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New EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture Good News for Virtual Data Center Storage Scalability

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EMC today unveiled a new approach to high-end data storage with an innovative new architecture purpose-built to support virtual data centers. EMC also announced the first storage system based on this architecture, which will serve as a cornerstone of virtual computing infrastructures that are transforming the technology landscape.

The new EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture integrates industry-standard components with EMC Symmetrix capabilities to deliver massive scalability – enabling systems that scale to hundreds of thousands of terabytes of storage and tens of millions of IOPS (input/output per second) supporting hundreds of thousands of VMware and other virtual machines in a single federated storage infrastructure. It is the first storage architecture that combines the performance and efficiency of a scale-up architecture and the cost-effective flexibility of a scale-out architecture. It was designed and built from the ground up to break the physical boundaries of data center storage, incorporates automation to simplify storage management, enables resources to be scaled on demand and uses less energy per terabyte of data stored than traditional high-end storage systems.

Full details about the new architecture and new systems are available here.

The first storage system based on this innovative new architecture is the EMC Symmetrix V-Max system, which is available immediately. It is the world’s largest high-end storage array and uses multi-core processors to lower power costs and improve IOPS per dollar. Combined with the latest generation Enterprise Flash, Fibre Channel and SATA drives, the Symmetrix V-Max system allows users to cost effectively meet the widest range of storage requirements for high performance and high capacity in a single system. It joins the market-leading EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 system and expands EMC’s high-end portfolio. Together they represent the two newest high-end storage architectures on the market today.

The high-availability Symmetrix V-Max Engine at the center of the new system is a flexible building block that features multiple redundant Quad-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors with up to 128 GB (gigabytes) of memory and up to 16 host and 16 drive channel connections. The Virtual Matrix Architecture allows Symmetrix V-Max Engines to interconnect and share resources. This enables a Symmetrix V-Max system to scale to 1024 GB (gigabytes) of global memory, with twice as many front-end and back-end connections compared to the industry-leading Symmetrix DMX-4 systems. The ability to interconnect and share resources to easily and linearly scale out is a key customer requirement as virtual machines and applications are dynamically added and shifted.

The Symmetrix V-Max system provides more than three times the performance, twice the connectivity and three times more usable capacity than Symmetrix DMX-4 systems and uses significantly less power per terabyte and per IOP. As part of EMC’s Early Adopter Program, more than 30 of the new systems have already been shipped to customers with some of the world’s largest data centers, including EMC’s own state-of-the-art production data center.

New Automated Management Tools

In virtualized environments, there are significant benefits to consistent and rapid provisioning of storage to multiple physical servers and server clusters. The Symmetrix V-Max system automates storage provisioning, reducing the time and complexity of provisioning by 95 percent. Integration with numerous VMware features enables both server and storage resources to be provisioned on demand, with centralized management, reporting and control. In addition, EMC ControlCenter(R) support for both the Symmetrix V-Max storage system and VMware will increase visibility and automate reporting across the virtual server and storage environments.

In tiered storage environments, Symmetrix V-Max systems enable data to be non-disruptively relocated to different storage tiers and RAID protections, including ultra- high performing Enterprise Flash Drives, traditional Fibre Channel disk drives and high-capacity SATA disk drives based on business requirements. The Virtual Matrix Architecture allows customers to relocate more data in less time and with less impact to overall performance than any competitor, while also maintaining local and remote replication activities to ensure continuous protection for today’s “24 by forever” data centers.

EMC also announced Fully Automated Storage Tiering (“FAST”), its innovative automation technology. Leveraging the Virtual Matrix Architecture’s unprecedented data relocation capabilities, FAST will automate the movement of data across multiple storage tiers based upon business policies, predictive models and real-time access patterns. This will further accelerate the adoption of Enterprise Flash Drives by enabling customers to more effectively leverage Flash performance together with the cost-effective capacities of SATA hard drives for improved return on investment and lower total cost of ownership. This new technology will be available on Symmetrix V-Max systems later this year.

The New Symmetrix V-Max Tiered Storage System

The first new Symmetrix model based on the Virtual Matrix Architecture is the Symmetrix V-Max storage system, the world’s largest high-end storage array, featuring:

  • Up to 128 Intel Xeon processor cores
  • Up to 1 TB (terabyte) of global memory
  • Fibre Channel/FICON/Gigabit Ethernet/iSCSI connectivity
  • Latest generation Flash/Fibre Channel/SATA drive support
  • Scale to 2,400 drives
  • Maximum usable, protected capacity of 2 PBs (petabytes)

Accelerated Data Migrations For Improved Efficiency and Agility

To help customers take advantage of the full capabilities of the new Virtual Matrix Architecture, EMC Global Services introduced a new EMC Migration Suite of tools and services to accelerate migration processes and execute migrations to the new architecture up to 50 percent faster and more efficiently. The EMC Migration Suite leverages comprehensive and unique best practices and EMC E-Lab(TM) interoperability testing to minimize risk, time and complexity.

EMC Proven Solutions for Major Data Center Applications

The unique features of the Symmetrix V-Max systems provide customers with new efficient ways to address the needs of their most critical data center applications, including those from Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. EMC has an initial set of EMC Proven Solutions that help accelerate implementation of VMware, Microsoft, and Oracle applications with Symmetrix V-Max systems, with additional solutions under development. These documented best practices and services from industry experts take advantage of the full capabilities of the new Virtual Matrix Architecture to maximize resources at the lowest possible cost.

Innovative Financing Options

EMC Global Financial Services offers innovative financing options for Symmetrix V-Max systems that can help customers further lower their total cost of ownership.

The Symmetrix V-Max system is generally available today.

Dennis Hoffman Joins Neocleus’ Board of Directors

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Neocleus today announced that Dennis Hoffman has joined the Neocleus Board of Directors.

Hoffman has worked in both entrepreneurial and general management capacities at numerous information technology companies and is an executive at EMC Corporation where he leads the company’s global sales engineering organization.

Hoffman’s leadership experience spans more than 20 years in the high technology industry. He boasts a strong track record of building and growing companies and motivating teams. He has successfully cultivated strong client and investor relationships. In his most recent role he was responsible for the strategy development, execution and financial performance of RSA’s Data Security business unit, as well as strategic planning, strategic partnerships and business development for the greater RSA Division.

“The client computing environment has become increasingly complex to manage and secure,” said Dennis Hoffman, vice president and general manager, EMC. “Neocleus’ innovative approach in applying client-hosted virtualization to address IT hassles is at the forefront of the software industry. I look forward to working with the company to help them expand their industry leadership.”

Before starting his role at RSA, Hoffman led the team at EMC that developed and initiated the execution of the company’s information security strategy. In his prior position at the company he led product marketing for EMC Software Group. Previously, he served as CEO and co-founder of Storigen Systems, a pioneering developer of distributed storage networking software that was acquired by EMC in October 2003. Hoffman also spent six years at Avid Technology, where he was responsible for the marketing and business development of its storage and networking products. He has held strategy consulting and engineering roles at companies including Marakon Associates, Eastman Kodak and Polaroid Corporation. Hoffman received an MBA from Harvard University and holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

EMC/VMW Acquisition By Cisco Imminent?

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Great field work on Virtualization.info today about the fact that investors are buying heaps of VMware stock, signalling that something is up.

A small excerpt:

Monday’s SEC filings shows that Cisco posted a prospectus on raising $4 billion in senior bonds. The book building is run by all the major investment banks and is closing on February 17.
Cisco must be really confident for such a major issuance in these market conditions, but Standard & Poors is giving the senior unsecured notes an A+ rating with a stable outlook.
Cisco will use $500 million of the $4 billion to repay short term debt.  When combined with sizeable cash holdings, this leaves them with with $4.7 billion in cash at the US parent company. According to CNET that amount excluded cash holdings at subsidiaries overseas.

EMC And Microsoft Extend Alliance On Virtualization And More

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EMC and Microsoft have announced a three-year extension of their strategic alliance through 2011.

The two companies are committing to broader and deeper product interoperability and service delivery to address key customer requirements including virtualization, security and content management through the powerful combination of Microsoft’s data center solutions and productivity applications with EMC’s information infrastructure solutions and consultancy. As a result, joint customers will benefit from more productive and less costly dynamic IT infrastructures that can effectively respond to today’s rapidly changing business requirements and economic constraints.

At an invitation-only event for chief information officers and other IT executives, Joe Tucci and Steve Ballmer discussed how the two companies will continue to deliver value to mutual customers through collaboration including a deeper focus on storage and protection of information in virtualized environments, increased productivity through centralized management of content, and leading-edge security solutions to prevent data breaches.

Building efficient and dynamic IT infrastructures is a top priority for organizations across the globe. The two companies work together in many ways to help organizations achieve efficiencies. In recent years, technology advances in server virtualization, tiered storage and IT management have become key elements in IT planning, offering a range of benefits, from lower hardware, software and personnel costs to improved reliability and enterprise-class manageability and performance.

Microsoft offers one of the fastest-growing and most cost-effective virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, including the ability to manage both physical and virtual environments from a centralized management console. EMC’s technology solutions enable storage, protection and management of information in Microsoft virtualized environments including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center, and jointly supported mission-critical workloads such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SharePoint Server. EMC Consulting’s Application Practice, a thousand-person strong team with deep Microsoft knowledge, provides expertise in assessing, planning and implementing Microsoft’s technologies in a wide array of virtualization solutions.

IT departments everywhere are trying to cope with growing amounts of information spread across disparate systems, such as file shares, content servers and team sites — making information increasingly difficult to harness and govern for business impact and regulatory requirements. IDC states that information under content management is growing at an exponential rate, more than doubling between now and 2011. Today, organizations can link the EMC Documentum® platform with Microsoft’s widely used platform including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft SQL Server to improve how knowledge workers utilize information wherever it lies, ultimately helping mitigate risks, reduce costs and improve IT efficiencies. Leveraging a unique blend of industry, design and technology acumen, EMC Consulting also helps customers maximize the value of information and decrease time to value through the use of field-tested tools, proven methodology and familiar Microsoft products connected with powerful EMC Information Infrastructure.

As part of deepening the strategic alliance, EMC will develop solutions that leverage and extend Microsoft Office SharePoint. In addition, EMC will continue to develop solutions that enable customers to use the familiar Microsoft Office and SharePoint user interfaces to interact through business processes and workflows with content that is stored, protected and managed by EMC. Ultimately these solutions will empower customers to direct SharePoint content and Microsoft Exchange messages, along with other business content, to integrated archives for long-term preservation, thus improving operational efficiencies, enabling scalability of production systems, and facilitating sound information governance and litigation readiness.

IT environments are increasingly reliant on their corporate information, meaning data loss, data unavailability or data corruption of any kind can cause severe business challenges. The two companies will collaborate on building information protection solutions across the Microsoft application. An example of this is how EMC and Microsoft are responding to the new demands of information security, including a record number of data breaches, by building industry-leading Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technologies from RSA®, the security division of EMC, into the Microsoft platform and future information protection products. The collaboration is designed to empower organizations to centrally define information security policy, identify and classify sensitive data virtually anywhere in the infrastructure, and use a range of controls to protect data at the network, data center and endpoint levels.

As a first step, the new RSA DLP Suite 6.5 has been engineered with tight interoperability with Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services. As a result security managers can successfully implement information access and usage polices throughout the datacenter and on endpoints based on the sensitivity of information. Microsoft will continue to integrate data-loss prevention technology from RSA into its products to enable security managers to help monitor sensitive data and block unauthorized use.

There We Go Again: EMC Shares Rise On Acquisition Rumors

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This is one rumor that just keeps coming back: Reuters is reporting that EMC shares rose as much as 6.3 percent yesterday on market speculation that the world’s largest maker of corporate storage equipment could be acquired. The company stills holds a majority stake in virtualization juggernaut VMware.

Shares of EMC rose as high as $14.92 in trade on the New York Stock Exchange, before retreating to $14.75 in afternoon trading.

EMC spokesman Dave Farmer declined to comment, saying the company never responds to market rumors or speculation. Pacific Growth Equities analyst Kaushik Roy said the most likely company to be interested in buying EMC would be Cisco Systems. Last May, we reported on rumors of a possible merger.

A popular phrase says there is fire where there is smoke, but we’re getting a bit skeptical. These rumors have been floating for years now, and although a Cisco-EMC combo would seem like a pretty logical combination, you can ask yourself if it why a deal would be in the works now, when a merger or full acquisition should have already happened if both companies and their shareholders agreed.

EMC Corporation

Cisco Systems