EMC Unified Storage – Next Generation Simplicity

So – the other big news today (beyond the awesome new vCenter plugins, the awesome new storage efficiency capabilities (FAST Cache, FAST, Compression), perhaps the biggest for our customers is the announcement of Unisphere.

Unisphere merges management of EMC’s SAN and across the full spectrum of our midrange family (which start down in the SMB band, and go up to the highest scale before you hit the class of arrays generally defined as “enterprise” arrays which have other characteristics).  It also covers Recoverpoint management.

All in a single pane of glass.

The other thing that’s important is that Unipshere has been written from the ground up on a couple of principles:

1. Simplicity is paramount
2. Ditch legacy UI models which were multi-platform sure – but were slow, and dated.
3. Make it totally customizable – from the dashboard to the details.
4. Make it contextual – show them hardware errors in context.  take them to powerlink and support forums, in context, etc…
5. Make it extensible, so we use it across the spectrum of EMC products – not just the storage platforms themselves.

Like all user interfaces, rather than have me explain it – it’s best to see it.   This is the demonstration we gave.

(shout out to Bob Abraham – the man behind the demo) Download the high-rez versions here: WMV and MOV

Some interesting things in this:

• UPDATE (6/2/2010 – just being more explicit) The use increased use of Flex as the platform for UI nicely aligns with VMware’s longer term UI direction – and makes for a fast, more lightweight, but still rich user experience.
• Note that you can use this without any software on the host (Java is used just to get you the Flex environment if you do this more accurately over time, less and less Java), or you can run it on a windows host as a thick client (even faster).
• We’ve enhanced the vCenter API integration that we introduced in FLARE29.  Does anyone else do this in their storage management UI today?  Note - I’m not talking about vCenter plugins – that’s “management for the VMware admin in their context”, I’m talking about vCenter API integration in the array element management tool itself.  Just curious.
• Take a look at the EMC Ionix UIM v2.0 demo.   Take a look at the EMC VPLEX demo.  Take a look at the latest version of SMC.  Do you notice something?   Common look, feel, and function across EMC.  Customers have been asking for more “cross EMC” integration in terms of UI and features – and you can see our progress here.  Not easy, has been 2 years of work – and still more to do.

All that will be GA in Q3, and available at no cost to customers using CX4 and current generation Celerra customers.

It was previously a fair jab to say “hey, you manage NAS and SAN differently on EMC’s unified platform” (The EMC Celerra) – though, I would point out that people should avoid throwing stones while living in glass houses :-)

It’s worth reiterating something – if you are using an EMC Celerra which offers iSCSI/FC/NAS – using every connectivity type available on the market (you can use FCoE today with Native FCoE connectivity close) you’ve gone from left to right in the picture below.

Not only a single pane of glass – but a simple, fast, elegant, customizable one..

We also showed a couple “forward looking things”

• The demonstration not only shows unification of the management of EMC’s SAN and NAS platforms – it shows how this UI will be used to integrated Recoverpoint as well.   Recoverpoint integration will be with Unisphere 1.0 (Q3), but over the year, Unisphere will also integrate EMC Replication Manager, EMC PowerPath and EMC Data Protection advisor.
• I want to call out one thing also for partners… This UI has the framework to enable in partners to even better help their customers.  More to come on that front over time.
• that we’re going to introduce not only “manage from the app” (like we have via vCenter plugin integration), but also all “manage to the app” directly in context (ergo create storage for Exchange, SQL Server, Sharepoint use cases – or VMware directly in the Unisphere context).

I’ve been using it for a while – and love it.   Wondering what you think? 

Comments

[Fabiorapposelli]

So you're following Compellent in their footsteps :-) after the Automated tiered storage the new Unisphere looks very similar to their Enterprise Manager.

[jim kunysz]

how about granularized security? I would need to limit specific users to specific tasks on specific arrays. Will that be addressed?

[CC]

Too bad we can't get it now. *wink,wink ... nudge :)*

[Jonas Irwin]

Chad - so awesome to see all the work of the last 3 years coming to fruition!

[[email protected]]

where can I download this unisphere for testing? thanks

[Andy Ormsby]

Hi - the link to the high def Quicktime recording doesn't work - I get "permission denied" :-(

[Chad Sakac]

@Fabiorapposelli - I don't know much about Compellent, don't see them too much. If their UI is simple and easy to use - I'm glad we look simple and easy too! :-)

So, since I'm not an expert, do they have a vCenter plugin, support flash as a cache model, integrate their array element manager with vCenter APIs, support compression and deduplication of filesystem? Dense storage configs? Continuous replication? Is their ZFS based NAS integrated in the management UI?

Look, my point isn't that they are bad, but that ANY vendor that claims to be "leading the WAY!" is smoking something. Each of us innovates constantly in our own way. Sometimes various players (big, small, startups) are first, and that's great. If you're a startup, you have to use that narrow window to get big fast. Having tried a storage startup, that's pretty hard. The window of opportunity while your thing is unique is generally pretty short, and storage adoption curves are hard. For every EqualLogic, there are 4 Lefthands and 100 Allocity's (the startup I was part of).

How much time is left on Compellent's clock, and what's the exit strategy? I don't know, and I'm not saying their stuff isn't great - frankly, I'm not qualified to say. I am qualified to ask the question.

@CC - I hear you - it will be out very soon!

@Anthony - the beta is full, I'll do what I can with the beta manager, but at this point, it might be at GA (which is soon!)

@Andy Ormsby - thanks for the heads up - link is fixed now.

[Glenn Anders]

I sat in on a webex with EMC today where Unisphere was shown...but I have been having trouble finding anything except the marketing stuff. It is available yet? Will it be downloadable on Powerlink?

[Etep]

It would be cool if you could change the "skin" based on the target application or OS. For example a Storage Orc skin would list LUNs, Used by, Name, etc - alternatively a SQL Wizard skin would translate those columns to Database, Log, SQL Server, etc. An Exchange Ranger skin would show Storage Group, Logs, Database, Exchange Server, etc.

Simple field name change, but much better usability (AKA Allocity concepts) ;)