back to article We've just stepped out of our time machine, and we can reveal ... EMC's new kit for early 2016

EMC has new storage products coming in both external shared array form and in its converged and hyper-converged systems lines of products, using new VSAN capabilities. These will be announced over the next two quarters and will change the shape of EMC's product lines. We think we now have an overall view of what the mainstream …

  1. Man Mountain

    By the time the XtremIO, VMAX and VNX 'announcements' are a reality, the competition will have moved on again! EMC are just chasing their tail at the moment, creating an even more confused and complicated portfolio! Throw Compellent and EL into the mix and it just gets worse!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Weak argument

    Mountain Man, your weak argument shows just how naive you are. EMC is dominating the primary storage and all-flash markets by a very wide margin over the competition because it has product depth and breadth that satisfy a wide range of use cases. That's why customers are voting with their wallets for EMC and less so for the one-trick unicorns that take a hammer's-eye view of every customer (hint: hammers see everything as a nail). EMC's shift to all-flash was inevitable and it's even breaking into a new market category with DSSD to satisfy a very high end market need. EMC's broad portfolio was built to offer the 'right tool for the job.' The confusion comes from those who don't have a clue about the variety of applications and use cases.

    1. Man Mountain

      Re: Weak argument

      EMC are still the overall primary storage market leader but the gap is shrinking rapidly (as recent market share reports have shown!). 'Inevitable shift to all flash' ... welcome to the future EMC! Only a year or 2 late! Right tool for the job? EMC / Dell have about 4 different tools for any job ... VMAX, VNX, XtremIO, and Compellent all potentially overlapping significantly. Some vendors can properly cover all 4 of those with a single product. A confused portfolio just creates decisions for customers that they shouldn't have to worry about!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Weak argument

      Yep EMC is doing so well it got acquired. Correction "EMC takes a broad view because 1) existing architecture is lagging and cant be evolved for Flash Fast enough. 2) Xtremio is still playing catch up to other more mature products in both Data Services and reliability stakes 3) EMC have 200 different products required to backup and fill the HW product integration void.

      Kudos to them though for putting a bit of lipstick on and heading to the dance

      Oink Oink

  3. Axel Koester

    Success factors for low-latency attachment technologies

    On a more technical note, launching a new low-latency attachment technology like DSSD is not a straightforward job. I started marketing CAPI-attached Flash at IBM two years ago, and the outcome was NOT some general purpose fast Flash storage. Read below.

    CAPI, never heard?? That's because it is only prominent in big number crunchers in finance, life sciences and research: CAPI links graphical coprocessors or arithmetic FPGAs into CPU cache lines, but it can also emulate memory pages. Hence the name Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface. Cool technology. (It doesn't get much quicker than this.)

    The outcome was that as you don't find common applications that understand new protocols like CAPI, NVMe or now DSSD, you'll have to write your own! Luckily some industries were just waiting for that external memory which feels like "nearline RAM" as it bypasses the 20.000 lines of code in the storage access layer, but comes at a fraction of the cost of true RAM.

    We went for the most popular rising NoSQL database, Redis, which became "BigRedis" as CAPI-Flash support was added by Redis Labs. In 2014 we announced the first IBM "Data Engine for NoSQL", a pure Redis appliance in 4U height, 2U for Power Linux and 2U for an Enterprise-grade CAPI FlashSystem. It corresponds to 24 rack servers of in-memory database up to 40TB, but only producing 5-10% of their heat output.

    The real question is, how big is this [gaming/medicine/web trade/geo science] niche of high capacity in-memory applications that will be upgraded to support "memory-style Flash" with energy consumption in mind? The (expensive) alternative is "cloud-style" deployment on an increasing number of general purpose servers which know just RAM and storage. Energy costs will decide.

    ..

    More from Julich supercomputing center blogging on openpower.org... http://openpowerfoundation.org/industry-coverage/julich-tag-teams-with-ibm-nvidia-on-data-centric-computing/

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