EMC and VMware integration

Mark,

You're exactly right, EMC's strong integration with VMware is, in fact, #1 of the Top Ten Reasons Why EMC for VMware.

And you're also right - to date you haven't seen a lot of integration in the three areas you mention. In the past, to VMware, storage was just a place where the VMs lived.

But that's all beginning to change.  For me, vSphere 4.1 marks the start of VMware's emerging focus on storage. You see this most keenly in the release of the vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), but it's starting to show up other places as well.  I'll give some examples as I respond to the three points you brought up.

1. VMware HA Application integration APIs

   There's actually a lot of development work going on in this area, and we've released our first solution based on this integration. You can read about it in detail in this VMware Knowledge Base article on Using VPLEX Metro with VMware HA.

   Now, I'm in the fortunate position of being able to see both the EMC and VMware roadmaps, but only under heavy non-disclosure. All I can say about it in this forum today is that VPLEX Metro's integration with VMware HA is only just the first of many things that will be coming soon. I'll make sure we post details on future VMware HA integrations as they come available.

   
   

2. Server, device, and application health-monitoring (for both VMs and physical devices)

   If you're looking for a simple solution for this from EMC you don't need to look any further than the Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM). It works with all the devices in the stack, allowing them to be managed as a single entity. There's a reason that UIM is the management product of choice for Vblock.

   Again, there's more, better, and deeper integration coming to UIM.  Stay tuned, I think you'll like what you see.

   
   

3. VMware Capacity Planner for sizing storage IO and bandwidth requirements

   At the moment, you're correct, there's nothing deeper for Capacity Planner available today.  Again, there's more coming, but it's not there today.

   But there's still a lot you can do now with storage from vSphere. Take a look at Storage I/O Control (SOIC)in vSphere 4.1. While it doesn't have any direct integration with EMC's Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST), the two features are extraordinarily complementary. You can use the two features together to create a sort of "DRS for storage". If you want to see more on this, watch this demo of VMware SIOC and EMC FAST being used together.

   
   

I hope this helps. Glad to have somebody like you who thinks about this sort of thing as one of our partners. Let me know if there's anything EMC can do to help you.

       -Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the detailed response.

I have just taken a quick look at Ionix UIM and I see that it is designed specifically for Vblock.

Is there anything available for non-Vblock solutions that will monitor servers, network devices and application health (i.e. something like the SNMP based open-source Nagios technology).

Also my concern is that the Ionix products are too expensive for most mid-sized organisations.

I shall look out for the new VMware Capacity Planner features and EMC solutions that support the new HA applications APIs - can you give me any indication of timescales?

Many thanks

Mark

Mark,

I remember Nagios fondly from my Unix sysadmin days.  With a little Perl scripting, the ablity to write a device driver, and a willingness to connect serial ports to things that the server manufacturers never intended, we were able to monitor all sorts of things. (My favorite was a script that monitored a webcam feed and counted when the number of specific-color pixels went above a threshhold - that let you know that the shuttle between our building and the local public transportation was on its way...)

But I digress...

Yes, at the moment UIM really works best for Block.  Look for more integration with VMware's vCloud Director in the future.

For monitoring the whole environment (servers, network, applications, etc.), I think the Ionix family is the best place to look, in particular the Ionix ControlCenter suite.  In addition to integrating with VMware, ControlCenter will let you manage and monitor the entire environment, including quite a few non-EMC storage arrays.  There are two whitepapers you might be interested in, one on managing VMware ESX servers and virtual machines with Ionix ControlCenter and one on Ionix ControlCenter's integration with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.  I've attached copies of each to this posting.

For timelines, all I can say for the moment is:

• From VMware, there is a TON of amazing stuff that will be in their next major release.
  
• From EMC, we have a LOT of really great stuff coming in the first half of 2011.
  

        -Dave