New EMC storage arrays, systems & Software-Defined Storage

The news includes revolutionary technology advances in the EMC VNX line of midrange storage, new capabilities for the world’s fastest growing reference architecture – EMC VSPEX, the upcoming general availability of EMC ViPR – a new Software-Defined Storage platform, and finally, a preview of “Project Nile” – which EMC expects to be the world’s first commercially-available complete, Web-scale storage infrastructure for the data center.
Collectively these new innovations provide customers and partners with the essential building blocks they need to build Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud environments. EMC President and Chief Operating Officer, David Goulden, had this to say about the impact of EMC’s new innovations for the market, customers and partners:

“Customers are demanding more performance and efficiency from their current data center infrastructure while, at the same time, exploring new architectures for their next generation mobile and Web applications. By fully embracing and exploiting disruptive technologies such as Intel MultiCore, virtualization and flash, EMC is providing customers with the products and solutions they need to help transform their IT department–not only delivering unprecedented levels of performance and efficiency but also providing the agility needed for their business to remain competitive.”

The announcement includes the following highlights:
· The new, highly anticipated range of VNX unified storage systems (VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800, VNX7600, VNX8000 and VNX-F), that shatter the definition and economics of midrange storage. The new VNX raises the bar for application performance, storage efficiency, data protection, data availability and ease-of-use. Through new MCx™ software the new VNX fully unleashes the power of flash, accelerating application and file performance by up-to 4X. The new platform also delivers unprecedented price/performance—one-third the price for the same performance of the previous generation.
· All EMC VSPEX reference architectures are now powered by the new VNX Series—delivering 2X more virtual machines at the same prices, and with a broader spectrum of choice for workloads that matter most. VSPEX is the worlds fastest growing reference architecture with 3,600 shipments adopted by 3,000 customers and 1,500 partners.
· EMC announced that the ViPR Software-Defined Storage Platform is planned to be generally available later this month. ViPR is scheduled to include both the ViPR Controller and ViPR Object Data Services. ViPR Object Data Services gives customers the ability to view objects as files, providing file access performance without the latency inherent in current object storage models.
· EMC also offered a technology preview of “Project Nile”, which EMC expects will be the first commercially-available complete, Web-scale storage infrastructure for the data center.
· New EMC XtremSW Cache 2.0 software offers deeper integration with EMC arrays including the new VNX Series—further driving down latency by 65%. The advanced caching software also delivers greater interoperability with VMware vCenter, industry first IBM AIX support and distributed cache coherency for Oracle RAC environments (scheduled to be available in the fourth quarter of 2013) as well as increased support for any server flash SSD or PCIe hardware (including EMC XtremSF™ server flash hardware).
· EMC is celebrating its technology partnership with the Lotus F1 Team by jointly announcing the EMCVNX 5400 Lotus Team F1 Limited Edition arrays in Lotus F1 Team colors.