EMC VPLEX Geo Stretches Data Center Walls Across Continents

EMC Corporation announced new EMC VPLEX Geo technology that stretches data center walls across continents, enabling the resources of disparate storage systems in geographically dispersed data centers to be federated together and utilized as a single pool of virtual storage.  

When combined with virtual servers it is an enabler of private and hybrid cloud computing and changes the way data centers are designed and information technology is delivered.

Since the first generation of VPLEX technology was introduced last May – with the ability to aggregate resources within a single data center or between data centers less than 100km apart – the technology has been deployed as the foundation of cloud computing by organizations worldwide. VPLEX Geo enables data mobility, availability and collaboration through active/active data over distance – the ability to non-disruptively move thousands of virtual machines and petabytes of information thousands of miles, allowing customers to dynamically balance workloads and easily shift IT operations out of the way of regional disasters.

Additionally, EMC announced several new capabilities
for all versions of VPLEX today including:

• The latest version of the VPLEX operating system improves storage efficiency by enabling VPLEX to non-disruptively move or copy virtually provisioned or thinly provisioned devices across EMC and non-EMC arrays, allowing storage to be allocated and consumed only as it is needed.
• Added support for some of the most common midrange storage systems, including those from NetApp and HP, enables more data center resources to be federated.
• New software capabilities that take the time and complexity out of failovers by constantly monitoring two VPLEX clusters and acting as an independent third-party safeguard and arbitrator that keeps applications online in the event of a failure.
• VPLEX hardware improvements save space and speed performance. New, smaller rack-mounted clusters include more powerful Intel multi-core processors, PCI Gen 2 cards for faster throughput, and new 10 Gigabit Ethernet WAN interfaces for faster communications between clusters.
• The addition of VPLEX products into the EMC Velocity Solution Provider Program, enabling EMC resellers to build solutions and offer storage federation technology to their customers.  
• New EMC Proven Solutions assist customers in leveraging EMC VPLEX Geo with business critical applications, such as Microsoft SQL, SharePoint and SAP in a Hyper-V environment. EMC offers a range of EMC Proven Solutions for VPLEX, providing best-practices for implementations in both VMware and Microsoft environments.

"Our environment is nearly 100% virtualized and we needed a solution that would make our data dynamically available and mobile between the two data centers.  VPLEX Metro with its active/ active configuration helps us achieve higher levels of availability, mobility and resource utilization between the two data centers," said Mario Scimone , CTO, La Spezia Container Terminal S.p.A.

"The market for wind turbines is growing globally and our IT infrastructure is constantly expanding to meet the needs of our business of developing, producing and servicing them. VPLEX Geo gives us the flexibility we require by linking our two German data centers that are 120km (75 miles) apart. It allows us to take distance out of the equation when allocating resources and providing high availability to our users around the world," said Carsten Fraszczak, Head of Server & Network Management, REpower Systems AG.

"Cancer Treatment Centers of America had the admirable goal – and board-driven mandate – to build and deploy an IT infrastructure with the goal of achieving 100% uptime.  To achieve this they engaged Ahead to design and implement this complex and mission critical infrastructure in their new production data center with redundancy built into both the physical data center as well as within the IT infrastructure.  In order to prepare for the worst-case scenario of a total storage array failure, we introduced VPLEX to the environment in order to guarantee automated failover and no interruption to host I/O.  With VPLEX Metro deployed within a single data center we are able to meet all of the client’s requirements of achieving the highest level of availability," said Brett Foy, Technology Consultant, Ahead.

"Organizations worldwide ranging from enterprises to public cloud providers have been searching for ways to pool their dispersed storage assets to create a global storage platform for their rapidly growing repertoire of cloud applications. EMC’s VPLEX Geo will bring customers one step closer to the realization of boundary-less storage for cloud computing," said Raghu Raghuram, senior vice president and general manager, Virtualization and Cloud Platforms, VMware.

"As part of our cloud services strategy, we rely on our key partners. EMC’s VPLEX technology allows us to serve our clients more easily by moving our virtual storage environment through multiple data centers when their business demands it," said Ken Stephens, senior vice president of Global Strategy and Innovation, ACS, a Xerox Company.

"Over the past year, Brocade and EMC have collaborated to successfully deploy VPLEX-based business continuity solutions that allow customers to dynamically migrate data and applications across data centers without incurring downtime.  The extended distance and simplified management capabilities of EMC’s next-generation VPLEX Geo virtual storage products significantly enhance the value of our joint solution, which integrates the Brocade DCX backbone director including FCIP, Brocade MLX Series routers, Brocade CES Series switches, Brocade ServerIron ADX Series application delivery controllers and the Brocade VDX Ethernet fabric switch. Together, we will continue to enable enterprises to accelerate their virtualization and private-cloud initiatives, while achieving the highest levels of application performance, mobility and availability," said Doug Ingraham, vice president, product management and marketing, Data Center Products Group, at Brocade.

"EMC VPLEX combined with Ciena’s wide/metro area-networking solutions ensures premium-level, carrier-class network services for any cloud endeavor – whether public, private or hybrid in nature – and enables dynamic bandwidth capabilities to effortlessly re-provision and move workloads between remote data centers at a low cost.  Together we are powerful market force in helping enterprises realize the true benefits of on-demand architectures and intelligent virtualized networks," said Philippe Morin, senior vice president, global products group at Ciena.

"EMC VPLEX Geo provides dynamic mobility and availability of applications by federating storage across data centers.  By integrating VPLEX with Cisco Data Center Interconnect (DCI) technologies such as OTV and LISP, IT organizations can seamlessly expand application capacity across data centers as well as migrate workloads fast and transparently between physical data center locations," said Walt Blomquist, Vice President Systems Architecture and Strategy Unit, Cisco.

"Silver Peak and EMC are shattering barriers for application mobility and collaboration over geographically distributed environments.  The tight integration of Silver Peak’s data center class WAN optimization with VPLEX Geo means customers can now use low cost WAN infrastructure and achieve the same or better performance than on more expensive dedicated WAN links. The result is dramatic cost savings and increased flexibility that ensures ‘anytime-anywhere’ access to applications and data around the world," said Marc Trimuschat, vice president of business development & alliances for Silver Peak.

"VPLEX Geo is key technology that will further accelerate both private and hybrid cloud adoption. It is changing the way organizations think about IT, from data center design to business continuity. Fundamental to this is active/active data over distance. It is the inherent benefit of VPLEX Geo – the ability to fully utilize two separate, geographically separated data centers, including from service providers, as a single shared resource that can be dynamically shifted as needed," said Brian Gallagher, President, EMC Enterprise Storage Division

VPLEX Geo is scheduled to be available in Summer 2011. Other VPLEX capabilities announced will be available this quarter.