With the V-MAX architecture; EMC are now Intel across all of their hardware; well, they will be once the DMX is finally sunset. This is a necessary step for them to start unifying their storage ranges or at very least, it brings them much closer.
If you look at the way a V-MAX is managed; it is a lot closer conceptually to Clariion than a DMX; well, that's what I feel from my cursory look over. Yes, you can stick to the old ways if you so wish but if you really want to sweat the full potential of V-MAX, you are going to want to change.
I suspect that this first iteration is a transitional product; yes, you can continue to manage it in the same way as a DMX and continue to use those carefully crafted scripts but I really wonder for how long? And at some point those legacy features will become obsolete.
I wonder if there was real debate in EMC whether to break with the past or ensure that customers have a smooth transition.
Going down the Intel route and with all the horse-power which EMC now have available to them leads me to wonder if we are going to see a virtual Celerra which runs within the V-MAX? Perhaps a whole raft of virtualised storage-related appliances could run within the V-MAX itself? IBM had the ability to do this with the DS8K range and never did it but perhaps EMC will.
Also I think the adoption of Intel at EMC's high-end actually throws the long term future of Clariion into question as well. EMC are probably well on their way to unifying their block storage range; EMC have already said that we will see FAST in both DMX and Clariion, this will allow existing customers to transition to a new way of doing things.
But eventually EMC are probably aiming that both sets of customers will eventually transition to either V-MAX-Pro or V-MAX-Mini. I can't see EMC wanting to continue with two code-bases for longer than they have to.
So that's EMC big announcement out the way for the moment. I wonder what the rest of the year will bring? IBM are long overdue a refresh and HDS are probably due an announcement at the high-end. And NetApp will finally bring OnTap 8 to the market and I suspect some new high-end heads; NetApp, like EMC, do have some advantages on refreshing hardware, their boxes are built mostly out of commodity. And IBM's own storage is either a PC or a pSeries box; servers as storage controllers…it's the future I tell you! Or perhaps in EMC's case, storage controllers as servers!
Porsche and Volkswagen build from common components but you don’t see the Golf being replaced by the 911.
EMC will continue to have finely differentiated storage products across all price points. (Or it will soon as Iomega grows into the market under the AX/NX).
Clariion isn’t going anywhere.
They run on a common operating system tho’…Porsche may have more bells and whistles but at the heart, it’s still an infernal combustion engine. And you do at least interface with and control it in the same way. No reason why you shouldn’t continue with the Clariion brand but there’s no reason why the operating system should not eventually become the same thing or extremely similar.
Do EMC employ programmers simply to keep them off the streets? Is it a care in the community scheme? No one wants to maintain multiple code bases if they can avoid it. I can see a way that EMC could start to merge their code bases and save money.
Brand differentiaton is at times a good way for a company to end up competing with itself…it’s a very hard thing to manage when the various brands have overlapping functionality.
BTW, I never think the luxury brand vs everyday brand analogy works for storage. Everyone knows that you buy a Porsche to show how much money you’ve got; I’d suggest that buying a V-MAX to show how much money you’ve got is a good way to go bust!!
Plus the customers always right Mark….
Dan
It would be great to merge CX and DMX. We have some big data centers and some small sites. It doesn’t make sense to place a big DMX on the small sites and it dosn’t make sens to not use DMX in the data center. So we have one manufacturer that has already two different kinds of SAN storage (management and hardware). If we take in Celerra than we have a third kind of storage provider.
With NetApp there is only OnTap. Done.
Because of this it is far easier to sell NetApp to the upper management than EMC, because the management is always the same. Only the size is different.
It would be easier for the host guys, too. A DMX has to be integrated in a different way than a CX.
So a all in one managment interface would be a big step forward. Even more if you just have a VMax and a VMay-Mini.
* Less education
* Some modular parts instead of whole boxes that work in a completely different way
* Less R&D for own management scripts
The move to Intel hardware is long overdue. Commoditizing the hardware lowers costs, then the vendors can focus on what truely differentiates their respective products: the software. It’ll be interesting to see where that goes with EMC. The Clariions are Intel running on Windows Xp embedded. The Symmetrix has been ported to Intel, but no word yet on what OS Enginuity was ported to. The Celerra runs Dart, a sort of Unixy homebrew thing with a custom SMB stack. EMC certainly has a long way to go before they can possible be considered unified. All aside, I won’t detract of this moment of hardware achievemnt in all it’s glory (despite the lack of applicablity to the current market. Even I have to give EMC kudos on their hardware achivement.
John F.