I’m at EMC World in Las Vegas this week and it’s been fantastic so far. I’m excited about the new 40TB XtremIO X-bricks and how we might leverage that for our largest and most important 80TB oracle database, also excited about possible use cases for the Virtual VNX in our small branch locations, and all the other exciting futures that I can’t publicly share because I’m under an NDA with EMC. Truly exciting and innovative technology is coming from them. VXblock was also really impressive, although that’s not likely something my company will implement anytime soon.
I found out for the first time today that the excellent VNX Monitoring and Reporting application is now free for the VNX1 platform as well as VNX2. If you would like to get a license for any of your VNX1 arrays, simply ask your local sales representative to submit a zero dollar sales order for a license. We’re currently evaluating ViPR SRM as a replacement for our soon to be “end of life” Control Center install, but until then VNX MR is a fantastic tool that provides nearly the same performance data for no cost at all. SRM adds much more functionality beyond just VNX monitoring and reporting (i.e., monitoring SAN switches) and I’d highly recommend doing a demo if you’re also still using Control Center.
We also implemented a VPLEX last year and it’s truly been a lifesaver and is an amazing platform. We currently have a VPLEX local implantation in our primary data center and it’s allowed us to easily migrate workloads from one array to another seamlessly with no disruption to applications. I’m excited about the possibilities with RecoverPoint as well, I’m still learning about it.
If anyone else who’s at EMC World happens to read this, comment! I’d love to hear your experiences and what you’re most excited about with EMC’s latest technology.
