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.