EMC VNX Unified Storage = CLARiiON + Celerra

EMC Corporation introduced a family of unified storage systems: EMC VNX.

The storage solutions consolidate the features and functionality of EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra into a single family of unified storage arrays that scale from entry-level to datacenter-class systems. The VNXe (for entry) series is designed for small and medium-sized businesses, department level storage solutions for enterprise, and remote or branch offices, combining simplicity with performance, availability, and efficiency benefits.

The VNXe series, with a starting price under $10,000 (USD), delivers simplicity, efficiency, and affordability for small and medium-sized businesses. Its capabilities include the ability to:

• Provision storage in for hundreds of Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes, or a 1TB VMware data store, in less-than 2 minutes.
• Automatically double storage capacity utilization using advanced data reduction technologies.
• Provide automated diagnosis, service, and technical support information in a single click.

The new VNX series provides 3-times simpler management, 3-times the efficiency, and 3-times the performance than current EMC midrange storage systems, enabling customers to:

• Run Microsoft SQL Server 3-times faster.
• Run Oracle OLTP 3-times faster.
• Boot 500 virtual desktops in 8-minutes.
• Reduce Microsoft SQL Server administration and tuning chores by hours per week.
• Improve capacity efficiency up to 3-times with the EMC FAST Suite, compression and file deduplication.

In Q3 CY2010, EMC was the #1 market share leader in worldwide external disk storage systems with over 26-percent market share according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker (December 2010). The VNX family is the future of EMC’s midrange storage systems – and will extend EMC’s market leadership. The VNX family is optimized for virtual applications, designed with the latest Intel multi-core processor technology to achieve performance. It also introduces new software packages for management and total data protection.

Both the VNXe series and VNX series are managed by EMC Unisphere, a centralized interface. The VNXe systems are designed for IT professionals with little storage expertise. Its wizard-based setup and application-centric provisioning enables customers to configure storage for 500 Exchange mailboxes – or 1TB of VMware data stores – in a few minutes. For small and medium-sized businesses, Unisphere application driven wizards make VNXe simple to install, simple to provision and simple to manage – with instant access to a self-service online community.

VNXe Series Product Highlights

• Application-based provisioning wizards for simplicity, including support for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Hyper-V.
• 2U and 3U packaging fits almost any environment.
• Built-in support for file-based (CIFS, NFS) and block-based (iSCSI) storage.
• No single-point-of-failure design.
• Built-in data protection, including replication.
• Features including thin provisioning, file deduplication and compression.
• Integrated self-help and support infrastructure automates and speeds problem resolution.
• 6Gbps SAS and nearline SAS drive for high capacity support.
• Scalable up to 120 disk drives (240 TB).

VNX Series Product Highlights

• Combines the capabilities of EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra into a single, unified platform – with 3-times the performance of previous generations.
• Based on Intel Xeon 5600 multicore processor technology to maximize solution throughput and bandwidth.
• Automated storage tiering (FAST VP).
• Offering both automated file and block sub-LUN tiering using FAST VP and extendable system cache with FAST Cache
• Supports 6Gbps SAS, nearline SAS and SSD drive types.
• Scales up-to 2 PB per system (1,000 drives).
• Support for multiple protocols and data-types including: FC, iSCSI, FCoE, NFS, CIFS, SOAP, REST.
• Integrated data protection, security and compliance.

"IT organizations are under extreme pressure to reduce costs and deliver, more efficient IT services. In addition, the expectation for simpler IT is at an all-time high and is dissolving traditional silos at larger companies. Meanwhile, small and mid-sized organizations are facing similar pressures but with fewer in-house skills. Our financial models show that by bringing together CLARiiON and Celerra, EMC’s VNX series will allow practitioners to reduce costs and accelerate IT delivery; while the VNXe series will enable small and mid-sized organizations to essentially deliver IT as a service without specialized storage skill sets," said David Vellante, Chief Research Advocate, Wikibon.org.

"The City of Safford is an ideal place to live, work and visit. Our IT organization is dedicated to providing residents and visitors with prompt and courteous services as efficiently and effectively as possible. We have a lot of commitments to our community-with a limited amount of resources. Technology is the backbone of our ability to interact with the community. The EMC VNXe series is the simplest storage product we’ve ever worked with. It’s also efficient and incredibly affordable-lowering our storage and management costs. EMC unified storage allows us to confidently manage our information-and easily scale our infrastructure as the City of Safford continues to grow," said Derek Kruger, IT & Communications Supervisor, City of Safford Arizona.

"As a managed services provider throughout Australia and Asia, InfoPlex, needs to offer uniform products independently of the location. This makes our support, reporting and billing much simpler. Designed to provide enterprise-class functionality for SMBs, remote office and back-office environments, EMC’s new VNXe systems will give us the cost, simplicity and functionality to make this possible for a number of service products that we provide outside of our core locations. In addition, VNXe replication capabilities will allow us to leverage backup and disaster recovery services in our core data centres, providing whole business solutions without major investment in smaller locations," said Ray Burquest, Chief Operating Officer, InfoPlex.

"PITT OHIO is a service organization dedicated to consistently providing transportation solutions to our customers. We are customer driven, people driven and quality driven – technology is central to our ability to meet customers’ needs. We require a unified storage solution – like the VNX series – that is powerful enough to handle the demands of our applications and shared storage needs, efficient and optimized for capacity and virtual environments, and simple to manage, monitor and scale," said Jules Thomas, System Specialist IV, PITT OHIO.

"Sweden-based Stena Metall is the leader in recycling and environmental services in the Nordic region of Europe. We recycle and process metals, paper, electronics, hazardous waste and chemicals – and have operations in international trading in steel, metals and oil. As a longtime EMC customer we’re pleased to see that EMC once again offers the latest efficiency technologies including fully automated storage tiering FAST and space saving technologies like deduplication, optimized for a VMware virtual environment like ours. The VNX series is a powerful midrange storage solution that will enable Stena Metall to manage our information simply and efficiently – while being powerful enough to handle our growth and the demands of our specialized applications which help us continue to be the leader in our market," said Hakan Canander, Manager IT Infrastructure & IT Support, Stena Metall.

"The Wake County Board of Education in North Carolina is dedicated to ensuring all students are educated, enabling them to become responsible and productive citizens who can effectively manage future challenges. Technology is critical to this mission and supporting our schools. We have a pressing need to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and simplify our IT environment – and eventually will move to a private cloud model. The EMC VNXe series offers the simplicity – and affordability – for us to deliver and manage non-mission critical applications (student email and individual school reading programs). The unified storage system promises the availability and reliability that was previously price prohibitive to us. EMC is bringing intelligent unified storage to organizations like ours – affordably," said Vass Johnson, Senior Director of Network Systems at Wake County Board of Education.

"This is the most significant midrange announcement in EMC’s 30-year history. It is a critical piece of EMC’s strategy of architecting our storage solutions to be optimized for virtualized environments," said Rich Napolitano, President, Unified Storage Division at EMC. "The VNX family sets the stage for all of our future products in EMC’s midrange portfolio. For storage specialists, we’ve converged the best attributes of the market leading SAN (with EMC CLARiiON) and NAS (with EMC Celerra) storage systems into one powerful new platform – armed with the industry’s most advanced automated tiering software to exploit the benefits of SSDs. For IT generalists, EMC brings tremendous simplicity and enterprise – class storage to SMBs – affordably."

The VNX family is orderable now and will be available in the first quarter of 2011 worldwide from EMC and EMC Velocity channel partners.