-DG facilities, and a few participants were long-time DG employees.

But -- at its essence -- this story has very little to do with hardware.  It’s really about re-thinking what storage software should do for the people who use it.  

EMC's Record Breaking Product Launch

Finally, it's January 18th 2011.  

It's EMC's big announcement day.

The online event has a bunch of cool content (and a few surprises!) that I won't be covering in this post, so -- if you have the time -- please see it here.

Every since we started promoting this event, there's been all sorts of speculation as to what we'd be announcing.  

A few small details have already leaked out, but there's so much more to talk about.

Let's start at a very high level -- today's announcement is all about breaking records.

For starters, this is the biggest announcement in the storage industry -- ever.

Today, EMC is announcing 41 -- that's right 41 -- individual storage products.  

Just about every aspect of our core storage portfolio is either new, or significantly updated.  

That's a new industry record from the industry's storage leader -- EMC.

As a result, there will be plenty to digest for customers, partners, analysts and competitors for some time to come.  

Some will be interested in one aspect or another, but I'd encourage everyone to step back a bit, and focus on the broader thematics here before diving into the details.

So that's what I'm going to try and do in this post -- draw the big picture for storage and EMC, and then dig into the major product areas that are new with today's announcement.

Introducing The VNX Family

Among all the many storage announcements from EMC today, perhaps the most impactful to many is the new VNX family.  

Certainly, it’s been the subject of the most speculation.

The new VNX models can best be seen as a linear extension and convergence of the wildly successful CLARiiON and Celerra lines – but goes farther than either one individually.

And the new VNXe is in many regards an entirely new product designed to serve an entirely new market segment.  

Both products will likely be extremely hot topics in the industry storage discussion during 2011 and beyond.  

Fasten your seatbelts :-)

Data Domain: Accelerating The Transition From Tape To Disk

As part of EMC's recent flurry of product announcements, EMC's BRS division (backup and recovery systems) is especially well represented: not only by bigger/better/faster versions of their existing successful products, but new offerings that open up interesting market segments.

As the IT industry progressively transitions to using disk for backup, recovery and archiving (and, correspondingly, moving away from tape), customers need solutionsEMC's BRS division is in an enviable position in terms of differentiated product features, leading market share and great customer enthusiasm.

Right now, I think this game belongs to EMC.

Symmetrix VMAX Gets Even Smarter

As part of EMC's "megalaunch", the respected Symmetrix VMAX got a very healthy upgrade of new features and functionality through software -- specifically Enginuity 5785.

Although others will probably do a better job on the deep dive specifics, I thought I'd use this post to share -- at a high level -- what the VMAX is all about, and -- more importantly -- what's new with this important release.

The World of High-End Enterprise Storage

Not everyone is familiar with this part of the storage landscape.  A while back, I attempted to write a post around what made this part of the market very different from all others.  If you're not familiar with high-end storage context, it's worth reading.

In this particular category, I think that most of the data shows that EMC has been the market leader for over 15 years.  More recently, traditional high-end storage market shares have shifted significantly in our direction, which is promising to say the least.

In this post, I thought I'd take you through the Big Picture, using the exact same intro deck we use with customers.  Along the way, you'll see many of the new features that were announced today, but in context.  

If you're keeping score at home, much of this content was initially discussed publicly (although not by EMC!) when we shipped Enginuity 5785 to customers in December 2010.  Indeed, many bloggers saw this as a big deal -- and were curious as to why we weren't making more noise about it.  

Well, we're "making the big noise" today :-)