Today in Milan EMC announced a whole new update to many products. So first, why did I get to go to Italy for the launch. Ok, so back up one more step. Thank you EMC Elect program. EMC Elect if you don’t know is the community advocate program for EMC. I am very honored to be picked for 2013 and as part of the press/analyst launch in Milan, Italy I was selected to attend.

On a side note, how freaking awesome is it to get a chance to go to Milan. Yes, it is just 2 days after I got home from VMworld but not sure I could say no to something so cool. Not saying that everyone will get to go on a cool 2 day whirlwind trip, but I really appreciate what EMC community teams are doing to encourage the community.

XtremSW 2.0

First off I want to touch on the version 2.0 of the XtremSW. Most importantly is native support for vCenter features (like vMotion).. I am very excited about not needing a special “work around” for vMotion. Additionally, this read caching ability is able to integrate with the EMC arrays on the back end and help off load read caching from the array’s own cache. Of course EMC has been saying this for a while now but that was limited to VMAX but today some of that is expanding to VNX. At first that expansion will include the management of the XtremSW software from Unisphere on the VNX and selection of the LUN’s accelerated. Just so no one is confused as far as I can tell prefetching and cache coordination is still only on the VMAX.

The Next VNX

Get used to hearing people talking about CPU cores. Taking advantage of all the cores in the Intel processors is a huge deal. When the power is in the software utilizing the CPU fully is extremely important. So while EMC VNX will have more drives and lanes and ports and all that. The software features that really make a difference like FAST, FAST Cache, VAAI will have a bunch more processor horse power to use to help you building internal cloud in the Enterprise and public cloud service offerings (for my SP friends).

but wait there is more…

The main point is all the cool features are in software and the Software Defined craze is going to push the idle CPU we have in everyone’s storage arrays. Much like vSphere does for compute, the software features in the array are going to help abstract control for the environment. Pass operations to the places in the data center that do them best. Things like tiering, snaps, and dedupe are done at the level most efficient for your workload. Provisioning, Policy creation and management will be done in ViPR. Hope it is all starting to make sense now. Let vSphere do what it is good at, let the array do what it is good at and finally automation and policy engines like vCAC and ViPR do the repetitive work.

Look at that, Solutions

If I was able to sit down with you this VMworld I would have told you about our efforts to help EMC become more Solution Centric. Making the solution the focus of the show was a big change but was just up my alley because as a vSpecialist I had to tie all the EMC and VMware pieces together. So I am happy to end this post with a shift from some cool products to some solutions that would actually help you the EMC customer and the EMC partners.

So you may have guessed from the picture of all the new VSPEX reference architectures. Solutions built to help EMC partners deliver proven solutions to our Customers. So make sure your EMC SE and partners share with you more than the new products but rather how they can help solve your business issues. To run the applications the customers of your IT organization use to make a difference for the business. So build-your-own, VSPEX, and Vblock are all great paths to get there and when the customer gets to choose they win.