Press Release: New EMC Unified Storage Delivers Unmatched Simplicity and Efficiency in Virtual Environments

FYI,

since I think some people here have been waiting for the official announcement - here it is - just went to news agencies today

see  http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2010/20100824-01.htm (quoted below) and expect much more info on Powerlink as we get closer to GA.

Rainer

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New EMC Unified Storage Delivers Unmatched Simplicity and Efficiency in Virtual Environments

Reduces Storage Capacity By 50%, Runs Applications 100% Faster

The News

Hopkinton, Mass.–August 24, 2010–Customers virtualizing their data centers and beginning their journey to the private cloud require a storage infrastructure that is both simple and efficient. EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in  information infrastructure solutions, today announced the availability of new capabilities for its market leading EMC CLARiiON® and EMC Celerra®  midrange storage platforms to meet those requirements.

Simplicity begins with ease of management. Through new EMC Unisphere  management software, EMC enables storage administrators to perform common tasks with 90% fewer clicks. Unisphere is integrated with VMware vCenter™ to also make life easier for VMware administrators.  Simplicity continues with integration. EMC unified storage  integrates out-of-the-box with VMware vSphere and VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). FCoE is also built into these midrange arrays.  EMC unified storage is not just simple, it’s also more efficient—and faster too. New Block Data Compression  reduces storage capacity requirements by up to 50%, and new FAST Cache performance optimization technology enables applications to run twice as fast, and is fully automated—no administrator intervention required.

EMC is Simplifying Storage

EMC Unisphere, a fresh approach to managing storage, and VMware vCenter Server integration and VAAI, provide a simple, integrated experience for managing both EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra storage systems in physical and virtual environments. These technologies are proven to:

       Perform “set it and forget it” tuning for application workloads like SQL OLTP in 80% less time

       Lower the number of “clicks” to manage common tasks by more than 90%

       Provision storage from a VMware vCenter Server in only 2 clicks

       Accelerate VMware server performance with 10-times less I/O for common tasks, enable 10-times more virtual machines per data store, and 10-times faster virtual machine deployment, clone, snapshot, and VMware Storage vMotion™ migrations

Additionally, customers will benefit from new FCoE support built into EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra unified storage systems for a complete Ethernet storage solution. Native FCoE fulfills EMC’s commitment to deliver customers a non-disruptive path to exploiting the advantages of FCoE, while continuing to offer online upgrades to FCoE for existing CLARiiON and Celerra customers. Native support helps customers minimize infrastructure costs associated with multiple Fibre Channel HBA’s and multiple NICs, consolidates cabling, and improves savings associated with power and cooling expenses dramatically.

EMC is Increasing Storage Efficiency

Virtualization  and the consolidation of applications puts extreme strain on storage arrays. The adoption of SSDs—coupled with SATA drives—is the best practice for satisfying these heightened demands. EMC pioneered the integration of SSD technology across its storage portfolio, understands it, and is building unique capabilities like the EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering)  Suite, FAST Cache  and Block Data Compression, that automatically optimize the use of high-capacity SATA drives and high-performance SSDs to deliver better performance at the lowest cost with the availability of new 100GB and 200GB SSDs—an industry first—delivering up to 30% list price savings, EMC is making SSDs more affordable than ever before. As SSDs become more affordable only EMC’s architecture can take full advantage of the savings, helping customers to:

       Increase performance two-fold in Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server environments

       Improve response time for VMware View™ by over 80%

       Achieve up to 50% improvement in storage consumption for less active data

       Improve the total cost of ownership by up-to 30%

Additionally, customers can also benefit from the doubled performance of new Celerra storage gateways—the Celerra VG2 and VG8. The new storage gateways, armed with EMC efficiency and simplicity software capabilities, is also the first midrange storage platform in the industry leveraging cutting edge 64 bit Intel Xeon® 5600 processors.

Customers testing and leveraging these capabilities are measuring the potential impact on lowering costs, eliminating management complexity, and improving their application performance. For example, Itron Inc., a leading technology provider to the global energy and water industries, provides smart metering, data collection and utility software solutions. Approximately 8,000 utilities worldwide rely on Itron to optimize the delivery and use of energy and water. Itron is testing EMC Unisphere, EMC FAST Cache, EMC FAST within its IT infrastructure.

“Itron delivers products and services to the world’s biggest energy and water companies,” said Joshua Lukes, IT Support Manager at Itron. “With the combination of EMC Unisphere and EMC’s integration with VMware software, we were able to dramatically simplify the management of our virtual environment across our Celerra and CLARiiON storage systems. We tested provisioning storage from VMware vCenter Server with the new EMC plug-ins—which took only two clicks. The overall impact that FAST and FAST Cache has on the efficiency of the system is staggering. We tested this combination with our Oracle and SQL databases and achieved dramatic results.”

Industry Analyst Quote

“EMC once again is delivering innovations that meet the new challenges customers face today-and will in the future-while building out virtual data centers. As more and more organizations move towards a virtual data center, storage requirements are growing. According to ESG research over half (54%) of current server virtualization users estimate their organization has experienced a net increase in total storage volume since their organization implemented a server virtualization solution. EMC has a new set of powerful management interfaces that allows everyday storage functions to be offloaded, while providing the ability to proactively identify the unique and demanding needs of the virtual data center. ESG Lab testing of Unisphere and vCenter plugins has confirmed that EMC's intuitive management interfaces can be used to centralize-and simplify-the management of storage in a virtual data center. The company is putting all of the tools in place to make the private cloud a reality for customers today.”

- Brian Garrett, VP ESG Lab, Enterprise Strategy Group

Partner Quotes

“Arrow's Velocity Partners continue to identify that their end-customers need storage efficiency and simplicity as they continue to virtualize their data centers.  At Arrow, our EMC-dedicated team is focusing on enabling our Velocity Partners' ability to leverage EMC's best-in-breed technologies for their end-customers' journey to the private cloud.   The latest announcements from EMC around Unisphere, FAST, and FAST cache further EMC's leadership position by bringing  greater levels of  efficiency and simplicity to EMC's midrange platform customers.”

-Matt Rochford, Director of Arrow's EMC Practice at Arrow

“EMC's new storage efficiency and simplicity enhancements bring improved levels of simplified management and increased storage utilization that help our reseller partners lower costs and improve performance for their customers' data centers. Avnet's commitment to providing comprehensive IT solutions with our StoragePathT and CloudReadyT practices, combined with EMC's unified storage and information infrastructure expertise, extend the benefits of cloud computing to end users on their journey to the private Cloud.”

-Tim FitzGerald, vice president Technology Solutions Practices, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas

“Cisco is working closely with EMC to deliver FCoE solutions that provide our customers a unified fabric for building private clouds in the dynamic data center. By offering FCoE solutions via our Cisco Nexus and Cisco Unified Computing Platforms that are certified with EMC's new native support of FCoE for EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra storage systems, our customers can benefit by reducing the number of devices and cables needed for data center consolidation, and automating management of a fully virtualized a data center.”

-Soni Jiandani, Vice President Marketing, Server Access Virtualization Technology Group at Cisco

“The energy efficient performance and virtualization features of the Intel® Xeon® 5600 processor are ideal for virtual environments. These capabilities make the Intel Xeon 5600 processor a natural building block within the powerful storage efficiencies built into EMC storage systems.”

-Kirk Skaugen, Vice President and General Manager at Intel Data Center Group 

“VMware and EMC share a common vision for helping customers on the journey to the private cloud. Getting to the private cloud requires new levels of automation. EMC’s new built-in tools unlock the power of VAAI to automate the storage stack, further simplifying customers’ virtualized environments to help them get the most flexibility and performance at the lowest possible cost.”

-Hatem Naguib, Vice President, EMC Alliance at VMware

EMC Executive Quote

“As the overall leader in midrange storage, customers look to EMC to ensure their storage environment is optimized for performance at the lowest possible cost. These latest innovations are helping to change the economics of storage and carry our customers into the future as they are continually virtualizing their environments on their journey to the private cloud. Advanced capabilities like EMC FAST and EMC FAST Cache enable customers to leverage the latest drive innovations for performance, scalability, and cost effectiveness that's unmatched in the marketplace. With this announcement EMC makes storage simple and efficient for customers.”

-Mark Sorenson, Senior Vice President, EMC Unified Storage Division

Availability

All capabilities included in this announcement are available worldwide with the exception of native FCoE, which will be available in the fourth quarter of 2010. Availability for 200GB Flash drives is expected in the fourth quarter of 2010 on EMC Symmetrix® VMAX™.