Originating Author: David Floyer
At the EMC analyst day, the company signaled very clearly the order in which it will deliver advanced functionality to its storage arrays would be file level virtualization, thin provisioning and then block-level virtualization. It's executives talked very little about block-level virtualization. Wikibon members have indicated that the current top storage project priorities are:
- Storage support for server virtualization projects (Block & File),
- Block-based storage virtualization,
- Block-based thin provisioning,
- File-based storage consolidation.
On the same day, EMC showed a strong commitment to providing the services and file-based virtualization for VMware. If an organization's servers are being virtualized on VMware and are supported by file-based storage, EMC should be strongly considered as a partner for this project and also for SAN VMware projects where virtualization is not a requirement.
For file-based storage consolidation, EMC has good range of products including Rainfinity as a file-based virtualization offering. EMC and EMC services should be on any RFP list.
For EMC customers with significant investments in EMC products, one strategy is to leverage the future benefits of thin provisioning into the Q4 negotiations, and ensure a commitment to early delivery. A small project on 3PAR or Hitachi should also be considered so as to jump-start the planning and application testing required.
EMC customers looking to establish a heterogeneous virtualized storage environment to tackle reducing the costs of commissioning and decommissioning arrays and optimizing storage software management costs, can consider Invista, but there are almost certainly stronger offerings from IBM, Hitachi and others.
Action Item: Users should create a list of storage projects with the potential payback and effort required for each project. Where EMC have well established technology and services, it should be included as a potential strategic partner in any RFP. For other projects, the choice of partner should be driven by user priorities and the willingness of the partner to help drive storage costs down.
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