Category Archives: EMC

Summary of Monday’s Announcements at Dell EMC World 2017

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As you might have expected from a conference that was essentially created by combining two huge tech events (Dell World and EMC World), there were a large number of announcements made on the first day of Dell EMC World 2017. To help you manage the influx of so much information, this post will attempt to summarize them for you.

Dell EMC made announcements across the following areas:

  • New PowerEdge Servers
  • New VxRail Hyperconverged Hardware, Software, and Pricing Model
  • Software-Defined Storage
  • New Storage Arrays
  • New Integrated Data Protection Appliance
  • New Open Networking Products
  • New Flexible Consumption Models
  • Dell Technologies Venture Practice Emerges from Stealth

I’ll review each of these in more detail below: Continue reading →

A Closer Look at the All-Flash Isilon, aka Nitro

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isilon-all-flashOn 19 October, Dell EMC made an announcement about the All-Flash Isilon nodes. This product line has been code-named “Project Nitro”. The announcement was timed to occur during the first-ever Dell EMC World event.

I’ll walk through what was announced, and then provide additional details.

Continue reading →

EMC Announces New Mid-Range Unified Storage Platform – Unity

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Today, at EMC World, EMC announced their new mid-range unified storage platform, called Unity.

Some time last summer, I remember thinking that it was weird that we hadn’t seen a “Mega-Launch” event announcement from EMC. VNX2 seemed due for a refresh, but nothing happened. Now I know why — the EMC team was working on Unity instead.

I’ll be clear up-front: Unity is NOT “VNX3”. This is a completely-new architecture, and one that finally actually delivers on the “Unified” promise that VNX never quite achieved. Continue reading →

What’s New in Isilon OneFS 8.0

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Isilon OneFSYou may remember that back in November EMC announced new features coming to Isilon. Most of the message focused on the IsilonSD Edge virtual appliance, but a lot of the rest had to do with “OneFS.NEXT” (which we all expected to be numbered 8.0).

About 3 weeks ago, OneFS 8.0 became GA. The availability of the new software happened with very little announcement and absolutely no fanfare. I found this somewhat surprising given how much EMC had hyped up the pre-announcement so far in advance.

With the availability of 8.0, two other new things become available: the new CloudPools software and IsilonSD Edge. This post covers everything that’s new. Continue reading →

EMC Elect 2016 – Just the Facts

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EMC Elect 2016Yesterday, EMC announced the list of those who had been awarded the EMC Elect designation for 2016.

The EMC Elect is EMC’s community recognition program. Now in its fourth year, the Elect program seeks to recognize those who exhibit engagement with the EMC community, commitment to be “part of the EMC conversation day in and day out, offering thoughtful feedback and staying optimistic in [their] language”, and leadership.

This year there are 72 EMC Elect designees. This number is the lowest of any of the years of the program. You can see the official list of the 2016 EMC Elect here.

Last year, I posted my “by the numbers” breakdown of the 2105 EMC Elect membership. In the space below, I’ll do the same for 2016. Continue reading →

EMC Announces Plans to Make Isilon Announcements in 2016

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[NOTE: This post has been updated with answers to some of the questions I had at the time of the announcement. The updates are inline, below.]

Today, EMC made some announcements about some new Isilon products that they hope to make Generally Available (GA) in “early 2016”. If you’ve been following Isilon closely like I do, nothing in the announcements will be a big surprise as everything talked about is something the Isilon folks have been talking about in roadmap presentations for a while now.

After presenting more marketing about the Data Lake message (I’ll summarize: Put all your data in one big place. That place is Isilon. That Isilon Data Lake can now (OK, in “early 2016”) be expanded from the Core to the Edge and even to the Cloud”), the announcement covers plans to announce:

  • A software-only version of Isilon called “IsilonSD Edge”
  • An extension to SmartPools allowing tiering to public or private cloud called “CloudPools”
  • An upcoming new version of OneFS

I’ll go through each of these, plus more, in some detail below. Continue reading →

Dell to Acquire EMC for $67 Billion – GeekFluent’s Thoughts

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Today, Dell, Inc. announced that they — along with private-equity firms Silver Lake, MSD Partners, and Temasek — have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire EMC Corporation for $33.15 a share. This price comes out to approximately $67Billion in cash and stock, making it the single largest pure-tech takeover ever.

Continue reading →

EMC World 2015 Discount Code Giveaway

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As in past years, EMC has given members of the EMC Elect community registration codes good for a $150 discount on the cost of this year’s EMC World registration.

Thanks to the generosity of my fellow EMC Elect members Hrvoje Crvelin, Ian Anderson, Mohammed Salem, Fabio Chiodini, Brett Sinclair, and Rob Peglar I currently have access to a total of 20 discount codes to give away.

There are a couple restrictions on the codes:

  • Discounts cannot be applied retroactively — the codes can only be used on a new registration.
  • Discounts cannot be combined with the discount given by any other registration code.
  • The codes are specific, so if I give you one don’t give it to a co-worker to use, too. Instead, send your co-worker to me and I can get them their own code.
  • The codes expire on 6 April 2015.
  • Discounts are not available to EMC employees.

So, if you:

  • Are not an EMC employee
  • Are not yet registered for EMC World 2015
  • Will register for EMC World before 6 April 2015
  • Would like a $150 discount on that registration

leave a comment on this post letting me know you meet the above criteria and I will email you your personal discount code.

Hope to see you at EMC World!

Journey to EMC Elect 2015 (with Bonus Number-Crunching)

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EMC Elect 2015Today, EMC announced the list of names of those people named to the EMC Elect program for 2015.

Now in its third year, the EMC Elect program seeks to recognize engagement with, commitment to, and leadership in the EMC technical community-at-large. EMC has been very active in reaching out to the Elect community, working to involve them in events, and providing access to product information and technical resources.

I am honored and pleased to have been named to the EMC Elect program for the third year in a row. This year a total of 102 people were named, approximately a 27.5% increase over the total named for 2014. You can see the full list of names here.

My involvement with the EMC Elect 2015 goes a little deeper than that. I was one of twelve members of the EMC Elect 2014 who were asked to be on the panel of judges to help select the EMC Elect 2015. Continue reading →

EMC Announces New High-Density Isilon Node – the HD400

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EMC Isilon HD400 NodeYesterday, EMC announced the addition of a new node type to their Isilon scale-out storage line. This new node offers higher-density storage than any other Isilon nodes, specifically 354TB raw capacity in 4U of rack space.

The new node, known internally at EMC as “Colossus”, has been launched as the HD400. I’ll walk through the details below. Continue reading →