Virtual Geek

Want a peek behind the curtain?

OK – background here… EMC Sales Kickoff 2011.   At HQ, we knew we had a killer 2010 (which is now public) – with growth everywhere.   HQ wanted to say “THANK YOU” to the field at large, and our leadership team came up with this idea. 

Literally days later, the whole thing is setup, and the office (including manufacturing) are all “glee’d” up for a crazy synchronized video extravaganza.   And now, through lots of strange convolutions, here it is for the outside world to see (never actually intended, but I was “this thing is awesome”)

for folks that know the “who’s who” – you can see pretty well the whole company there – and there are plenty of insider jokes – but regardless it’s something anyone will love to watch.

For what it’s worth – there’s a lot of talk about culture.  This is the EMC culture I know.   We are far, far from perfect.  There are good days and bad,  we work our tails off for the customer.  But on the whole, it’s the best place I’ve been.

With that – my own THANK YOU to my vSpecialist team and my respected EMC colleagues (in sales and everywhere) – it was a great 2010!   And now, onwards and upwards to take more share in 2011!

VMware PEX – time running out….

Folks – if you haven’t registered yet, and you’re a VMware, EMC or Cisco partner – you’re going to miss out.

Working furiously on the EMC boot camp (Tuesday, starts at 9am) and I hope to make it epic.  In my section I’ll be:

1. Challenging myself to a Pecca Kucha presentation (look it up – this will be a gas)
2. Explaining where you can expect to see VMware and EMC go to market together in 2011, why, and if you’re a partner, how to get leverage from that.
3. Doing an open-kimono around the products, and what’s next – in open transparent ways that make some uncomfortable.  I’m pushing the engineering teams to bend the rules left and right.   This will require a “no competitors” policy in that section – SORRY.
4. Taking any and all questions you want to ask – along with absolutely any feedback of any kind.

We’ll also have details on all sorts of programs, products, and tools for our VMware/EMC partners.  

We’re rolling in the VMware/EMC Hands-on-lab, where you’ll be able to play with all the tech yourself… (always super popular!).   We’re trying to pull off a high-risk demo that will probably fail :-)

I’ll also note that VMware has announced major products to VMware partners-only at EVERY PEX I’ve been to.

Join us! 

Here’s the Registration link (you can select EMC Boot Camp once you register for the conference)

Here’s the EMC Boot Camp agenda….

EMC Boot Camp Tuesday February 8th
9:00 – 9:15	Welcome	Jason Romsey
9:15 – 10:15	Keynote Being a Cool and Profitable EMC and VMware Partner: Technology Tools, Toys and Roadmap	Chad Sakac VP, VMware Technical Alliance
10:15 – 10:45	New VNX Family Unified Storage Platforms	Eric Herzog
10:45 – 11:00	Next Generation Backup & Recovery Solutions	Steve Flynn
11:00 – 11:15	Break
11: 15 – 12:15	60 VMware Integrations in 60 Minutes	Dave Henry
12:15 – 12:30	Enhanced Velocity Partner Program	Dave Kurtzer
12:30 – 1:30	Lunch
1:30 – 2:00	Selling EMC to SMB – Now’s the Time!	Jason Romsey
2:00 – 2:30	How Do We “Secure the Cloud?”	Tim Shea
2:30– 3:00	Virtualizing Mission Critical Applications: From Oracle to Microsoft to Desktop	Aaron Chaisson
3:00 – 3:30	Accelerate the Virtualization Journey through Backup Redesign	Phil George
3:30– 3:45	Break
3:45 – 4:15	Show Them What We’ve Got: Demos, Tools, and Tips!	Scott Baker
4:15 – 4:45	Go To Market Investment: Awareness, Demand and Incentives	Jack Salerno
4:45 – 5:00	Wrap Up	Linda Connly

A great week–with some good, bad

• GOOD: Was a great week out in Barcelona  with the EMC vSpecialist EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) crew during our 2011 kickoff.   I’m honored to be part of the team, and a spiritual leader :-)
• GOOD: Another good thing was I got to play with Isilon more this week.  I’ve seen a lot of “simple” in storage land (from EMC and much from outside EMC), but this thing is easy like nobodies’ business.   Boot node.  Assign IP pool.   Add nodes to cluster as needed. Done.  Wow.   Need to push to get the VM out there.  Heading out to Seattle next week to help work to accelerate their VMware integration.
• GOOD: Some great time in the lab with future VMware and EMC products.   So satisfying to see things coming together.
• GOOD: We announced EMC and VMware’s Q4 and year-ending results.   It’s always a relief because as an exec focused on both, I see this stuff all well before hand, but need to keep absolutely quiet about it.  When it’s public, it’s always a relief.   Both EMC and VMware awesome – exceeding the street expectations (VMware did note that while there was going to be continued growth, their margins were going to be flat as they continue to invest in engineering/emerging market sales – which some people took negatively, but I think is dead right strategically).   Most importantly – continued growth means we’re doing the right things by our customers, which is ultimately the most important thing.
• BAD: needed to deal with some silly competitive stuff.   This “competitive list stuff” I see all the time both EMC and VCE as targets, and gets fwded around like mad (I’m sure we do the same thing – not claiming to be innocent here).  It appeals to everyone’s desire for “silver bullets” – but man, it’s about so much more than that.   The “bullet lists” I see are so trivial, so stupid, and always so wrong (in part or in whole), that I can’t help but think that everyone is best served by playing their own game as well as possible.  I’m starting to think I’m naïve on this point.   I’m not even going to point at the blog post in the hopes of not fanning the flames.

But – in the words of Gandhi – “be the change you want to see in the world”.

In the spirit of the BOTH the good and the bad, here’s a picture from the Barcelona (which is REALLY a beautiful palace) trip.  

Story: Fred Nix (@VCEMonk on twitter, and also in the shot below to the left) decides he wants to spontaneously add some “positive energy” to the world – writes up this “free hugs” sign in spanish, and walks out to La Rambla (a famous pedestrian promenade) and starts holding it.  

The first few people look at him all askance, but a few come over and give him a hug.   Bit by bit more people do it, and then the vSpecialist team (me included) comes out and joins him. 

Next thing you know, there’s a hug fest going on between total strangers.   Some of the best hugs/responses come from the people you would least expect – nice old ladies, homeless dudes, little kids.    We went out for dinner all smiling, and realized that yeah, it was a bit of positive energy, and we got as much as we gave (in fact, it was net positive to the universe – in spite freaking some people out).

So – to the competitive “checklist makers”, as well as to anyone – friends, colleagues, family – I’m always open for a free hug :-)

Native, Open Intel FCoE Software stack = game changer (IMO)

So, personally, I think this is a big deal.

I’m on record saying – hey, I think NAS + iSCSI (and post-facto, I’ll add Object storage as I’ve become wiser, though still learning) will “win” long term (note that “win” doesn’t mean exclusively).  

BTW – if you want to see the dialog/wager, you can read it here.   One way or another, someone’s getting a nice bottle of wine!  But.. Over the last couple years, I’ve learned a lot…

Interesting stats on FC storage target FC vs. Ethernet storage targets per year.  Thank goodness EMC is an IP storage leader, that graph isn’t looking good for FC in 2009, and I bet 2010 didn’t fare better :-)  

Our growth in the midrange, backup and other spaces is almost all in Ethernet-connected storage (see the Q4 FY’10 results – which were very good here).

I’ve come, over time, to understand Chuck’s perspective more clearly – and that expanded understanding is one of the reasons I think the the native FCoE software stack form intel is a big deal. 

At the time of the debate, I was coming from the commercial (mid-sized customer) side of EMC where I came in via acquisition of a company that had a long history with iSCSI targets, and software initiators (so I certainly had a bias). 

In that commercial market, customers have little to no existing FC infrastructure, iSCSI is a natural shared block storage choice (always coupled with NAS).  

Conversely, over the last few year, I’ve meet customers with thousands of existing FC ports they are happy with, and there, it’s a different story altogether – they have considered iSCSI completely, and rejected it almost absolutely.   As is often the case, perspective matters a lot.

As an aside, that Chuck/Chad public debate is a bit of an interesting archeological artifact.  You can see CLEAR evidence of Chuck dragging me kicking and screaming to blog. 

While I still think you’re wrong on this Chuck (iSCSI will win over FCoE by port/target count, revenue, various measures) – I respect that you’re right on another note – for a large existing FC shop, there’s little of interest in iSCSI, and they need to have a good evolutionary path to a converged 10GbE Ethernet network.

BUT – that’s why today’s announcement is a big deal.   FCoE’s strength is that it enables convergence for that huge install base of FC customers.   There’s a consideration when you’re buying a new host about whether you want a converged adapter.   Where this becomes a no-brainer is “what if iSCSI/FCoE/NAS/LAN” is just part of the NIC (particularly if it’s LOM)?   And what if the acquisition price is way lower than having separate Storage/Network infrastructure?

So – whammo, today Intel formally announces what the X520 software FCoE initiator.  It looks like this:

The x520 is one of the most robust, more popular 10GbE adapters in it’s own right.  You can also get it in the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Controller family, which may be embedded on your server MB.

EMC and Intel are VERY close partners.   Since everything we ship as a product runs on Intel (we are fully invested into x86 as the winning wager over custom ASICs and other hardware), and we ourselves use their tech for much of our 10GbE stuff – it’s no surprise that these Intel software initiators are fully supported by EMC and on the E-Lab Matrix with our VNX (and previous generation) Native FCoE (and frankly all FC) targets DAY ONE.

You want iSCSI?  Great.  You want FCoE?  Great.  You want NAS?  Great.  You want object storage?  You want it all over 10GbE as part of your converged network strategy?  Great – I’m glad that EMC and Intel can help you.

Long and short – this is a big milestone into making the “what protocol do I use” a “100% moot point” at this point – the debate is over, Ethernet has won, and the only question is are you running FCoE, iSCSI, NAS, Object, or any combination thereof.

If THIS is the debate you’re having (“no it’s FC!  No, it’s Ethernet!”), or someone is trying to start that debate with you – with some caveats, I’d suggest you’re talking to the wrong people.

BTW – I’m checking in to see when this will appear on the VMware HCL.  Stay tuned for that update.

Chad’s World–Episode #2 (VNXe and VNX)

Folks – Episode #2 of Chad’s World is now posted, click on the link below to watch.   Wade and I intentionally ham it up.  Yes, there’s some frommage – but we’re trying to make it punchy and fun, and there’s some awesome stuff in this one.

A thank you to Jonathan Holmes from FIS Heathcare Solutions, who was our guest on this episode, and also THANK YOU for being a VMware/EMC customer!

If you’re a VMware/EMC customer interested in attending the next taping, we’re getting ready to record the next few episodes at the end of Feb.  It’s a fun experience (the whole crew/taping thing), and the other upside is that part and parcel, you get a full NDA briefing (and see stuff before anyone else does!).   Just comment on any Chad’s World post.

A couple episode notes (as we recorded it before the mega-launch).

• The VNXe 3300 shows the 2.5” disk enclosure.  To be explicit (it is noted in the video) these 2.5” enclosures are fully supported and available with the VNX, but will take a bit longer to be supported on the VNXe.  Rest assured, they will be supported soon enough.
• obviously the faceplates on the VNXe and VNX kit is missing, but I like that – I’m hardcore :-)

B-Roll gags and “Behind the Scenes”

Last post on the mega-launch, I promise :-)  

Heck, I’m glad to have it done…  But, wow – what an event, what technology, what execution.  My hats off to all those who pulled it off.

I wanted to post some funny “B-roll” gags that didn’t make the cut, and also some “behind the scenes” (including the motorcycle jump).    There’s a lot of cool stuff, it would be a shame if they never saw the broad light of day…

Without further ado, here they are – read on….

VNXe = incredible things.. in tiny, transformer-like packages!

What’s the VNXe scoop in a nutshell?

• VNXe was code-named “Neo”.   IMO - an apt name (read in the details to see why)
• VNXe fits all the goodness of EMC’s Unified VNX family into a smaller, even simpler, even more affordable package.
• When we say affordable, we’re not kidding.   The MSRP is $9499.   For this class of storage (feature rich, unified block and NAS, and expandable to 96 and 120 SAS spindles), that’s a GREAT deal - 20% less expensive than it’s competitors – some of which are block only, some unified (we compare the smaller VNXe 3100 to the HP P2000i, IBM DS3512i, Dell MD3200i, NetApp FAS2020)
• VNXe uses a completely homegrown EMC innovation (C4LX and CSX) to virtualize, encapsulate whole kernels and other multiple high performance storage services into a tight, integrated package.   We call the process of prepare the storage services for integration “refactoring”.  This is hands down, one of the coolest things I’ve seen.   Hint – there’s a lot more getting ready to get “refactored” to be integrated into the VNXe and VNX family over time.
• It uses shares features/functions with the larger VNX family (it is running the same software, “refactored”), including Unisphere, which is drawing a lot of very positive feedback, including a “one click” online support experience.   
• We made Unisphere on the VNXe even MORE easy, and integrate it with a set of storage use cases very common for the SMB customer – Microsoft Exchange, VMware, Hyper-V.
• Software bundles (like the VNX) for things like snapshots, replication and others have been simplified into 3 software packs.
• You can even leverage EMC Replication Manager for application-integrated local and remote replicas.

What’s important for partners (on top of the list above which customers care about, partners have other things they find important too)

• get trained, able to sell and service in 3 days – for free.
• best of breed program and overall profitability.
• dramatically simplified “ease of doing business” with all the associated systems and process stuff that implies.

In my personal opinion, VNXe is the coolest of the cool things we’re launching today… sometimes it’s cool to be small :-)

Read on for more, including demos and details…

Mega, Giga, Ultra, Uber launch!!!!

That’s right.   Today is the biggest storage event – ever.  

(if you’re reading this, and aren’t watching it on simulcast, something is wrong with you :-)

if you go to www.emc.com – you’ll see details, and get on…

We aren’t shy at this launch – and didn’t do it in a small way (watch the short video to get the highlights, and dive into the sub posts to get all the details – technical, videos, demos and more).   As the leader in shared storage, we wanted to dial this up to 12 :-)

We broke a series of storage records, and for fun – Breaking several Guinness world records linked to the themes of the products. 

Put one way – it really reinforces the fact that EMC is NOT the “if we don’t have what you want, then you don’t need it” company… And that we have a lot of fun :-)

For more behind the scenes, read on…

 

These product launches are a reflection of 5 very distinct themes I see occurring in the storage industry:

1. The incredible growth in SMB and smaller enterprises – who need simplicity, incredible capabilities, in small, low-cost packages, and who primarily purchase through channels.  This is what the VNXe is all about.
2. Meeting ever-changing “mainstream” storage needs – these are “swiss army knife platforms”.   We’re delivering our next generation unified storage platform which delivers 3x more performance, 3x more efficiency, and 3x simplicity.   This is what the VNX is all about.
3. The fact that the customers using the most powerful, most trusted platform VMAX now, via a software upgrade can make it even smarter (FAST VP, Federation, more performance and more).  This is what the VMAX updates are all about.
4. The growing need for “tactical nuke” storage – these are things to meet needs that can’t be met with swiss army knife architectures.  They demand scale-out solutions like nothing else out there.    That’s what Isilon and Atmos are all about.
5. The need for backup solutions that can protect it all – and deal with the very basic fact that when it comes to backup – speed REALLY matters.  There are only 24 hours in a day, but the volume of data isn’t slowing down.   That’s what the Data Domain updates are all about.

I’m going to cover each of these in detail, but I want to explore one idea before going into that detail.  Read on if you’re interested…

VNX = the worlds biggest, most bad a$$, swiss-army knife storage.

 

And by the title of the post, you know my blog posts aren’t ever approved by anyone :-)

Putting it into basic terms… VNX = 3x MORE EFFICIENT, 3x FASTER, 3x SIMPLER

What’s the VNX scoop in a nutshell?

• VNX was code-named “Culham”.   It’s a small village in the UK, but that small village also hosts one of the world’s leading fusion R&D centers that hosts The Joint European Torus.  It’s the largest and most powerful tokamak currently operating… Fusion + “Most Powerful” = VNX.  Hence the codename :-)
• VNX is EMC’s next-generation midrange storage platform – designed to do everything but deal with the kitchen sink, but in a way that’s simple, efficient, powerful, and affordable.
• VNX is a unified platform – every protocol under the sun  - Block and NAS (including MPFS and pNFS), but also Object storage.  While there is a block-only variant (VNX5100), this is mostly for specific OEM-type applications.   CLARiiON and Celerra aren’t end-of-life, but from now onwards, everything in the EMC midrange is unified.  Period.
• When we say 3x more performance, we’re not kidding.  
  • There’s distinct method to our madness.   Updates in EMC platforms generally tick-tock between “major software-only releases” and “hardware to fully leverage the new software”.   This helps us make sure that quality stays high, and we don’t change too much in one window.   SO – the innovations around FAST Cache, FAST, Compression, NAS Dedupe that came in FLARE 30 and DART 6.0 were built to leverage the fact that we new that the VNX would scale (at the upper end) to a platform that could have 120 Westmere cores and 240GB of memory servicing IO, and end to end PCIe v2.0 (more detail below).   Yup, you read that right.   120 Westmere cores.  Yikes.
  • Record-setting bandwdith and IOps in a midrange array.  We’ve demonstrated that in real-world workloads, sustained rates of 7GBps (ergo 50+ Gbps) or more.   For comparison, the previous generation (which was already good) was around 2GBps.   Do do this requires hardware (end to end PCIe 2.0, 6GB SAS backends, huge Ultraflex IO module density including 10GbE and FCoE).   BUT all that hardware, without the massive investments made in the software stack, there’s no way we would be able to use all that juice.  
  • And yes, in case you’re wondering, there are many benchmarks ready to go to prove it all – us vs. our own n-1 gen and us vs. the competition.
• People who claim VNX is a hardware rev without software changes, well… they don’t know what they are talking about :-)  VNX includes updates to software in a big way – some under the covers, much visible to the users.  Unisphere has been getting rave reviews (and is the tip of a big iceberg of innovation I talked about in the VNXe blog post), and it’s further improved in VNX (more detail below).   There’s other critical stuff in the heart of it too from a software standpoint.  As an example, in the previous software package, FAST Cache worked on block and NAS, but FAST was only supported on NAS.  This capability has been converged. 
• Software bundles just like with the VNXe simplify everthing.  Things like snapshots, replication and others have been simplified into 3 software packs.

In my personal opinion, if VNXe is the coolest thing we’re launching today, VNX is the most bad a$$.

Read on for more, including demos and details…

VMAX – Powerful, Trusted, and now even SMARTER

Enginuity is at the heart of the storage platform that powers more mission-critical apps than anyone else.   Enginuity 5875 adds more than I could believe when I first started to look at it many moons ago, and according to Symm engineering is one of the biggest Symm releases ever.

Imagine:

1. If I told you “I’m going to give you a software release would DOUBLE your performance for bandwidth-centric, large block workloads!”  That’s pretty killer, eh? 
2. What if that release added the best, most scalable, the highest performance, and the most granular fully-automated storage tiering model… and that capability meant you could do 40% more work, for a cost that is 40% lower?
3. What if it delivered a KILLER VAAI implementation – hey, Merry Christmas!  EMC now has VAAI support in the midrange and the high end enterprise arrays.  I **think** this makes us the only vendor with VAAI support across the midrange and the Enterprise storage market.
4. What if it added scalable data at rest encryption and embedded key management – and that capability had ZERO impact on performance?
5. What if that same release enabled something that – as far as I know is a completely new innovation in storage land – the ability to federate storage from one array to another – live, without sticking something in the middle?   I know my readers are more VMware-centric often than storage-centric.   The analogy is that you can “storage vmotion” from one array to another, but in a way that is much faster, and can operate across many different host types.  It can do this without adding any “virtualizer” in the front.   

That last one (Federated Live Migration = FLM) is an interesting one.   If you think about it, the storage protocols that exist are all about a host talking to an array and vice-versa.  It’s weird that no one thought to add to the standards the ability for an array to talk to another.   That’s the core innovation involved.  While replication of the data between arrays has always been there, the final cut-over was always the tricky bit, and involved downtime.

FLM has one array communicate with another and take over the “persona” (all the identifiers) of a storage device.   Pretty darn cool :-) 

While at first it’s for DMX to VMAX (and VMAX to VMAX), the idea of storage federation will become a universal EMC thing over time.   We’re also taking the idea to the standards bodies to try to see if we could get the other storage vendors to make it something that the industry as a whole picks up on (which would be really cool).

oh hey, we threw in a nice bonus – it will do a zero reclaim as part of the process, saving you a pile of $$$ :-)

That list of 5 items is a MASSIVE release.  That – plus a TON of other features (seriously!) is what was released.

In my personal opinion, if VNXe is the coolest thing we’re launching today, the VMAX updates are going to have our existing customers dancing in the street the most.

Oh, and Brian – that bit in the mega-launch with the MAX 2011 was… priceless :-)

Later, I’ll also post details and behind the scenes on the mega-virtual storage jump – that was AWESOME :-)

There are some great blog posts that cover this immense release in more detail.

Barry Burke has a post that covers the items above (and many, many other awesome features) in detail here: http://thestorageanarchist.typepad.com/weblog/2011/01/3017-vmax-2011-edition-powerful-trusted-smartest.html 

Chuck Hollis did a post on the topic here: http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2011/01/symmetrix-vmax-gets-even-smarter.html

The always awesome Itzik Reich did a great one here: http://itzikr.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/emc-symmetrix-vmax-enginuity-5875-fast-vp-vaai-making-the-best-array-even-better

Would love feedback!