Thank you!

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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?

We know that the alternative exists from companies (and respected competitiors) like HP and IBM to offer a “full stack” to customers.  

We also know who we (Cisco/EMC) are – we are best-of-breed vendors – innovating faster, integrating with VMware further.  

To understand what this means – look for VMware-integration (as opposed to “works with” interoperability) with HP and IBM and it’s a short. relatively minimal list.   They are relatively slow with basics like SRM support, and generally non-existent with innovative products that significantly leverage deep VMware integration (think VN-link, PowerPath/VE, vCenter plugins, etc).  The examples they do have tend to come from the things they “kinda” do (aka IBM reselling NetApp – but representing only single digit percentages of NetApp’s annual revenues).

If you ask the “all-in-one” vendors (just one example) for their plans for integration into the VMware networking stack, or a vStorage plugin, or demonstrating their vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) stuff for EVA/HDS, ES/DS/XIV, well – it’s not there, and if you’re a storage vendor and don’t have VAAI demos now, you’re missing the next major wave of integration opportunity.   Knowing what I know (we are in the midst of finalizing our joint 2 year engineering priorities now) about the degree of engineering focus here – that divergence, profound as it is even now, will tend only to get broader over time.

Look, that may sound harsh, but conversely they do what they do well, and historically a lot better than “best of breed”: they offer a single throat to choke engagement and support model.  

So, if “integrated sales/service/support” is that’s something that “best of breed” vendors like EMC and Cisco haven’t done as well historically it meant that picking best of breed required customers to “home-brew” integration, and work with all sorts of support models.    Many customers look at “best of breed” and say “look, this IT stuff has so many moving parts, I’ll give it to HP as a full stack, even though I may like the capabilities of EMC/Cisco”.   

This is part of the Virtual Compute Environment announcement is a large-scale attempt to offer a new, third option – best-of-breed, but so integrated from a business standpoint that they look like one.   We’ve been constructing it for the past year.  Still have a ways to go, but it’s mature enough to be something that hasn’t existed in the IT landscape that I know of. 

There’s a lot of detail on each of these elements (pre-sales, services and support).

On the “presales  and PoC support” part of things is that Chad’s army will grow.   I hate to keep recruiting here – but…

If you like what you’re hearing and are a “warrior monk” level system/sales engineer type – with mad, mad skills on VMware, Cisco and EMC – and can present to a CIO one moment and then go crazy hands on in a Proof-of-concept the next – I really, really want to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.   Those of you who have reached out already, we’ll be talking soon.

Now, while I’m always recruiting :-)….   The coolest example is the support side, IMO.  Anyone who has ever initiated a support call with any vendors knows what a difference good support can make vs. bad support.   Normal baseline “partnering” is to setup “joint escalation procedures”.   These work well enough, but are a pale substitution for a truly integrated support model.   So, what we’ve been quietly doing is :

• taking our key global escalation support engineers across the three companies and cross-training them in each other’s technologies.   This new group forms the core of the new support model.  In number, they are greater than the total number of global support engineers at many pure-play companies :-)
• We have connected up the primary support sites with Cisco Telepresence and enabled the people to have direct systems access to each of the communities – they can see, open and manage cases across each of the company systems via a unified inter-company collaboration tool
• Going forward, we will be expanding these integrated support teams in our RTP and Cork facilities, where we are also expanding our joint case re-creation labs.

This joint support model will be available for customer regardless of whether they buy from the Cisco/EMC and VMware coalition, from Vblock partners, or from the new joint venture designed to sell Vblocks as a service.

Pause and think about this for a second:

1. Think about the amount of work and “partner cooperation” to have people from each of the three companies to be able to access each other’s systems, and to take top people and cross-train them on technologies not from their “home” company… And think about what an improved support model that can represent.
2. If you thought VMware, EMC, and Cisco were a good choice yesterday – are we a better choice today, with integrated pre-sales, services, and support models?

So…

• I would love to hear from you if you’re one of those “warrior monk” types – they are precious.
• I would love to hear about your EMC/VMware/Cisco support stories (good and bad – the good are nice, but the bad I run with and fix as several readers can vouch for)
• I would love to hear from you on your thoughts on this new model!

Our partner ecosystem is very, very, VERY important to Cisco, EMC and VMware.   As we looked at all the models of what we could do – making sure that it was upside for our partners was first and foremost in all the dialogs.

As I said in the post on the joint Cisco/EMC (and Intel) venture part of the announcement here, 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.

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.

All the Vblock intellectual capital will be shared with VBlock partners.   Acadia will also be sharing their intellectual capital with partners as well.  The work on integrated pre-sales

In fact, many partners – both systems integrators, and service providers have all started lining up behind Vblocks.    Here are just a few examples:

Most of the vCloud Express launch partners are using the VCE coalition, and want to move forward with a formal Vblock model.   Examples are Terremark, Alphawest, Savvis, Orange and SunGard.

If you want to see (in spite of some of the stuff competitors are saying negatively in response to our leadership position) an example of how we can work together to accelerate our partners, you can look at Terremark’s vCloud Express page here.

If you want to be a Vblock partner (reseller, channel, systems integrator, service provider) – then we want to partner with you.   If you are an existing EMC, Cisco and VMware partner/reseller (and we have a very strong partner overlap) – you will be receiving more tools and support around this new model.

Back in the old days (before I was at EMC – so I can’t comment out of personal experience) – EMC was legendary for an aggressive direct sales force.   Channel was anathema to the company.    Now – we still have a long, long way to go – and the importance of that lesson was burned into our collective brain.   EMC went from “worst to first” in the Everything Channel (www.crn.com) Annual Report Card in 2006, and have won first place in the networked storage category ever since.    This is the result of hard work, and focus.   Transforming oneself is very hard.   It’s a journey, we’re always working on improving.

But – let there be no doubt… Channels, Resellers and Partners are critical to all three companies.

So – if you’re a partner of the 3 companies – I would love to hear your thoughts!

I remember the first time Donatelli (formerly at EMC, now at HP) told me: “in 2-3 years, there will be no place for a high-performance rotating rust disk, we’ll only have solid state and very large slow magnetic media” (that was about 1 year ago).

I was a bit skeptical.   

I was also talking to a customer about it yesterday, and we debated about cross-over points (not whether it would happen, but just timelines).

This just clears away any of my skepticism.

So – this article is on Anandtech – one of my favorite non-storage related IT sites.   If you don’t want to read the whole article, jump to this page.

Or – let me summarize it for you.   Read on if interested, or if after reading the article the “tada!” epiphany doesn’t jump right out at you.

Here’s the standout thing in the article:

• Kingston 40GB drive (the purple line on the chart from Anandtech), based on the 35nm Intel X-25M
• Price: $115 before rebate ($85 after mail-in rebate, but am not going to assume that)
• delivered 4000 4K IOps random writes.
• delivered 7500 4K IOps random reads

Don’t get the big deal?   First – look at the odd ones out.  Those are fast spinning magnetic media disks.

Still don’t get it?   Ok, let me make a comparison.   Sure, a 1.5TB 7200 SATA drive can be bought for $115.   But it will do 80 4K random write IOps.

So:

• Expressed as GB/$ = the SATA drive is a 38x better deal
• Expressed as IOps/$ = the SSD drive is a 50x better deal (for write IO workloads, for reads, it’s 93x better).   The SSD delivers 34 IOps per dollar.   The SATA drive deliver 0.69 IOps per dollar.

To match the random read IO performance of that $115 Solid State disk, you would need 50 of the 1.5TB SATA disks.

But surely, if you were looking for performance, you wouldn’t use the SATA disk, right?   You would probably use a 15K RPM FC disk.   Those cost about $1000.  They do about 200 random write IOPs.  So, you would need 20 of them to do what that $115 SSD could do.    That’s 0.2 IOps per dollar – or 170x more expensive than the SSD on a IOps/$ basis.  Oh, you think SAS 15K drives are a better deal?  They are – than FC disks.   A 15K SAS disk on Pricewatch costs about $210, and they also do about 200 IOps.  that’s 0.95 IOps per dollar – or 37x more expense than the SSD on a IOps/$ basis. 

Also – all the “more for less” items are purely expressing acquisition cost.   Solid state is also orders of magnitude better in power efficiency and density.

Now, sometimes, performance is focused on bandwidth (MBps) – this is usually for sequential IO workloads – very common in backup to disk use cases, and in those cases, spinning rust does OK, and often faster pipes (10GbE for example) are “efficiency technologies” – enabling you to get more for less, and so is big SATA and fantastic dedupe (we do them all of course :-)

For most production workloads in the 4K to 64K average IO size, performance it tends to be gated by IOps.

Ok – fast forward this just a LITTLE bit.   a 32GB commerical MLC-based SSD cost $900 near the beginning of this year.   Now, it’s 10x cheaper.

Today, there’s only one manufacturer that has a LOCK on the “enterprise” SSD (or Enterprise Flash Disk) market – a company called STEC, and we can put them in all our arrays.  We’ve sold out for the last 6 quarters.   I also got some great customer feedback after I first observed that (this is a customer who use EMC arrays with solid state right now).   From DaveFW on twitter:

“RT: @sakacc re:SSD Its had a HUGE impact on our production oracle database already”

“RT: @sakacc re:SSD we had jobs that ran 2 days take 10 hours now with no impact to users”

But today, without automated tiering, and with the $/GB being skewed against SSDs – they are reserved for applications that have low capacity, but high IOps workloads.  Theses aren’t unusually (they are everywhere), but they aren’t universal.

There is more to the story, however.  EMC is one of Intel’s biggest (in fact I believe THE biggest) non-server OEMs.   We use Intel’s CPUs everwhere, and are now nicely riding the Intel Nehalem roadmap.   Pat Gelsinger is here now which also helps.   I can tell you for a fact that the Intel Flash folks are consistently making progress towards enterprise-class SLCs.   Samsung is pushing hard too.   BTW – I’m assuming no “star trek” technology like phase change memory, this will happen with the basic technology that exists today.

What will it mean when a SSD has the same $/GB and 100x better $/IOps than a 15K 500GB SAS disk?

I no longer doubt what Donatelli said.  

I also don’t doubt that the arrays of the future will all need the ability to leverage a combination of very large SATA and very large solid state storage.   The curve on this is a classic innovators dilemma example of a disruptive technology coming into an existing market.   The external forces will simply be too strong to ignore.

Exciting times in storage land – exciting times! 

I’ve got to get myself one of those kingston drives!!!!

Would be fun to get input from people on when they think the inflection point (volume of solid state used in enterprise servers and enterprise storage has a higher volume than high performance spinning media) will occur…   Please, comment!

So – what does it do?

Well – you can run it before you setup a VMware Site Recovery Manager recovery plan, and it makes it much easier.   It will summarize whether the underlying replication pre-requisites have been met for individual VMs (some customer have VMs with VMDKs on multiple datastores, or VMs that have multiple RDMs), or entire datastores (some customers have spanned extents).   This is an incredibly powerful capability, and makes SRM+Replication setup much easier.

And… you can run it after you execute a Site Recovery Manager recovery plan, and use it to failback, including every step except sequencing and IP address changes.

Where do you get it?  It automatically installs when you download the MirrorView SRA from VMware here.

Here’s a great short demo of this awesome tool in action – check it out!

You can download a high-rez version of this demo here in WAV and MOV format.

Thanks to a couple people:

First of all – the incredible Giri Basava.   Part of CLARiiON engineering, he single-handedly developed the MirrorView Insight for VMware tool.   Giri is always awesome and coming up with great innovate ideas.   Above and beyond that one thing I admire about him in particular is amazing customer focus.   Whenever we’ve had a Mirrorview SRM case, bam – get it to Giri and it’s resolved.   Giri – you are incredible!

Second – in “Chad’s army” – Alex Tanner and Ben Dunning.   Alex – for his great work on this tool in beta – a lot of the things people will like are a result of Alex working hand in hand with Giri.  Alex has great “customers will dig this” instincts.   Ben - thanks for working on this demonstration video!

So, to recap for customers using EMC replication products and VMware:

• If you’re sitting on the fence about SRM – stop :-)   Join the more than 2000 SRM customers around the world – the majority of which are using EMC Storage Replication Adapters.  With SRM 4 adding vSphere 4 support, N:1 replication topologies, NFS datastores support, and faster recovery plan execution – there’s no reason to wait, particularly if you are virtualizing mission critical applications that need disaster recovery.   At EMC we’re happy to help you – regardless of your protocol, regardless of your scale, regardless of your recovery point objectives.  We can cover it all – heck, we can cover heterogenous (non EMC storage) use cases too!
• If you’re an EMC/VMware partner – make sure you check out the standard service kits available on Powerlink.  These can help you work with your customers to accelerate their VMware Site Recovery Manager deployments. 
• SRM 4 coverage: Celerra (both block and NAS), CLARiiON Mirrorview, and Recoverpoint SRAs have fully completed their VMware qual and are available.   In fact, I was happy to see that our engineering and qual work paid off – and Celerra and Mirrorview were there day one of the SRM 4 launch.
• The only EMC adapter who’s qual has not yet finished is SRDF, and it’s SRM 4 SRA is just about done.   Should be any day now.
• Each of the latest EMC remote replication adapters and replication products does something above and beyond the SRM basics at no extra cost.
  • EMC Celerra Replicator: has a vCenter plugin that automates failback for iSCSI (associating VM objects and making it simple to reverse replication, present back to the production site, renaming datastores, handling VMware un/registration, automating VM power-on activities)
  • EMC Mirrorview: has Mirrorview Insight for iSCSI, FC, and FCoE use cases.   This actually does even more than the Celerra failback tool – including changing VM networks.
  • EMC Recoverpoint itself directly integrates with vCenter, making mapping of dependencies and configuration a piece of cake, for iSCSI, FC, and FCoE use cases.

So.. What’s next on the topic of VMware-related DR?

• We couldn’t leave the Symm out with all this additional bonus stuff :-) The next SRDF SRA has tools to make configuration, setup, test, and failback much easier – this has been the #1 requested feature for SRDF use cases.
• The next version of the Celerra vCenter plugins expands the failback capability a fair amount.  While the Celerra SRA supports iSCSI and NFS, right now the failback capability is iSCSI only.  NFS failback support is around the corner.   Some additional failover handling (VMware network reconfig, start sequence) are all also being worked on.
• I’m corralling the product teams to make sure that the good ideas that they came up with independently get integrated across the product portfolios (I know this is what customers would like us to do).
• We’re heads down with VMware on the next major rev of SRM, which does a LOT.   Ultimately this will be the right long term vehicle for completely exhausive failback (and other powerful workflows!) management – and a lot of the lessons learnt from all this innovating extra tools we’ve developed are being applied.   Still early days down that project, but SRM will continue to expand it’s functionality!!