after a bunch of “high level” of posts, glad to do a technical one again :-)

Glad to see vSphere 4 udpate 1 hit today – you can get more here.

A couple important things are improved/added – I’ll call out the key ones for me:

• Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 support (32-bit and 64-bit)
• MSCS gets VM HA and DRS support in a limited fashion – you can have MSCS nodes supported (worked before) in a cluster by excluding them from VM HA and DRS.   This means no more “MSCS only VMware clusters”.
• paravirtualized SCSI support for boot disks on W2K3 and W2K8 (nice, eliminates one of the pvSCSI beefs)
• View 4 support (you need update 1 to use View 4)
• This update didn’t trigger re-cert on the HCL, so the stuff that was on the vSphere 4 HCL is there for update 1

A smaller item, but there’s an important fix in update 1 for folks using anything that updated certain things (one of which was any 3rd party Pluggable Storage Architecture SATP, PSP or MPP).   These  they occasionally caused the storage view tab to show the following error (Mike Laverick – you helped us fix this :-) :

The storage service is not initialized. Please try again later.

The following entries might be written to sms.log during the periodic SMS initialization cycle:

2009-04-20 12:18:57,180 [Thread-5] DEBUG com.vmware.vim.sms.provider.VcProviderImpl - Populating scsi volume information...
2009-04-20 12:18:57,289 [Thread-5] ERROR com.vmware.vim.sms.provider.VcProviderImpl - Failed populating service cache
com.ibatis.common.jdbc.exception.NestedSQLException:

Other important items:

1. FCoE/10GbE
   • Got loads of questions from customers deploying gen2 CNAs and wondering when they were on the VMware HCL.   Just checked, and they are there now (see that list here)
   • The Qlogic gen 2 (8100 series) CNA drivers for vSphere are here for FCoE and Network
2. NMP RR (changing the IOoperationlimit value) – important note!
   • we’re getting reports that when customers change the IO Operation Limit from 1000 (default) to 1, on ESX reboot, weirdness happens.   This parameter governs how many IO operations are sent before a new path is selected when using NMP Round Robin.   On reboot if it has been changed from the default to a value of 1 – it becomes what seems a random value – making loadbalancing… less than optimal.   I don’t recommend changing the value until this gets resolved – just leave it at the default.   I expect that this should affect all arrays using block devices equally.   It doesn’t affect PowerPath/VE users– as it is a 3rd party MPP – it replaces the full NMP stack (both the SATP and PSP – and this looks like a PSP thing).  Will do a more detailed post on this early next week.
3. VMware Update Manager (VUM) expanded in update 1 with more PowerPath/VE goodness.
   • Want to see the power of the customer?   I did a survey on Virtualgeek asking “how should we patch 3rd party vmkernel modules?”.   Results?   below:

Alright customers – you have spoken!   PowerPath/VE 5.4 can be installed and even patched to PowerPath/VE 5.4.1 (will be released soon, and will of course be the model for subsequent releases) integrated with VUM.  In vSphere 4 udpate 1, VUM gets a “extension” option for 3rd party baselines for vmkernel-level modules and patches (think PowerPath/VE, Cisco Nexus 1000v).   See a demo below.

You can download the high-resolution demonstrations in WMV format and MOV format.

FYI – I know that people ideally want PowerPath/VE licensing to be integrated with the new vCenter-centric licensing model – working on it….

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1562474/one-terabyte-ssd-hits-shops

While these are consumer drives, and are missing the things that are needed for enterprise-grade solid state storage that STEC does now (much heaver duty cycle, flat performance over time, larger SRAM to Flash ratios, dual ported interfaces, etc) – it really highlights how fast things are moving, and innovation that occurs in consumer-land can trickle up in the same way that the reverse is true also.

I’m sticking with my bet (admittedly more aggressive than others think) – late 2010 will be the point where solid-state will:

1. match fast magnetic media as measured by $/GB (currently about 10x less efficient)
2. will pass being 300x more efficient measured by $/IOps (currently about 100-200x more efficient)
3. will continue to be 100x more efficient measured by Watts/GB (10,000x more efficient measured by Watts/IOps)

When this happens, will be crazy – only room for SSD (SAS/FC interfaces) and huge slow magnetic media (SATA/SAS interfaces).   Everyone will be looking to see how to maximize this.  

There are second-order effects too – we’re getting close right now to the maximum heat density we can with 15K drives – as we increase the drive density, we can’t use 10/15K RPM SAS/FC, only SATA and SSD (this is why dense – meaning >15 drives per 3U - storage configs generally focus on low-power SATA use cases now).

What people also don’t intrinsically get is that non-volatile storage that sits in between the characteristics of memory, but hundreds (thousands even) times faster than magnetic media has broad transformational characteristics – including things like HPC, BI/DW appliances and all sorts of things.  People have developed entire technology stacks around the idea that you have memory (volatile) and then 1,000,000 times slower you have disk (non-volatile).

Between virtualization (many, MANY more exciting things on that front), broad 10GbE adoption, deduplication showing up everywhere, Nehalem (and it’s successors), and solid-state disk moving mainstream – lots of transformational technology elements – 2010 will be an exciting year!

Congrats to Jocelyn and the whole View team – this is a big release, with a lot of additional features, and dramatically improved experience in broader use cases.

As always – loads of work behind the scenes…  You can read what EMC and Cisco have done to support View 4 in the PR here.   So – without further ado, further here are supporting reference architectures and validation work you can leverage…

VCE Vblock Type 1 View Reference Architecture

The VMware, EMC and Cisco teams have created a joint reference architecture on a Type 1 (mid-range) Vblock.   This Reference Architecture is targeted for customers with low to mid thousands of clients as their scaling target.   High note of the testing work: $750/client – all in.   Higher user density than we were able to get from View 3 on VI 3.5 in the past.  Since View 4 can work on vSphere 4, we get more density, and overall better client performance.   A lot of the Virtual Center scaling and responsiveness we struggled with in large-scale View 3/VI3.5 work is now also resolved.  

Click on the doc below to get the whitepaper which is hosted by VMware.   Thanks to the View team, the EMC and Cisco Solutions teams!

Looking for something a little smaller? 

Celerra NS-120 Validation Test Report

The EMC Celerra Solutions team have published an updated View 4 Validation Test Report (contains a lot of performance data and step-by-step information) targeted towards use cases for customers with hundreds of clients.   This leverages a ~250 user building block approach.   Click on the doc below to get the whitepaper which is hosted by VMware.

What to expect soon:

• Even more Vblock testing
• The RSA SecurBook on View – very cool doc that covers how to futher secure the platfom, as well as the virtual desktop itself.

We started to jokingly call the role “Warrior monk” and “Warrior” in the early days because it was funny and nerdy in a D&D kind of way, but someone fwded this description and it’s perfect…:

“…the presence, service and dedication of a monk and the absolute skill and precision of a warrior”

Now, I’ll warn people.  There are distinct disadvantages to being on my team.

Here’s one of them – the picture below is some of the folks who are my direct managers (each have their respective teams) in the Americas – we were getting together to plan 2010 the night before the VMUG.   A lot of nights, it seems like we’re the last ones in the parking lot.    It takes passion, commitment, and we do it not because there is someone saying “do this”, but because it just needs to be done.   It can make for a difficult work/life balance (not a good thing) – look I’m emailing this @ 4:30am EST.   The other thing that makes it hard is that we’re a bit “outside” the normal organizational lines.  This sounds great (and is needed to maintain the very fast changes and communication needed), but in practice, extra effort is needed to align with the organizations they support.

On the other hand, there are some upside benefits to being on my team.  This is the Altanta lab – we have 6 of these super-labs (and many more smaller ones) around the Americas, and several in europe and APJ as well.   The goal here is to have all the latest stuff GA stuff, have pre-release everything of VMware/EMC/Cisco – and get real stick time.

This is a Vblock Type 1, and also a lot of additional rack-mount and blade servers.     It hosts VM appliance versions of all of EMC Ionix software, most of EMC’s other software (and heck, some of our “hardware” platforms – this lab has many Celerra VSAs, and several of the UCS blades host virtualized Recoverpoint appliances, which really benefit from Palo’s virtual adapter and depends on vSphere’s VMdirectpath).   

It’s constantly in use, and a great source of ongoing learning for the whole team (including our local Atlanta Cisco and VMware brothers/sisters).

We have a ton of both Gen-2 Qlogic and Emulex CNAs filling those Dell 1U rackmounts.   Everything is end-to-end 10GbE (with 4 and 8GBps FC as well if we need it).   Lots of the 10GbE stuff we showed at VMworld 2009 was done here.   Notice the black cabling from the blades and the UCSes (10GbE Twinax), we also are using 10GbE over Cat6a.

Everything has it’s price – the team is filled with “go anywhere, anytime, and get anything needed done” attitude (which I love), and get to play with all sorts of the latest software and hardware toys.   But the price for that is a LOT of hard work. 

The passion and love for what you do is the only thing that makes the pace sustainable.

Thank you!

http://sites.google.com/site/fundraisingforjustinguyadeen/

Cisco did the morning keynote and I did the one right after lunch.   One of my team mates recorded the session, so if you want to see it, you can watch the video below.

Topics discussed included the VCE announcement (near the latter half), the strategy that’s guiding our investments and focus, what customers are telling me, and what we’re trying to do to help them/learn from them…

Here’s the presentation I gave.

Ok – as we sat on telepresence after telepresence, and f2f meeting after meeting approaching the VCE launch, one thing we’re very cognizant of was the fact that some would (and this is a natural fear) that this would signal less independence on VMware’s part.

In uncharacteristic fashion for me – let’s make this short and sweet.   VMware is, and will continue to be, an independent company, that makes it’s own independent decisions, and openly partners with those that partner with them.

if you want more details (and some of the behind the scenes of the VCE announcement with this topic in mind), read on…

Look, it is true that VMware and EMC share board members, and that our financial results are linked.   It’s also worth noting that Virtual Infrastructure and Information Infrastructure are the two linked core strategies for EMC in a larger sense.

BUT…

EMC understands that we cannot hug VMware too closely.  They must be able to partner openly.

I’ve seen this in exec staff and board meetings time and time again: “this would be good for EMC, but bad for VMware – let’s not do it”.   If you doubt it – remember how everyone assumed VMware would be rolled into EMC day one – but Joe and the exec team decided to go the better route – let VMware be independent, and thrive.  And thrive they did, and things were good.  That has to lend some credence (since people doubted it then as they doubt us when we say it now) to us saying “that is NOT going to change”.

It’s also true that while VMware will always be open with it’s API models and opportunities for partner integration – period.

But, what’s interesting – is that when we don’t apply our full resources (as was the case in 2007) we’re considering “missing the opportunity”, and when we do apply full resource and focus (2008 and 2009), people assume collusion.

Let me spell it out…    Starting in Jan 2008 and going forward (until it’s over my dead body), EMC will always do a “full commit” to leverage/integrate with any program/API/initiative (engineering, marketing, go-to-market – whatever).   In those engineering meetings (some of them with EMC competitors present) – on our side we’ll make a massive commit.   This isn’t cheating, and it isn’t collusion, it’s focus and application of resources.   Each competitor has the choice to do the same.

We have an R&D budget of about $1.7B per year, and we’re betting hard on the virtualization of the datacenter and this transition to private cloud computing models.  This is significantly more than many of our storage pure-play peers.   On the other hand, they have narrower (or stated in a more positive sense, more “focused”) product portfolios, which perhaps allows them to have higher R&D efficiency.   Conversely, in other areas, our R&D/revenue model (like our Ionix stuff) is investment along the lines of our much larger competitors in this area (HP/CA/BMC) – where what we need to do is be focused (and we are – on the virtualized datacenter using VMware and the private cloud scenario).

Where there is an opportunity to align in the field with our customers – we will do it, with massive commit, and focus of resources in a similar way.

Where use of EMC intellectual property can help VMware and vice versa, one difference between other partner models is that we are always open to the discussion (sometimes with other technology partners, the door isn’t even open).   But people should understand - the legal and business structure that govern those are just like all partner models.

And yes, EMC and Cisco, like VMware – will continue to partner with others, including VMware competitors (like Microsoft) and VMware with EMC competitors (like NetApp), and Cisco competitors (like Brocade and HP).   They may not have the inherent focus that VMware, Cisco and EMC have on our joint vision/strategy/engineering, but the opportunities will always be open.   The things that govern EMC’s thinking at least are first and foremost customer demand (overwhelmingly VMware in the server virtualization space) and then alignment with our strategic goals and vision.

Ok – but that said, back to the discussion at hand…

There were a couple parts of the announcement that were us trying (perhaps failing) to signal that VMware’s role in the VCE coalition is different than Cisco and EMC’s.

1. Note that Acadia is a Cisco/EMC joint venture – not a VMware/Cisco/EMC joint venture?   That’s because that would have been crossing a line that we don’t want to cross, and would adversely affect VMware’s other partnership models.
2. Note how consistently Joe/John used the words “Cisco and EMC, with VMware”?   Cisco and EMC aligning as tightly as we are is possible because we have joint vision, joint strategy, joint engineering, but also (and very importantly) joint enemies.   VMware, Cisco and EMC share joint vision (private clouds), joint strategy, and joint engineering – but some of Cisco/EMC’s enemies are VMware’s partners (and vice versa).   We’re very conscious of that.    It’s very important to everyone (including in EMC) that VMware remain able to operate independently.

Just like people’s doubts about whether we can do this without hurting the channel – I don’t immediately disregard people (like Scott’s here) concerns on the impact of the VCE Coalition to impact VMware’s partnering.   It’s a legitimate concern, one that we share and are trying to be careful about.

Is there anything we can do to “solve” this concerns about VMware’s independence in one fell swoop? 

Well, short of selling them, or not leveraging our resources to integrate and go to market aligned with VMware and letting our competitors run with the ball - both of which would be colossally stupid moves - NO.

Simpletons look for simple answers (in business, not technology), but the world is a bit more complex.    The answer (just like demonstrating ongoing channel senstivity and alignment – as discussed here) – isn’t pretty, or “sound bite simple”, but it’s the truth.  It’s about aligning, integrating, and focusing Cisco and EMC resources around the VMware-powered private cloud use case (which is the defining element of most x86 datacenter and service provider projects), but at the same time giving VMware the room to operate and partner independently.

Are we perfect, no – but it’s a work in process, and we try to prove it every day.

For context – here’s the announcement, and I will also link to the recording of the 3 CEOs discussing what it is, what it isn’t, and what it means.   Here’s also a summary video from John, Joe and Paul.

I’m also glad finally to be able to start talking openly – you should have seen the edits that occured to the VMworld 2009 VMware/Cisco/EMC supersession (SS5240 – which you can watch here) to tiptoe around this (if you do watch it now knowing what we’ve been working on – it’s interesting).   Specifically, the inital versions of that VMworld session called out what we were doing together around Joint Engineering, Joint Solutions, and Joint Support models.   Suffice it to say it go kiboshed by the secret police at all three companies – but we still managed to sneak in a lot of sneak peaks :-)

IF YOU ARE a VMware/Cisco/EMC Employee (and on your intranets) – you can get more content from http://www.vceportal.com

IF YOU ARE part of the public and interested in what we’re doing on this, there is more content here http://privatecloud.com

So, now that the cat’s out of the bag – what exactly are we talking about?

The most important thing isn’t the tech (though that is very cool, and I’ll get to that in a second), or the joint Cisco/EMC/Intel venture (though everyone always focus on that because it is evidence of joint commitment) – it’s an idea.

That idea?   It’s what people who have heard people from VMware (like Paul Maritz or Steve Herrod), or Cisco (like Padmesree Warrior or Ed Bugnion) or EMC (like Joe Tucci or Chuck Hollis or myself) talk in the last year will seem very familiar:

• If you agree that x86 wins (price and price/performance – today mostly, and tomorrow almost entirely), and virtualization is the way to go – it’s possible to build infrastructure based on those assumptions in a much more standardized way, with much more cost-effective and innovative elements, and importantly - leverage VMware and VM-Aware networking, compute, and storage resources to “get out of the plumbing business”.
• This could not only saves a ton of capex dollars, just as importantly, one could get order of magnitude improvements in operational efficiency – instant self-provisioning, end-user chargeback.   This could result in interesting new business and economic proposals, where you could pay-as-you-go as opposed to up front-capex centric models – if you had vendors willing to partner with you in that way.
• It requires infrastructure not only integrated with VMware, but also designed for scale-out, so you can start small, and get as big as you want (otherwise the economic models are whacky).  Also – if you took the engineering resources of industry leaders and applied them in a very focused way against this use case – you could build something so integrated, it would in effect be a software mainframe built out of commodity elements.
• It also requires management that is deeply integrated across the stack – from the infrastructure up to the business application, and that spans the physical and virtual infrastructure.
• Heck – if you could do all that – you’d have standardized building blocks for people building internal clouds, and external clouds (either public or private)

That’s what we jointly announced today – execution against that idea – making the idea real.

To recap – there were 4 major parts of today’s announcement.  I’m going to break this up into 4 posts – one that deals with each.

1. Technology Innovations - Vblock Infrastructure Packages.  Tightly integrated standardized “building blocks”  Click HERE for more on this topic.
2. Integrated Pre-Sales, Services and Support - Vblock Unified Customer Engagement.   Engage like we’re one company, get services like we’re one company, support that is exactly like we are one company.  Click HERE for more on this topic.
3. Solutions Venture and Investment - Acadia. A Cisco-EMC (and Intel) joint venture to build, operate, and transfer Vblock infrastructure to organizations who want to accelerate their journey  Click HERE for more on this topic.
4. Partner Ecosystem Leverage - Vblock Partner Ecosystem.  Click HERE for more on this topic.

There’s huge amounts of detail on each of these things – enough for twenty blog posts (more I bet!).  We’ve been working on this for more than a year (we’ve been plowing away with “intense partnering” for many years, one year ago we got the “engage in joint partnership like nothing else” direction). 

I’m also going to write another one where I will try to answer a question I think we will get often: Where does VMware fit in the VCE Coalition – are they still independent?  The short answer is: ABSOLUTELY.   Go to the link for a more detailed dialog.

Ok, knowing my beloved and technophile readership, you will tend to have come to this link, and not the others (that discuss the other parts of the announcement: integrated pre-sales/services/support; Solutions Venture and Investment; Vblock partner ecosystem).   I’d highly encourage you to look at them, as the business elements are as important as the technical pieces.

Then again, we can’t deny who we are, and I am a nerd at heart that does business too :-)

So – without further ado, let’s discuss the technology innovations!   Read on – this one is long so to spare RSS readers, I’ve broken the post up…

OK – start from the principle that ideally, you would have infrastructure as a service (IaaS) whether it’s at your site, or at a service provider.   Why?  Infrastructure as a service is fluid, dynamic, and more efficient than traditional “per application” static models.    We call this an Internal if you’re inside an enterprise datacenter and External Cloud if you’re in a service provider facility.   If you can link them together (which we think is possible), VMware/EMC/Cisco call that a “Private Cloud”.   If the External Cloud is open on the Internet, it’s often called a “Public Cloud”.

So – what are the ingredients for Infrastructure as a Service?

• Scalable infrastructure – ability to start small, and grow big
• Be able to be efficient at every level possible
• Be able to manage the whole thing top to bottom – where “bottom” is the low-level plumbing, and “top” is the business application.  This is important to maintain “fluidity” (which results from end to end provisioning models coupled with over-subscribed “big pool models”) while delivering the SLAs needed (which derives from end-to-end visibility and understanding context and dependencies at any time – and of course providing the detailed chargeback picture).
• Be as “cookie cutter” as possible – you want standardized building blocks, and use virtualization to be able to apply for many compute purposes.

If that’s the list of ingredients, here’s our cake and the recipe – Vblocks.  Vblocks are the answer to “cookie cutter” bullet, and the ingredients (Cisco UCS, EMC mid-range and enterprise storage, VMware vSphere 4) are the answer to the “Scalable infrastructure”, and “efficient at every level possible” bullet.

Now – the above diagram is actually what a “medium” Vblock looks like.  We call this a Type 1 (targeted for 1000 medium VMs per vBlock, and environments with between 800-3000 VMs).   There is a Type 2 (target is very large enterprise and service providers- with a very large degree of horizontal scaling – for customers with 3000+ VMs).   You can see a 3D model of the Type 2 Vblock here.

Note that the distinction is that a Vblock type 1 scales by adding Vblocks from a storage standpoint, and a Vblock Type 2 scales-out from a storage standpoint – as per my blog post on this “cloud storage architectures” here.  

We’re also finalizing a Type 0 which is the entry level Vblock for customers with less than 800 VMs (and will start very small).   There will be others – but not a TON of others.   The idea is to make this like McDonalds – would you like a combo one, two or three – and do you want fries with that?

That may not sound glorious – but it allows us to define scope down to a point where the amount of variability is still flexible, it’s based off of very efficient, very cost effective components, but can have an end-to-end “software mainframe” model.  

Many customers are off working to create their own Vblocks – often calling it different names, and I’ve heard them all :-)   It’s because fundamentally it’s a good idea, and VMware makes that degree of “horizontal infrastructure standardization” possible.   We want to provide a model where they huge amount of time needed to “home brew” is not needed.  

A customer quote: “we found that reducing our infrastructure variability was the biggest move to making us more flexible for our app owners”.

It also it worth pointing out that this allows (Cisco and EMC) to wring every last ounce out of the configuration – whereas we find that most customers aren’t leveraging all the neat stuff their infrastructure can do.

Some examples – and this is comparing with what we find at most of our customers with more traditional virtualized configurations:

• 30% increase in server utilization (through pushing vSphere 4 further, and denser memory configurations)
• 80% faster dynamic provisioning of storage and server infrastructure (through EMC Ionix UIM, coupled with template-oriented provisioning models with Cisco, VMware, and EMC)
• 40% cost reduction in cabling (fibre / patch cords etc.) and associated labor (through extensive use of 10GbE)
• 50% increase in server density (through everything we do together – so much it’s too long to list)
• 200% increase in VM density (through end-to-end design elements)
• Day to day task automation (through vCenter, UCS Manager and EMC Ionix UIM)
• 30% less power consumption (through everything we do together)
• Minimum of 72 VMs per KW (note that this is a very high VM/power density)

Note that all of the above is before we start to apply the next wave of technology innovations we’ve publicly been discussing (things like solid state, FAST, vStorage APIs for Array Integration, and much much more which are all relatively near term).

That all said – there’s even more to the story. 

A VERY important part is the answer to this bullet from the requirements list:

Be able to manage the whole thing top to bottom – where “bottom” is the low-level plumbing, and “top” is the business application.  This is important to maintain “fluidity” (which results from end to end provisioning models coupled with over-subscribed “big pool models”) while delivering the SLAs needed (which derives from end-to-end visibility and understanding context and dependencies at any time – and of course providing the detailed chargeback picture).

This is where all the EMC Ionix acquisitions and R&D over the last year have been directed.   I love it as a plan comes together :-)

So – first of all – here’s how they integrate in the “big picture” sense:

It’s important that EMC Ionix is trying to be focused.   They are not trying to displace/compete with the big traditional management players, but instead, be so focused on managing the “nearly 100% virtualized, cloud-like provisioned, datacenter, built on Vblock type architectural models”, that in that context, we can compete (ergo not try to replace the existing management toolset).    Our long term view is that in the future, datacenters will have legacy environments, and then these new “islands” that are growing with a core idea of fluidity unlike the legacy.   The legacy will still exist of course.

Each of those blue boxes would be a HUGE post to discuss in detail, but here are the core elements.  I’ll also call out what’s here today, and what’s coming

• VMware vCenter manages the core elements – and nothing does that better. 
• Cisco and EMC continue to have fantastic element managers (things that manage the parts of the VBlock), each of which integrate with vCenter (EMC VM-aware Navisphere as an example)
• EMC Ionix manages the totality, not the elements:
  • EMC Ionix Unified App Stack Management is the role in that stack focused on management of the guest and ESX host (think ESX host profiles on steriods) builds.  It has a strong focus on trying to do this with a focus on efficiency (hence the Fastscale acquisition), but also to have very, very strong compliance and remediation tools.   Today, this is based on EMC Ionix Server Configuration Manager (which you can see here).     We are merging in the core Fastscale elements – which takes what was already a “next generation tool” in Configuresoft – and makes it transformational.
  • EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager’s (or UIM) role can be summed up as “Vblock management” – in other words – all the parts of the infrastructure that support the vSphere 4 environment.   In Q4, this is through extending UCS Manager’s capabilities to add more, and in the early part of next year, this is through complete end to end management of the full stack (including the storage elements themselves).   EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager is integral to Vblocks, and the preferred modus of integrated infrastructure management. 
  • EMC Ionix Data Center Insight (or DCI) role is the part of the management stack that connects the bottom (infrastructure) with the top (applications), makes the connections, gives cross-domain visibility and context.

EMC Datacenter Insight shipped right around VMworld 2009 (Sept this year), and in that VMware/Cisco/EMC supersession, I demoed it – including a UCS module that will ship in Dec.   You can see how that all fits together here:

Youtube is notoriously bad for detailed screens – you can download high resolution in WMV or MOV format.   Remember that while EMC Data Center Insight is GA, the UCS elements in the demonstration GA in December.  

But… Let’s focus on the “Vblock” management layer.  To restate the challenge – the goal is to have a thing that makes utility-like management of a Vblock (or more importantly a series of them), including server + LAN/SAN network (UCS manager does this well for one UCS system) + storage itself.   As with all things in the VMware, Cisco, EMC consortium, we know customers need choice – and any one element is replaceable.  The value proposition is that the things we build are so tightly focused, so tightly integrated, that if you are looking at something like this – the integration value is so high it’s nearly irresistable :-)

You might have noticed the call out about the new EMC Ionix element in the stack as part of the VCE announcement: Unified Infrastructure Manager

This is a critical part of what’s important in a Vblock – much more comprehensive end-to-end management.    Unified Infrastructure  UIM isn’t GA yet, but is very close.    EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager is the preferred Vblocks management model.

The first release of EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager is focused on extending UCS capabilities and will be released this quarter.   It manages compute + network.   The next version, targeted for early 2010, will extend the capabilities (into the actual storage devices themselves) and use cases (push button site configuration against mass template for things like reconfig for disaster recovery).   That early 2010 UIM release manages compute + network + storage as an integrated package.

There’s so much to this news, I’ll do a followup detailed post on UIM v1.0 shortly, as well as what’s in UIM v2.0.

Exciting times indeed!

If there’s a couple things to take away from this:

• Vblock in one sense is simply putting together the best of breed technologies of VMware, Cisco and EMC.   On it’s own – that would be great!
• In the more important sense – it’s trying to be a new consumption model – where compute, network, and storage all come under an integrated management model.  In fact, they become so integrated, that you don’t think of them as separate entities, but rather as a “virtual compute environment”.  You just know you have enough resources to scale to a certain point, both other wise it’s a pool of pooled compute, network and storage resources – fungible and fluidly useable – bringing a new level of economics both capex (higher density) and opex (pay-as-you-go, and use-on-demand).    The fluidity become manageable because you have the tools to manage pools of pools, and the ability to tie it all together so you can see correlation, context, and dependencies in an integrated fashion.

What do you think?   Are we off our rockers – or is this where you want us to go together?

The ultimate expression that a customer agrees with the philosophy of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as a model of the future (both internally and externally) is that they don’t even view the hardware as capital – and start to push their hardware vendors to accept that same model. 

In the end, the core idea is that the infrastructure becomes a service itself to the end customers of IT – whether you are using it internally or externally.   The result is that while many customers will chose to acquire the infrastructure in a more traditional way – many others have been pushing Cisco and EMC for a new model.

These conversations are always interesting – people describe what they’re looking for, but don’t know exactly how to formulate their thoughts. As we discuss it though – there’s clearly a desire for something new.  These usually fall into one of the 3 following types in my experience:

• Some of the more “avant garde traditionalists” still wanted to own the infrastructure, but use a capital-defered acquisition model (utility, but still capex). 
• Others wanted opex oriented models (think of this as “pay for your UCS/V-Max in a usage model”) –
• But at the full extreme of the model there is a pure service, “VM utility” consumption model.  

The first two, Cisco and EMC can do in our existing business structures.  Speaking on the EMC side, we have sold more than $1B of storage this was over the last few years – mostly to service providers, but to some enterprise customers also.    But… The third option required something very new, and didn’t fit into the models Cisco or EMC could bend our existing organizations.

So, we ve formed Acadia.  

Acadia is a Cisco-EMC (and since this all using Intel’s latest stuff – Intel is also in) joint venture to build, operate, and transfer Vblock infrastructure to organizations.  Let me spell this out a bit:

• Build = we will help you get it up and running – taking out all the risk of consuming Vblocks.   It is paid for completely in an opex consumptive model.
• Operate = if you want, we can operate it for you as a managed service
• Transfer = if you decide, you can take it on yourself, and we transfer the intellectual property over to you.  

If you’re considering a outsourced model – you owe it to yourself to look at this from Acadia or from our Vblock partners.   This enables you to get all the upside of outsourced model, but  without the downside of older technology, lower degrees of technical integration (outsourcers generally integrate through brute force, and this results in a higher operational expense model – which is good for them, but bad for customers).  

It’s very important to note a couple things (because I’m sure this will be the source of much FUD):

1. Acadia will offer services directly as well as through our partners (learn more about that here).   The goal of this exercise is not to compete, but rather provide a guiding model.   I think that while some degree of partner/channel apprehension with anything new is understandable, it’s mostly rooted in FUD as competitors try to find leverage – Marc Farley is a strong player at a competitor (3PAR) and was even doing that yesterday before the announcement as leaks started to become fast and furious.   Expect to see more from other competitors of EMC, Cisco, and to a lesser degree – VMware.    Let me explain why I think it’s good for our partners.  It may seems to be a bit complex for those with a simplistic world-view, but the reality is that we’re very focused on enabling as many routes to customer value as we can.  It’s analogous to why we’ve launched www.emccis.com – it’s not to compete with all the vCloud partners, but rather to provide a real proof point example.   To be a real proof point – it has to be real.   Also, it’s important to be pragmatic.  

   Here’s a question – is HP a partner-friendly company?  Surely they are.  But, yet – they sell direct, and they acquired EDS.   How is that possible?   The answer is basic - this isn’t a zero-sum game.   Through this process, and what we learn – we share it all with our partners.

1. It’s important to note that we did this as a new joint venture so that it would be able to operate independently from Cisco and EMC, but still leverage the other elements of this announcement (the technology innovations, and the joint presales/service/support model)
2. Acadia will be operating in the market starting the first quarter of 2010.

This part of the announcement highlights that what we’re talking about here is not only new technology, and new ways of managing and operating IT infrastructure, but entirely new ways to consume it. 

What do you think – is it possible for EMC/Cisco thought this joint venture help our customers?   Can we do it in a way that helps our Vblock partners and Cisco/EMC resellers?