Well what can I say, Day 1 was a blur, as was D2 and D3. Between keynotes, sessions and solutions exchange track time the ability to formulate my thoughts and introduce them here has escaped me. But anyways here is the synopsis..

Session1-Symmetrix V-Max Series w/Enginuity Overview by Rick DiFabio

What generally became of this session was presenting an understanding of the V-Max storage hardware and architecture. There was probably more pertinent information along the way but all the hardware talk up front clogged my comprehension and made my mind drift, again hardware is hardware…

Industry standard components, scale up and scale out, and a massive redesign (3X more performance and capacity) were all put a few of the engineering feats presented in this session. The speaker focused on the following core components: Engines, Directors, MIBE’s (or Matrix Interconnect Board Enclosures) and Service Processors. Configuration minimums and maximums were also voiced as well as the introduction of the V-Max/SE (Single Engine), which encompasses the following:

• 2 Directors, 16 FC ports, 8 FICON, and 8 iSCSI
• 120 disk base expandable to 360 or 300TB, 128G of cache

V-Max (non-SE) is capable of 1-8 engines as well as 2-16 director boards. 128 FE ports, 64 FICON, 64 iSCSI ports, and up to 1TB of cache bind this demon. Additionally the system holds 96-2400 drives which tips the scales at 2 PB.

Physical locale within the cabinet of each component was also made available.  Enough of that on to the keynote…

Joe Tucci and Paul Maritz Keynote

First up, Tucci himself. The message was clear, proliferation of the Virtual Data Center (or Private Clouds) echoed through the conference hall. According to EMC the following are top priorities in IT camps nowadays, what other company can offer such a broad portfolio of products to cover each of these hot spots….no one by EMC.

• Storage consolidation / utilization
• Business continuity
• Back-up to disk
• Data de-duplication
• Compression
• Automated tiered storage
• Virtual (thin) provisioning
• Unified storage

Interesting yet blatantly obvious slide in relation to server virtualization on storage…

• 23% on External disk
• 28% on NAS
• 48% within VMware Environments, what percentage is Hyper-V oh wait?

Maritz, enter stage right annnnnnd present the same content that was given during the vSphere launch, thanks…missed it?..check it here.

Session2:Fiber Channel over Ethernet, iSCSI and the Converged Data Center by Stu Miniman

This session focused on FCoE and its components, the processes and hurdles to get us to the converged data center and peripheral technologies and protocols such as iSCSI (its place), 10Gb, and the lossless Ethernet. The presenter was the always enlightening Stuart Miniman from EMC. I have to say I took little notes in this session of which I am kicking myself now but I will say I was totally enthrawed in @stu depth of knowledge and passion for driving this technology from the inside out. If it has to do with FCoE at EMC, miniman is driving it at some level. For those that are interested check out @stu blog here. Excellent Session all in all. 

Related articles by Zemanta