EMC Redefine Possible Showcases New Flash Arrays, Storage Solutions

Storage virtualization juggernaut EMC (EMC) held its Redefine Possible event in London July 8, where The VAR Guy was treated to several new products and updates to EMC's existing XtremIO platform. In keeping with classic British sci-fi fashion, the Doctor Who-themed event featured numerous TARDIS-like police booths and references to England’s most popular doctor, as well as a healthy does of storage virtualization news and announcements. Ever a fan of the good doctor, The VAR Guy took in the news and kept his eyes open for any Daleks in the audience. Here's a rundown of the day's events.

EMC Information Infrastructure CEO David Goulden opened the media presentation by outlining some of the challenges facing IT in meeting storage requirements for their hybrid cloud arrays. Among these challenges, Goulden said dealing with existing workload growth, infrastructure application drag and performance-hungry workloads were the most prominent problems for end users. With today’s announcements, EMC is working to “redefine” what is possible with hybrid cloud storage by introducing several new products and solutions.

Next up, EMC’s President of Products and Marketing Jeremy Burton took the stage to outline each of the new announcements in detail. Before jumping in, Burton talked about the advantages of the XtremIO system over similar storage arrays and its level of success after being released earlier this year. According to Burton, the array has already garnered more than $100 million for EMC in less than six months, making it one the fastest growing all-flash arrays on the market.

EMC first announced the Starter X-Brick storage array and the addition of up to six X-Bricks for customers with heavier workloads. New XtremIO snapshots also are available with the new arrays, with EMC promising zero limitations on performance, features or capacity reservations due to the system’s in-memory metadata architecture.

EMC also is readying the release of the VMAX family—the industry’s first series of all-flash arrays with open enterprise data service platforms, according to the company—later this year. The three new models add the HYPERMAX OS open converged storage hypervisor and operating system and Dynamic Virtual Matrix architecture into the lineup.

HYPERMAX OS enables users to embed storage infrastructure services such as cloud access, data mobility and data protection directly to their arrays without having to save it remotely, according to the company. Burton noted the OS OS can help customers lower their total cost of ownership by up to 50 percent while reducing their physical footprint and energy needs.

The Dynamic Virtual Matrix, meanwhile, offers the ability to dynamically allocate processing power to meet distinctive service levels across their workloads, essentially allowing users to dictate which areas receive the most processing power.

EMC also announced it has acquired TwinStrata, which will enable the the company to deliver new embedded cloud access capabilities to customers with its cloud-tiering technology. Financial details of the acquisition were not provided.

Burton also offered information on the release of XtremIO 3.0, EMC’s newest free software code update to increase the efficiency of its existing all-flash arrays. The software adds in-memory, metadata space-efficient snapshots to create high-performance application copies while providing inline, always-on data compression, according to EMC.

And last but not least, EMC is updating its existing Isilon storage unit to enable enterprise users to take advantage of a singular “Data Lake” of compiled information. Isilon OneFS provides an enterprise-grade scale-out Data Lake, with twice the performance of similar platforms, according to the company. The Isilon X210 and X410 platforms are the newest additions to the portfolio. An additional Data Lake Hadoop Bundle will allow users to help businesses improve their backup and replication abilities while bridging their Big Data efforts with their Data Lake architecture.

That’s all for this dimension. EMC sure knows how to pack an event with tons of information, and The VAR Guy's head is practically full. Perhaps a good dose of the good doctor was in order. Good thing our intrepid blogger's in London—that gives him a six-hour flight to do some serious binge-watching.