So No DMX5

I'm on leave this week, so I'm not going to post a whole deal on this but I actually thought that this announcement was important enough to sit through the video presentation just to see what EMC were going to publically  announce.

So there it is revealed, there is no new DMX! There you go! I told you that there wouldn't be!

I've known a little about about the V-MAX (that's a cool name, pity it sounds like a console) for nearly a year now; I responded to a post on Chuck's blog with a list of things I wanted from an array; Chuck didn't put the post up and just said that they were working on making my desires a reality.

I really wanted Automated Storage Tiering to simplify storage and it looks like EMC have delivered it. The devil will be in the details though but this is the start of something which will have industry wide implications. Automation on the scale that I believe will eventually happen will change the role of the storage management team for ever.

I've spoken before about the ability to federate arrays; I actually look at what much that has been done both by IBM and HDS as moving towards this. EMC have delivered the ability to federate their arrays; pity it can't do third party but hey…this is EMC we're talking about! Technology refreshes and data-migrations will become a breeze!

Building on top of industry standard hardware, this is just plain common sense. Going down the Intel route, just makes sense as part of cost reduction and common components.

Management tools will need to change as part of all this, I'm expecting a refresh of the management suite at some point. Who knows, we might get the long promised re-write of Control Center, I'm not holding my breath though! I might go as blue as the flashy lights on the front of the new V-MAX.

I don't know a whole lot about the details but I know that there have been arrays out in the field for a bit. I don't have one before you ask! And of course, I can't tell you who else I have had very similar conversations with about what they might be doing. Life is going to get interesting.

I am frankly very impressed that EMC taken such a leap. Congratulations one and all!!

Oh yes, I forgot to ask….how much is this all going to cost us?

And yes, I don't for one moment believe that the V-MAX will not replace the existing DMX4 unless we are going to see a DMX5 in the future? Now EMC have surprised us once but a DMX5…not a chance! Actually, I think questions have to be asked about the future of all of the other EMC disk-lines; just think about it!

Damn, this is a longer post than I intended! Oh well, back to the DIY!