Congrats on V-Max

EMC had big news today thanks to their virtual launch of the new Symmetrix V-Max. It has garnered broad industry coverage, as well as its share of competitive brickbats.

It's a revolutionary break from the old-line monolithic array. Based on x86 components, designed with modular 'engines' to enable more granular scale-out, and built-in automated tiering makes it more like an offering from a nimble innovator like Compellent or 3Par. But with scale-up to a claimed 3PB and "tens of millions of IOPS" this is still gold-tier enterprise storage.

EMC's Chuck Hollis paints a typically empassioned view of the technology. It includes storage virtualization features such as pooling data across multiple arrays, non-disruptive data mobility and I/O load-balancing. He listed architectural approaches customers have to achieve Storage Virtualization: "today, we've got three different approaches to putting storage virtualization in the network: (1) use a server appliance (e.g. IBM SVC), (2) use an array controller (e.g. HDS USP), or (3) use an intelligent switch (e.g. EMC Invista)." Forgiving the over site of "host-based" (e.g. DataCore), this list does cover the typical enterprise, large service provider or government agency considered set. There are a number of choices each with its pros and cons.

And despite all the greatness of V-Max, the Storage Virtualization buyer often needs to address issues of heterogeneous storage resources, performance and vendor lock-in. Where these are issues, a fabric-based approach is still the best way to go. (And if you're an EMC shop, you can still make your sales rep happy by choosing Invista.)

Congrats to the Symmetrix team on the launch -- we're all eager to see how the new V-Max vision rolls out over the coming months.

Virtual Storage as well as Coffee Cups

The report from SNW: still a big show but not quite as large as last year. Cost cutting was top of mind, with one attendee sharing that his company eliminated styrofoam coffee cups to save $70k!

Storage news included the apparent maturing of Storage Virtualization, with 76% of attendee orgs either having already deployed or expecting to deploy a solution by next year. Companies are realizing savings from Storage Virtualization through efficient resource pooling, reduced management complexity and the ability to manage more data with the same staff. One company shared that they had 15PB all on a performance SAN, and wanted to reduce cost through tiering to cheaper arrays -- a compelling use for Storage Virtualization.

With the maturing of the category, the key players will stabilize their respective positions. But there's a potential disruption on the way, because the market still hasn't found an equilibrium in terms of form-factor, with shares split between array-based (e.g. HDS USP), appliance-based (e.g. IBM SVC and NetApp V-Series), Host-based (e.g. Datacore) and Fabric-based (e.g. EMC Invista). Expect to see innovation in how network-based technology works to improve the performance of these and other storage apps...