Would a rose by any other name?… Brand and VMAX.

“Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” – man, that Shakespeare had a gift for words :-)

The idea of “Brand” has been obsessing me recently – not “company”, but rather “personal”, and not mine per se.   I’ve seen interesting (and normal) conversations where people are considered/rejected for roles based on their personal brand – all without them even knowing.   It’s made me think “what have these people done to create this ‘image’ that the people talking quantify so personally?”

You personal brand is the “shadow of you that is there when you are not, and creates echoes/impacts that reach farther than you ever can”, and has more impact on your effectiveness and career than I think people can possibly imagine.  

I strive hard to aim for “technologist, sincere/passionate, zero hidden agenda” as my brand, because it’s not only WHO I am, but also what I WANT to be.  This means avoiding politics and bureaucracy like the plague, and constantly editing myself from (natural) utterances that might reflect as “politics” (yeeeach).  … And if I decide I **do** have an agenda, I will try to put it on the table right upfront.

Brand is important.

So… What is EMC’s brand?   

I’ve spent the last few months with a LOT of road time.   Over the last two weeks I’ve been fortunate to be in France, Italy, Germany, UK – and if you look only out a month and change further, all over the US (California, Denver, Chicago, NY, Massachusetts), Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand…   It’s a blessing to meet diverse customers, partners, and EMCers from around the globe (and improve my cultural and language skills along with my tech skills).  It’s not without sacrifice (I can feel myself aging + too many airplanes/timezones = you get sick, just trying to avoid ebola :-).  

All in all, I think in the last 30 days I’ve personally visited more than 80 different customers 1:1, and several hundred if you include group things.

I’ve started to ask as an opener in 1:1 dialog: “If I say ‘EMC’… quick, without thinking, what comes to mind?” (aka a brand test).

The answer is fascinatingly universal – regardless of country, culture, or local language:

“Storage”. “Big”. “Complex”. “Expensive”. “Reliable”.

This is the Symmetrix/VMAX brand reflecting into the overall EMC brand. 

Symmetrix is the brand that made EMC as a company, that led to the success, the people and the necessary resources to acquire DG, RSA, DataDomain, Isilon, XtremIO, VMware, create Pivotal and VCE, and build ViPR, Atmos.  

That “Symmetrix only” brand no longer reflects our singular reality.   It doesn’t capture us supporting use cases like Vatican Library (Atmos/ECS), Xbox Live (Isilon), HPC (VNX and ABBA); being the NAS leader; being the AFA market leader (XtremIO); having the largest commercial object stores that support consumer services we all use; and hyper-converged transactional stacks on commodity hardware (ScaleIO).   Of course beyond EMC – in the Federation, there is of course VMware (Virtualization SDDC), Pivotal (PaaS, Big/Fast Data, Analytics).

But there’s something interesting in there… In that Brand: “Reliable”.   When I “unpack” this word with people – it means a lot of things wrapped up in one word.   

I talked about how people haven’t been selecting “Enterprise” storage arrays for “performance only” workloads for a long time here and here.   I’ve been frank (and I hope consistent!) that for these workloads – AFAs can now be a better fit (and in that architectural category, I think XtremIO is awesome).

Soo… What do people mean when they say “Reliable”?

Stealing liberally from the awesome Matt Zwolenski (SE leader in Australia/New Zealand)… Stop for a second and think about what it would mean if RIGHT NOW, all the VMAXes around the world “fell over”:

• Trains/Automobiles/Planes wouldn’t run (VMAX underlies the most critical transportation systems around the globe)
• You couldn’t use your bank machine (VMAX underlies the most critical retail banking systems).
• Your credit card would stop working (VMAX underlies the most critical credit card)
• Trading would stop (VMAX underlies the critical banking systems around the world that clear all sorts of inter-bank and equity-trading systems).
• Your cell phone would stop being able to (VMAX underlies the most critical call detail record systems at the majority of the telcos around the world).
• The majority of hospitals using Epic, Cerner – or almost any critical healthcare system anywhere in the world would stop working.
• Governments would continue to debate (that doesn’t require anything but hot air), but they wouldn’t be able to take any taxes (yeah!) .. or to provide any services that use tax revenues (boo!)

… In other words, it would be the FREAKING ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.  Think “where did I leave my crossbow, generator and canned goods” kind of bad.

People use EMC VMAX for the things that matter the most – the things that hold up society.  This is partially system architecture (from deep NDU always, maniacal pride in data integrity over all other things, and of course data services like RDF) – but it’s also partially about the whole structure of our support model to sustain those use cases.   A recent example (just one!) from my road trip:

If you’re a citizen of Europe, and like to watch football (aka everyone) – and use the most pervasive broadcaster for those events - the systems and “Platform 2” application stacks that ensure the transactional side of that business works (aka - “this customer is entitled to watch this event”) run on VMAX.  

We looked at XtremIO when it was time to update, but the requirements for Synchronous RDF were such that XtremIO (nor ANY all-flash array) would be even close – and it wasn’t even too “extreme” a use case.  And on top of that – in this case, the data set was very unfriendly to both dedupe and compression – and VMAX flash was more dense and economical.

At that SAME customer, there are also really cool “Platform 3” encoding, streaming, broadcast flows that we also support – and the efficiencies they are getting from upgrading their VMAX (Platform 2) is helping them save so they can invest in their new stuff (Platform 3) using Openstack, ScaleIO, ViPR and more.  

Please add the following to the “list of things VMAX does to hold off the zombie apocalypse”: “helping ensure that we avoid an entire European Union is football-less”

The other thing that is interesting about a “brand” is that as it strengthens it becomes almost unassailable.  There’s simply too much systemic self-reinforcement at scale that new data struggles to make it in.

Consider the new VMAX3 for a moment.  If I told you that a “Symmetrix” did the following things – should it still be called a “VMAX” – it certainly would imply changes to some of the other words above (certainly “complex” wouldn’t apply):

• Yup, you can use industry standard racks.   Seriously.   And there is no “system” vs. “storage” bay.   And – you can intersperse them all over the datacenter with long distances.
• Eliminated complexity (ppl, the “rule of 9” was outdated a long time ago – but this is much more than that):
  • No more Hypers or Metas – just devices of a specified size (in GB, not Cylinders) of a specified Service Level Objective (say, “less than 1ms response time”).   This isn’t a “gloss over” – complex manual provisioning isn’t even an option.   WAIT.  WHAAAT? 
  • CPU/storage processor automated balancing between FC port services, disk services, and HyperMAX services.   No “FA/DA processor utilization” anymore folks.  One.  Big. Pool.   WHAAAT?
  • No more cylinders.   WHAAAT!
  • No more TDATs or Save Pools
  • Just “One Big array”, with 1, 2 or 3 pools of storage (flash, 10/15K, and SATA)
    SIMPLE – and only gets better re a self-service STaaS portal with ViPR
  • Built it for vVol – this platform will be vVol ready after VMworld ships (will talk more at VMworld)
• Fixed the 20,000 outstanding extent copy limits (have caused some XCOPY issues)
• Completed redefined backup models…
  • … By integrating natively letting an app-triggered app backup use an array snapshot and destage to a data domain target (this has gotten huge customer response)
• Oh – there’s more to come that is shocking to the “umm, that’s not a Symmetrix”:
  • Soon to be - Eliminated snapthot/clone overhead and complexity:
    • Instant Snaps, with ZERO overhead
    • Up to 256 per LUN today; 1024 within the year
    • Entirely pointer based, with NEAR ZERO metadata overhead (no more copy on write) – radical improvement to cache impact of replicas.
  • Soon to be - Native NAS on 10GbE front end ports.   Yup, no datamover needed.   This is but ONE use case of HyperMax’s ability to run data services and data transformation code (vs. general puporse apps) internally in a converged infrastructure fashion.
  • Soon to be - rearchitected LUN-level DARE (ergo it’s software, and leverages the existing hardware).
  • Soon to be -  No more gateway LUNs required for management.  WHAAAT!   You heard me.  Native direct API access over IP.

And, of course, there’s killer new hardware too:

The smallest new VMAX3, the VMAX 100K has 2TB of cache, and 48 Ivybridge Cores – and 64 x 16GBps front-end FC ports.   That’s a lot.

VMAX3 is the first platform to use the new 120 slots x 2.5 form factor 3U “Viking” enclosure (and we tend to use common hardware across the portfolio – expect to see more soon).  I think that “Voyager” (60 slots x 3.5 form factor in 4U) takes the current crown (anyone know otherwise?) in terms of capacity density ($/RU/W per TB), and I think “Viking” takes the “IOps density” crown (imagine that filled with 1.6TB SSDs!)

Talking about SSDs – while the “design center” of VNX and VMAX remains mixed workloads (some all-flash, some tiered) – it’s important to know that in fact, for workloads that are non-dedupable, I think the VMAX3 and the VNX2 may be the fastest (lowest latency) and lowest-cost ($/GB usable) platforms in the market.

Oh – one more thing :-)   Between the software (which is more important than new hardware – HyperMAX is the “MCX” of Enginuity) and the hardware (… still an awesome improvement, but only leveragable due to HyperMax changes) – the IOps per storage engine have gone up by about… 10x.   Yup, 10x.

Look – there’s no way to change that much without really changing some architectural fundamentals – and my hat’s off to the engineering team (thank you for all the blood sweat and tears – have me buy you a drink next time you see me!)

This ain’t some lipstick, or a minor a make-over.  VMAX3 is a new beast.

So – if it’s very new what makes the new VMAX3 share that VMAX brand and heritage?   After all – I would wager that if a startup were to build something this cool in this category, let you ONLY put flash in it, named it “ultraawesome AFA” – well it would be the second coming :-)

The answer is this – which is at the core of the brand and why customers pick VMAX: “Reliability”.    Does this mean other EMC stuff isn’t reliable?  Goodness no – but the design center of VMAX is in a different plane.

In fact, knowing that our customers treasure reliability, we’ve switched to a agile vs. waterfall style product release pattern, and targeting on NAILING the things people do first (core platform – the stuff noted above + open systems support), and will continually add things (the stuff noted as “soon to come” + mainframe support)

Look – we know it will take time for customers to adopt, we know it will continue to harden – but wow, a lot has changed.

Ultimately, is VMAX3 a VMAX?  YES.   It’s design center is Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability above all – that’s a VMAX hallmark.   It’s designed for broad ranges of workloads that expect the strongest infrastructure integrity,resilience, low latencies – that’s a VMAX hallmark.   And it starting at moderate going up to large scales.  

It’s a VMAX3, and it’s designed to KEEP holding off the zombie apocalypse! :-)

Are you a VMAX customer?   Are you happy?   Have you looked at the VMAX3 – and if so – what do you think?

Comments

[David Lapadula]

Chad,

Great points -- both on VMax enhancements and branding.

I also think 'first impression' impacts ALL types of 'branding' (personal, corporate and product). By that, I mean the first WIDESPREAD impression something/someone makes defines the 'compass direction' on how the brand will start and evolve. How much it is reinforced and maintained over time shapes how difficult it is to drastically change the brand (inertia), OR how easy it is to incrementally modify the brand view.

For example, my first impression of you was when you helped to get the PMA tool (which used Perfmon as input) out to our channel partners 6-7 years ago. Since then, you have been consistently reducing the presales 'air gap' with our channel partners [more tools in Mitrend, Backstage Pass training, Minors access...]. This proves that your brand ("technologist, sincere/passionate, zero hidden agenda") is both defined and reinforced through your actions and words.

For everyone, it is critical not only to put your best foot forward, but to CONTINUE to do so, and to stay true to both who you are and what you want your brand to be.

And I love helping to prevent a Zombie Apocalypse! :-)

[Mike B]

Chad, important to note that the "Voyager" 60-drive enclosure can't keep up with the 84-drive, 5u Dell SC280 enclosure in $/TB (at least at street pricing) or TB/RU (Dell gets 67.5TB/RU vs EMC at 60TB/RU).

EMC does do better at power consumption, using only 63% of the power for 72% of the capacity.

I don't think anything comes close to the "Viking" enclosure though, that's going to be an exciting item (especially if it has similar power efficiency and becomes an option for VNX owners as I have some RU-constrained scenarios).

[John]

I'm sure I'll know soon. But can you walk though some volume mgmt functions. Like extending drives. Rdf setups pairings etc?