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Flash – King of the Impossible

I am a little kid at heart and mind so whenever someone says “Flash” I immediately play Queen in my head and visions of Flash Gordon pop to mind. The truth is the song isn’t that far off of how Flash storage helps with datacenter I/O loads it really is doer of the impossible. EMC recently announced XtremIO which is our foray into the all flash array. It opened up to some criticism from the competitive market which is of course expected as EMC is somewhat late to the game in all flash storage, but that doesn’t mean that flash hasn’t been part of the EMC portfolio.

In fact XtremSF which is EMC’s server based flash solution (SF stands for server flash) has been around for some time. VNX has had Flash drive integration for caching (Fast Cache) for even longer. So really to say EMC just started caring about Flash because of market pressure isn’t a reality. The thing is that EMC didn’t want to jump into the All Flash Array (AFA) market without thinking about how Flash storage works.

The EMC Infomercial

I guess I should have said really early on that before I came to EMC as a vSpecialist I had limited experience with EMC storage or products. I knew they were enterprise class, and I knew they were expensive, but aside from that I hadn’t worked on EMC since the old Clariion days. So I have been tossed into the deep end of the pool and told to learn to swim, only the pool is a product catalog that can answer just about every storage or datacenter question and swimming is forcing out knowledge about 80’s pop culture in place of something more useful.

Despite my useless knowledge replacement therapy, I have found that the onslaught of technology and information is like a late night infomercial that you get sucked into and want to buy everything from. Private cloud and replication have been my recent obsession, let me channel some Shamwow guy for you … 

Sure other companies have private cloud and replication capability but do they have the solution set to provide data recovery, virtual provisioning and bundle it all up in a proven reference architecture? Think of it as a family recipe for a cake that has been tried and true for generations.

In working our channel partners VPLEX provides a flexible solution for partner to add their own flare to the cake and make it the flavor the customer wants. That can take the shape of servers, networking or software components backed by EMC storage and management.

VPLEX enables customers and partners to leverage solutions sets like Atmos, Syncplicity, VNX or VMAX along with Data Protection solutions like Avamar and Data Domain.

With multiple site to site replication scenarios and technologies along with partner know-how VPLEX is proof you can have your cake and eat it too.

Whew … slowing down a bit I got to wondering what if that’s too many choices? (Wait a sec while I get my Billy Mays voice ready)

So what if you don’t want to bake a cake? Or what if you don’t know how?  Well we got a solution for you! VBlock is a scaled to solution pre-fabricated architecture complete with networking, compute and storage to meet your needs. All provided through VCE (I’ll spell it out as though some folks don’t know) this is the partnership corporation between VMware, Cisco, and EMC. VCE provides a single patch baseline management suite and simplifies the issues of patching conflicts and device management. VCE Block is a converged management architecture with all enterprise class technologies, and can arrive in a fully racked ready to roll state and be up and running in weeks from date of PO.

But wait there’s more … It’s EMC there is always more and as I figure it out I will share it.

Home Lab Gear

Add this to the long list of folks who blog about their home labs, but here is the config I just ordered. Once everything is in place I will post final specs and cost. Fortunately as a vExpert I have a year worth of VMware licenses. I also have access to some EMC virtual appliance licenses which will definitely make it in for testing to add to blog material and my education.

So here is the list of gear I am waiting to be delivered, (all gear is ordered from Amazon)

3 x Dell 1950 2xe5440 Quad Core 2.83ghz Processor 16gb RAM Raidperc 6i $210.00
Condition: Used – VeryGood

6 x C2G / Cables to Go 24240 18 AWG Universal Power Cord (NEMA 5-15P to IEC320C13) Black (1 Foot/0.30 Meters) $2.95

9U Wallmount Cabinet Enclosure IT Server Network Rack Glass Door Locking Casters $184.50

4 x WD Red 1 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache – WD10EFRX $69.99

2 x Cable Matters 5-Pack, Cat6 Snagless Ethernet Patch Cable in Blue 3 Feet $10.99

Cisco SG200-26 Gigabit Ethernet Smart Switch with 24 10/100/1000 Ports and 2 Combo Mini-GBIC Ports (SLM2024T) $279.99

ViewSonic VA2246M-LED 22-Inch LED-Lit Monitor $109.99

CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS 1500VA 900W AVR Mini-Tower $149.99

Synology DiskStation 4-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS413 $423.49

Once I get everything in and I know I don’t need any more hardware I will be ordering rails to mount the servers. The server config I believe is solid but you only know as much as the description when buying reconditioned gear.

Stay tuned for more on the home lab moving forward.