I’m currently visiting the Boston area because I’m attending EMC World. One of the bigger introductions made here yesterday was actually a new appliance called the VPLEX. In short, the VPLEX is all about virtualizing the access to your block based storage.
Let me give you a quick overview of what I mean with virtualized access to block based storage. With VPLEX, you can take (almost) any block based storage device on a local and remote site, and allow active read and writes on both sides. It’s an active/active setup that allows you to access any storage device via any port when you need to.
You can get two versions right now, the VPLEX local and the VPLEX Metro. Two other version, the VPLEX Geo and the VPLEX Global are planned for early next year. And since there is so much information that can be found online about the VPLEX, I figured I’d create a post here that will help me find the links when I return, and to also give you a one spot that can help you find the info you need.
An overview with links to more information on the EMC VPLEX:
Official links / EMC company bloggers / VMware company bloggers
- emc.com – press release
- Chad Sakac / virtualgeek – “Your Virtual Machine Teleporter is ready… Are you?”
- Barry Burke / The storage anarchist – 3.003: to boldly go
- Steve Todd / Information Playground – VPLEX Quality
- Mark Twomey / Storagezilla – This is VPLEX
- Stuart Miniman / Blog Stu – VPLEX: Redefining the Boundaries of the Data Center
- Chuck Hollis / Chuck’s blog – VPLEX: The Birth Of A New Storage Platform
- Scott Lowe – EMC VPLEX Launches Today
- Christopher Kusek – EMC and AOL use VPLEX to reduce complexity in migrations, eliminating downtime!
Blogs and media coverage:
- StorageIO – EMC VPLEX: Virtual Storage Redefined or Respun?
- Storagebod – V(per)PLEXed?
- Storagebod – New Device or Future Array?
- Gestalt IT – EMC Shouts VPLEX In A Crowded EMCWorld
- SearchStorage – NetApp replies to EMC’s VPlex announcement at EMC World
- TechNewsWorld – EMC’s Vplex Puts Data on the Bullet Train
- About Restore – Pondering VPLEX and backup
- Compellent – Comparing Compellent Live Volume and EMC’s VPLEX
- StorageRap – VPLEX undressed
- The Storage Architect – Enterprise Computing: VPLEX – A Dreary Storage Cluster?
- Computerworld – EMC users voice mixed feelings about VPLEX appliance
- Cinectica – Just another V-(per)Plex(ed) post
- Wikibon – EMC announces Federated Storage Vision with VPLEX
Now, if I missed one or more links, please just send me a tweet or leave a comment and I will make sure that the link is added to this post.
BasRaayman's Technical Take 
Martin – it’s too bad you mseisd EMC World, as much of what you ask for was actually discussed. I did a session on array-based federation, for example, that outlined the path for seamless tech refresh migrations: first from DMX’s, then CX’s, and then (hopefully) via a new standard for LUN presentation.And your point about cross-platform consistency is well said…and the development teams ARE making progress. Consistent SMI-S support across platforms and the new Virtual Storage Integrator are two examples where we present a single tool/interface that supports all of our products.‘Tis a journey, though, and not a destination. There will always be more that we need to do. And as ‘Zilla said, it will be the customers who will untimately make the decision to merge or sunset product lines.Until then, EMC spends more money and invests more people in EACH of our product lines than do ANY of our competitors in each market…you call for convergence, while we seek “integrated innovation” to drive each product to be #1 in its segment.
Dave Floyer of Wikibon wrote a comprehensive analysis on VPLEX via Wikibon – please take a look if you have time: http://bit.ly/a0ZqNh
Thank you for your interest!
Thanks for letting me know good folks of Wikibon. I just added the link.
You forgot the part about all that while coiuintnng to add new features and pricing the products at $0.I just want a clear list of asks Martin. ;-pThere are more than a few heterogeneous tools in the portfolio which will allow you to transition between Symmetrix and CX but were I to pick just one I’d choose RecoverPoint as it’s something which people are using to do that test-dev to production aspect today and it will probably support VPLEX at some stage now that’s off to the races.Lanaguage and definition is already happening specific terminology has already started to be deprecated. As I stated in my post the Pool model is the model going forward and that doesn’t deal with a lot of the previous concepts.Unisphere is the midrange User Experience. I wouldn’t foresee that encapsulating Symmetrix anytime soon as it’s focused on the Unified Storage segment and doesn’t have to deal with Mainframe concepts and the like.SubLUN FAST will work in the same fashion across all supported platforms the way Virtual Provisioning does today, and recall that started out on Celerra in 2006, but the implementations will differ to account for specific requirements and system configurations for those market segments.For systems with smaller caches you have to take into account metadata overhead Vs the extent sizes and the like.I don’t think anyone wants to develop a system which is mediocre at many things.