VNX Family Enhancements

At EMC World 2012, EMC Corp. transformed its VNX unified storage solutions with new hardware and software enhancements.

                    VNXe 3150

It introduced the new VNXe 3150 storage system, combining 50% more performance and capacity per rack unit.

It also advanced in enterprise flash technology with new capabilities that improve flash drive efficiency while lowering costs, deliver application protection and simplify management of storage in VMware environments. The VNX series has been designed to take advantage of the latest flash drive technology, maximizing storage system performance and efficiency while minimizing cost per GB. When flash drives are combined with the EMC FAST Suite, customers capture the optimal benefits of a Flash 1st strategy.

Technology Highlights:

Storage Pool Efficiencies
Improve Flash 1st Strategy

• New VNX storage pool enhancements will offer increased efficiency with a 38% lower starting purchase cost for flash tiers. Customers will be able to mix RAID types within a storage pool-for example, RAID-5 for flash and RAID-6 for NL-SAS – for efficiency and protection.

VNXe3150 Delivers Quad Core Performance
at Entry Level Pricing

• VNXe 3150 extends its VNXe Series, which is purpose-built for IT generalists. It is optimized for cloud computing and virtualized applications, provides increased performance and capacity by 50% per rack unit and remains simple for IT generalists managing virtual environments. This product retains the VNXe family’s simplicity for managing virtual environments, and is available exclusively through EMC’s Velocity Solution provider partners or authorized resellers.

Improved Virtualized Application Protection
and Monitoring with One-Click

• New EMC AppSync will offer a simple, self-service SLA-driven approach for protecting virtualized Microsoft applications in VNX deployments. After defining service plans, application owners can protect production data and recover data quickly with item-level granularity. It also provides an application protection monitoring service that generates alerts when the SLAs are not met.
• New VNX Snapshot capabilities now support 256 writable snaps per LUN for up to 32,000 per system (depending on VNX system size), as well as snapshots of snapshots, making it for testing, development and disk backups. When used with AppSync, these snapshots are application consistent and can be used to quickly and efficiently provision copies of production data for application development and testing.

EMC and VMware Extend Partnership
to Develop, Sell and Deliver
Storage Analytics for VNX

• EMC will extend its VNX storage software portfolio with the addition of the EMC Storage Analytics Suite that is based on vCenter Operations Management Suite. The software will enable VNX to optimize management of their VNX storage and improve SLAs with performance and capacity analytics and sophisticated health monitoring and diagnostics while displaying FAST Suite configuration and performance.
• New integration with VNX Connector for VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite will provide features such as dashboards with health alerts and patented analytics, providing administrators with a cross-domain view.

Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, said: "EMC’s multifaceted enhancements to its VNX unified storage family hit on many different, crucial storage pain points experienced by IT generalists. EMC’s transformation of its midrange storage offerings-for example, focusing on Flash 1st’ single-click application protection and analytics in VMware environments-demonstrates its deep understanding of its target customers. Simplicity, cost-effectiveness, efficiency and automation are all paramount in these IT environments, and EMC is clearly a leader in providing effective unified storage solutions."

Helder Rebelo, SAN, Backup and Storage consultant manager, Portugal Telecom, said: "EMC’s VNX and EMC FAST Suite allow us to execute an effective flash 1st strategy for faster application and cost-effective data management. With just 5% of our capacity in flash drives, we’ve doubled our performance and reduced costs 30%. We’re also looking forward to upgrading to the new VNX efficiency features, particularly mixing RAID types per pool for additional cost savings. We anticipate the new VNX features to save our team approximately 8-10 hours per week of administration time by automatically rebalancing storage pools when new data is added."

Patrick Williams, systems specialist, North Carolina State University, said: "With just 5% of our capacity in flash drives, we’ve been able to double our performance and reduce costs by 30%. Additionally, the new features on our VNX will enable the team to be more efficient. For example, we will be able to save 8-10 hours per week of administration time by automatically rebalancing storage pools when new data is added. Whether it’s automatically allocating hot and cold data with flash 1st or ratcheting down our power costs by running more efficiently, EMC’s VNX products effectively meet both our budget and our performance needs."

Rich Napolitano, president, EMC Unified Storage Division, said: "EMC unified storage has leapfrogged to the top of the midrange storage market thanks to relentless innovation, simplicity, efficiency and performance. EMC continues to develop new, industry-leading solutions to enable customers to build, maintain and manage virtual and cloud apps, and the storage essential to both."

Availability:
All of these enhancements and new offerings are expected to be available in the second half of 2012.