EMC and AOL use VPLEX to reduce complexity in migrations, eliminating downtime!

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OMG! IT’S FINALLY HERE! Yea baby, you heard it here first! The VPLEX is a REALITY! But no, it’s not just vapor, and no, it’s not just ‘oh look an announcement’ what I’m really excited about is those who have actually been using it.   In particular, I’d like to showcase AOL who has used it, in this whitepaper – “AOL extends Virtual Storage to cloud computing with EMC VPLEX clusters” It’s pretty short, to the point but so succinct in the message it delivers.

Referencing a few quotes from this whitepaper really speaks volumes to the types of challenges we all face within the Enterprise space.

Stevens said, "We take disaster avoidance very seriously because the costs are so high if our systems aren’t available. Not only are there huge administrative costs and logistics involved with recovering hundreds of systems, but we risk losing customers forever if they can’t access our services."

That particular point is especially resonating – How many times have you lost a customer due to services being down, imagine if you can take that burden off the table from a storage stand point, that’s particularly cool if you ask me (not to mention being able to actually set and meet a true 5-9’s Forever SLA)

Stevens explained, "Because there is no downtime with migrations, we don’t need to devote huge amounts of time coordinating with application owners, database administrators and system administrators, and even our external customers. The actual migration itself is much less complex for our storage administrators."

"We’re no longer delaying migrations to avoid disrupting a peak load cycle.  So we’re returning our systems before the lease expires and not getting hit with high fees."

I’m not sure how many of you have to deal with regular lease cycles, even when you OWN the equipment scrap the leasing… dealing with the maintenance burden and moving data and equipment around non-disruptively in order to meet the needs of your application owners and the business without the hellacious burden of downtime windows managing apps unique SLA requirements.

And to think, in the use case and example above – This is something any customer can do TODAY by leveraging VPLEX, and that just opens the doors to extending your datacenter across geographic boundaries and the infinite number of other really cool things that the VPLEX will offer.

I’m glad such a renowned organization like AOL was able to be a part of this from the beginning, not only to provide this blog post I’d be able to share with you, but especially to be able to solve real world challenges today by using the technology of the future (Available now! :))

Yes Virginia there IS FAST for the DMX! (Think FAST DMX3 and DMX4!)

Today I sat down with some of our favorite Presidents, and St Valentines since he was free after his holiday was over.  And we decided to discuss what should be announced this week.    With the importance of these holidays in order and the fact that the Olympics are on – the only Olympic and Presidential decision we could come to conclusion on was…

FAST for the DMX!

Whoa, hold on there wait just one minute.   You said DMX4 AND the DMX3?!? Are you serious?!?!

Why yes sweetheart! (yea I know you san admins LOVE to be called sweetheart :)) This does infact support the DMX3 and the DMX4, but because I didn’t find it on my first google search after spending a few seconds (I know you’ll do the same ;)) so the caveat which all of you hardcore DMX3’ers know – the fact that the DMX3 supports only fibre-channel drives. But now that we have that put to the side, let’s discuss what this means for your environment today!

Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) for Symmetrix DMX enables your system to automate the movement of data across differing drive types based upon your performance characteristics.  However, unlike the VMAX which allows you to move across both “Drive Types” AND “Protection Types” the DMX supports only moving across Drive Types.     So if you have a short stroked configuration today running across a boatload of Fibre Channel disks (Oh you clearly know who you are :)) You can start to do what it takes to move that workload non-disruptively to a smaller sampling of Enterprise Flash Disks, and I’m sure your facilities people will instantly fall in love with you (Valentines day! :))

Okay nay sayers, it’s time for you to step up and say “DMX 3 FAST sounds stupid, WTF is that for? It’s FC Only! /end whine” :)   Yea, I’m with you guy, I totally get that.  I have an investment in DMX3’s on the floor today and I want to find SOME way to take advantage of this before I’m completely off of maint and I start swapping systems out for VMAX’s (You know you want to..:))

What value you’ll be able to get here, is since it is FC only, fortunately FC has been tiered within itself for such a long time – through different disk sizes, and different speed types (10k, 15k) So this can atleast allow you to take your applications which don’t require that 15k workload and move it off to your “less critical” 10k disk infrastructure and still allow you to leverage the investment you have on the floor until such a time that you’re ready to upgrade to a DMX4 or V-MAX.    If you’re that guy who happens to have the fully loaded DMX3 15k infrastructure of all the same size disks – Hey, it’s a good problem to have, and in that case the FAST for DMX3 will NOT be the solution you’re looking for.    I’m not sure what percentage of folks are in that particular bucket, but it’s nice to have options :)

Alright, now that I’ve spent nearly have the blog post discussing how to leverage this within the DMX3, I want you to make sure to realize that the DMX4 is still an excellent platform especially for it’s supportability for FLASH and SATA which will let you leverage this to great proportions!    So get out there, contact your rep or TC and get rolling on upgrading to Enginuity 5773.155.107!

I want to make special mention of Barry Burke’s post on this subject 2.040: dmx gets some fast love! a definite must read as it covers a whole bunch of OTHER features now available in the DMX line which all of you VMAX’ers are loving today.    So make sure you read his post as well!

And if you’re looking for information on FAST for the V-MAX, please refer to: One Stop Shop for Symmetrix V-Max Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) docs!

One Stop Shop for Symmetrix V-Max Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) docs!

Welcome to Episode 1 in a series around information for you regarding EMC FAST! (Something I’m extremely excited about)

I know a lot of you are looking for materials and information regarding FAST – There are numerous questions you have regarding this and since a lot of you are self-starters, I’m going to tell you what information I directly know about today, and where to get it!

Available today on PowerLink are the following documents around for V-Max FAST in the areas of Introduction, Implementation and Solution

The documents below require credentials on EMC’s PowerLink – so please keep that in mind when it comes to accessing the links!

Whoa, wait a minute – Are you saying there is already a Best Practices guide and solutions already built out for every major application under the sun? (psst, yes I am saying that :))

I’ve provided these direct links using PowerLink and a Partner account (not employee)  – Please advise if for whatever reason you’re unable to find something and I’ll be sure to get that taken care of and the document in front of you!   Also, if you come across a document I missed and you think should be included, raise the roof and let me know and I’ll be sure to get it featured here! Not to mention if you find a particular document to be overly useful, feel free to comment on that fact, I’d love to know which would be a better doc to re-read or recc’ to others!

I’m really excited about this and your questions are what will make me and the whole community as a whole a lot more knowledgeable around this subject! So Keep em coming!

I’m looking forward to producing a similar single point of capture list for Clariion FAST and Celerra FAST as well, so that’ll be coming soon!