VNX engineering update, and CX4/VAAI vSphere scoop

[UPDATED WITH SURVEY RESULTS]

Folks – did a webcast today (the weekly EMC/VMware Webcast – every Thursday, 11am ET/8pm PT) on the topics of:

• VNX FAST VP code deep dive (how this works depends on a shared chunk of code for virtualization/abstraction that is critical for FAST VP, hardware accelerated copy snapshots, thin, and other “redirection stuff” – aka dedupe) – which is critical to understanding a lot
• Deeper dive on the upcoming changes in the major software update that is around the corner (codenamed “Inyo”) to this and other stuff.   This impacts:
  • Changes to pooling enabling a Flash 1st policy, multi-RAID pools, new RAID configs
  • improvements to thin behaviour
  • new awesome snapshot stuff
  • Improved VAAI XCOPY on pooled devices, improved space reclaim

But – we also shone a light on something that’s giving people some heartburn.   My view, and the view of my colleagues at EMC is that transparency is best.   The topic?  The fact that EMC CX4 arrays are listed as not supported with VAAI with vSphere 5, but are listed as supported with vSphere 4, and VNX arrays are supported with VAAI on both.  What’s up with that?

It’s useful to look back at the previous webcast in the same vein of “Good/Bad/Ugly” updates (useful still  - though the APD stuff has been fixed) here: 3 Pieces of Bad News and a Deep Dive into APD - Virtual Geek.  

I’ll post the webcast recording link as soon as it’s up – but for now, here’s the full presentation I used.

[UPDATE: June 6th, 28th 2012 – here’s the recording]:

http://www.emc.com/event/102727.htm

The webcast uncovers the scoop on this bit of ugly, and it’s interesting.  The engineering trade-off here is real (on the VMware side, and the EMC side).  We’re REALLY hoping for customer input on this.   If you’re a customer, partner, EMCer – would love you to take this quick 5 minute survey for input on this issue.  EMC and VMware engineering will see it, but PLEASE listen to the webcast before responding – like most things, there’s a lot of color around this topic and it’s a tradeoff.

[UPDATE: 7/22/2012, 9:26pm] – here are the results of the survey – click to download.  I believe in transparency (and according to the survey, you do too).

Comments

[Shawky]

Tried to get the recording of VNX engineering update, and CX4/VAAI vSphere scoop, the link on @EMCcorp is not working, http://www.emc.com/event/102727.htm

can you help?!

[Shawky]

I found the event :)
http://www.emc.com/events/2012/q2/06-28-12-virtually-any-virtualization-topic.htm … one of the most interesting webcasts for me about VMware, VNX, and CLARiiON