EMC has launched VMAX Cloud Edition, an update to the previously announced VMAX SP. While SP was targeted to service providers, EMC found enterprises and others who provide IT as a service, be it for internal or external clients. The VMAX Cloud Edition is more encompassing and serves the storage needs for anyone who needs to provision application storage in a self-service model. VMAX Cloud Edition promises to bring enterprise-grade storage with a simple deployment model that includes a self-service portal, pre-configured service level catalog, metering and chargeback reporting and APIs to enable connectivity with other business application needs.
EMC has launched VMAX Cloud Edition, an update to the previously announced VMAX SP. While SP was targeted to service providers, EMC found enterprises and others who provide IT as a service, be it for internal or external clients. The VMAX Cloud Edition is more encompassing and serves the storage needs for anyone who needs to provision application storage in a self-service model. VMAX Cloud Edition promises to bring enterprise-grade storage with a simple deployment model that includes a self-service portal, pre-configured service level catalog, metering and chargeback reporting and APIs to enable connectivity with other business application needs.
While VMAX Cloud Edition provides a new usage model, the technology centers around the proven VMAX 10K, 20K and 40K architectures. Deployments of VMAX Cloud Edition can start as small as 50TB and can scale up to 10PB with additional hardware. The magic of the Cloud offering isn’t necessarily capacity based however, the core benefits are more around management and speed of deployment.
According to EMC it takes just 5 minutes to provision storage for an application using the VMAX Cloud Edition platform. EMC simplifies storage deployment by providing service level options that vary based on capacity and performance needs. These service levels are pre-vetted by EMC, meaning the typical steps followed to design and test application service levels can be disposed of, leading to rapid storage provisioning that matches the need of the application. The entire solution is fluid as well, so as an application’s needs change, it’s a simple process to switch to a higher or lower service level to accommodate. EMC breaks down the available service levels as follows, each can be tuned to some degree based on the underlying VMAX configuration:
- Bronze (highest capacity per price) Use Case Examples: Archive, file and print servers, application development, and testing
- Silver Use Case Examples: Decision support data warehouse, messaging and collaboration applications, small less critical virtual machine applications
- Gold Use Case Examples: Mainstream business applications
- Platinum Use Case Examples: Mission critical OLTP and ERP applications (On-line Transaction Processing / Enterprise Resource Planning)
- Diamond (highest performance per price) Use Case Examples: Performance critical Applications
Pricing and Availability
VMAX Cloud Edition will be available March 7th. The cost model is linear per service level TB, systems start at 50TB and scale to 10PB.
