EMC Unity Makes Flash Storage Simple

emc unity emcworld 2016 faceplate

If you were looking for the announcement of “VNX 3” at EMC World you may be disappointed… but you shouldn’t be. Instead what you will find is an all new, built from the flash up, midrange storage device. EMC Unity was built with four key and very clear goals: simple, all flash, rich data services, and affordability.

Unity provides the most complete set of data services on the market from day 1, including all of the features necessary for deep VMware integration, complete Microsoft integration, and access to all of the latest data capabilities: VASA, vVOL’s, SMB3, NFS, CIFS, and more.  With all of these advanced features and functions it is tough to keep everything simple, but EMC has knocked it out of the park with a very easy to use HTML5 interface. NO MORE JAVA !!! From one simple interface you can create protection schedules for file, block, and vVOLs using unified replication and snapshots.

Sure the simple interface is just my opinion, but EMC also took it a step further and ran some third parties tests with Mad Pow. They compared the interface to a some others in the market and were blown away.

“EMC is setting the standard for storage simplicity” – Mad Pow

EMC Unity EMC World

EMC Unity was designed for all flash but also has a hybrid option as well and the ability to tier to the cloud. With the all flash configurations you can get up to 80TB in a single 2U shelf. For the ultimate in options you can also have a virtualized Unity appliance in the data center to serve as replication target or to deploy for dev test scenarios.

emc unity flash optimized design

When I say that EMC Unity is designed for flash, the above image demonstrates the key differences in legacy hybrid arrays trying to act as an all flash array. Typically the NVRAM in legacy hybrid arrays is small and fills up quickly. With Unity you can utilize the full system cache, that also scales as you add more flash drives. Eliminating the NVRAM bottleneck.

With the all new storage architecture, some new space efficient features are included. No Storage left behind, meaning no reserved space for snapshots and free space is returned back to the pool when snapshots are removed or deleted. Built in copy data services allow fast and space efficient, pointer based snapshots. Replication is just as efficient, only sending data based on snapshot deltas.

The best part about all of these features I have described is the simplicity. No longer do you need an entire team to manage storage. You can now do it with your eyes closed… well you might have to peak to see the screen 😉

 


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