What EMC can offer us in 2010?

Just read tons of information about EMC World 2010 Boston. EMC has developed lots of new technology and provision for 2010. Let’s check out briefly.

1. VPlex active-active storage

This technology is basically design for distant SANs to synchronize each other. It makes VMWARE DR site runs parallel possible since the second SAN doesn’t do everything as the first SAN did. The second or other SANs will understand what have changed in the storage level and make change according that. And it supports asychronous replication.

Comparing with NetApps (it claims they can do remote distance SAN cluster as well), EMC said they can do more than 2 SAN synch.

2. EMC FAST 2 and block – Level compression, common management console

For the FAST 2 technolog, I didn’t see much new features as it just utilized Flash cash “better”. Block Level compression does sound interesting (essentially, it compress all “0” on block level) but how come EMC still doesn’t support block level deduplication as what NetApps does ? According to EMC, block-level compress can server better in daily production because it uses less time and easy. But block-decuplication is better in using backup.

Common management console is only design for user who owns Clariion and Celerra system. So you will have centralized management tool to work.

3. New Backup support (DD Boost).

Finally, this is a good news for Vmware owner we can speed up our backup speed up to 50%. By installing this software on your backup server (so far, backupexec and Netbackup from Symantec), your backup software will have metadata of your SAN data and understand where and how your data store. It can make deduplication level happening in SAN level (not VM Level).

4. EMC understand VMWARE more about disk operation

So this is another deep integration. It’s not only support vStorage API and it also supports thin provision stun (it hold vm if vm exceeds disk space, so other vm won’t crash), fast/full clones (SAN level clone instead VM clone), write zero/write same (SAN level snapshot or clone and SAN level eagerzerothick disk).

Conclusion:

From brief review, EMC started to integrate VMWare technology from core level regarding clone, copy, backup. It does make progress on distant SANs (more than 2) sych but most of users will still wait for best practice coming out. However, EMC still doesn’t support block level deduplication which I personally very confused. I guess that’s where NetsApp find crack.