VMworld 2010 - EMC vCenter Plugin.Next

Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is currently in the version 3.x release train, and customer feedback has been amazing – thank you!   Conversely, I’m always shocked at how many customers aren’t using the vCenter plugins their vendors support.   To me this suggests two things: 1) we need to make getting them and getting the value from them easier; 2) many people don’t even know about them.

If you’re an EMC customer – there’s no reason not to use this free vCenter plugin (download it on powerlink, along with all the supporting documentation) -  

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But, no rest for the wicked :-)   At VMworld, we previewed VSI 4.0, which is a very important release.

The most important thing is that we’re unifying all EMC vCenter plugins.  VSI 4.0 is not only a vCenter plugin, but an extensible framework.   Andrew Kutz, Lee McColgan, Joshua Hutt and others have been working furiously to make it something that actually is a tool that accelerates the work across all EMC on vCenter integration (and note there is an EMC VSI for Hyper-V though of course that doesn’t integrate with vCenter :-)

While customers may not care directly about how we make the proverbial sausage, it’s important in it’s outcome:

• All EMC functions can be embedded in vCenter – and we can do it fast – accelerating innovation
• It enforces a common look/feel automatically – making things simpler.
• It’s an architectural model that enables innovation across the company to occur at it’s own rate without slowing down the overall machine.   For example, Replication Manager will integrate with VSI over time.   Avamar is working on integrating with VSI.   We have an AWESOME vCenter plugin team in the unified storage team that’s in RTP (Joshua Hutt I’m looking at you :-)

You might see a theme here with Unisphere (unifying block/NAS management along with other EMC products, common look and feel, and improved ease of use). 

That’s exactly right.  

What we’re doing is spending a lot of effort that let’s us get leverage from our strength (breadth of capability) while simplifying things down (by unifying all management) without forcing all the engineering teams to turn into a monolithic monstrosity where we are gated by a single engineering thread, a single kernel.

It’s paying off, and we’re accelerating….

Here’s just one of the demos we’re doing at VMworld this week of the VSI 4.0 model (there’s a lot more in there, including one doozy I’m keeping as a bit of secret :-) – will be a nice Q4 present for EMC customers (and will continue to be FREE!)

You can download this demo in high resolution WMV format.

What else would you like to see in VSI 4.0?

Comments

[Dominic Rivera]

I'd like to see some integration with PP/VE, right now the monitoring tools around PP/VE ( for vSphere admins ) are to put it lightly "lacking". I'd also like to see the licensing for PP/VE to move into the vSphere realm where I import my licenses through the vSphere licensing mechanisms and not have to manage a VM just for PP/VE licensing.

[daniel]

Hi Chad,

I'd like to see an integration of the clariion Mirror View configuration features to ease the complexity of setting up all the requirements for an automated fail over using SRM. Today it's a very complex procedure to prepare the storage to work with SRM smoothly. Would be fine to have some kind of wizard for the admin picking the options to set up mirrors, consistency groups, storage snaps and affiliation to the right storage groups for the mirrors. We have some ideas on that since we went to a planned fail over and fail "back" with more than 100 production VMs. There was a lot of handiwork to do to make this running fine. Would be fine to share these thoughts with you...

[Chad Sakac]

@daniel - have you looked at MirrorView Insight for VMware - DOES EXACTLY that (you can search VirtualGeek for it, or just google it). Checking to see on vSphere 4.1/SMR 4.1 support.

Thanks for being a customer!

[daniel]

Do you have an idea when we might see MirrorView Insight for VMware support for vSphere 4.1/SRM 4.1?