EMC World: EMC Chucks Flash Everywhere

EMC is talking up its flash storage game claiming it is pushing it into all the right areas, announcing a number of products including a VNX product that it claims cuts the entry cost of flash by 38 percent.

The VNXe3150 model, part of EMC’s unified storage lineup aimed at “IT generalists” managing virtual environments, delivers 50 percent more performance and capacity per rack unit, according to vendor, which was making the announcement at EMC World 2012.

In addition, EMC is going to work with its subsidiary VMware to integrate VNX with the analytics of the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite. The VNX Storage Analytics Suite and VNX Connector for VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite will be available in the second half of 2012, according to EMC.

Every little helps

Talking about the kit, Rich Napolitano, president of EMC’s unified storage division, talked of how “a little bit of flash goes a long way”. “If you use about five percent flash, you can drive 70 to 80 percent of your i/o to that flash,” he said. “That’s a tremendous value proposition for a wide array of applications.

“You can then store your capacity on much lower-cost, denser drives.” He explained how Goldman Sachs was using just one percent flash to absorb 40 percent of its i/o. “We this in thousands of customers and that is going to continue and drive customers.”

Some companies have taken to bashing EMC for its flash approach, most notably Fusion-io, which is now in greater competition with the storage big gun after the latter’s launch of VFCache. So why does EMC think it has the right strategy when it comes to flash? “We have flash in all places, that’s why we have it right. I do believe flash will live in multiple places in infrastructure. You need multiple tools in the toolbox to solve the most complicated problems in IT today,” Napolitano said.

Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC, had a mini-dig at Fusion-io too. “Anytime – and Fusion-io does this – you have a message out there that this is the best way to do storage or anything IT, it is foolish, it is darn right foolish,” Tucci said.

The company was also teasing delegates with its Project X initiative, building on its XtremIO acquisition. It appears EMC is going to introduce an all-flash array for SANs at some point soon.

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