EMC VSPEX Solution for Virtualized SharePoint

EMC Corporation announced VSPEX Proven Infrastructure configurations optimized for virtualized Microsoft SharePoint environments.

VSPEX provides customers the power to choose the hypervisor, server, and network technology they prefer to go along with EMC’s VNX and VNXe unified storage and Data Domain, Avamar and NetWorker backup and recovery solutions to address their SharePoint environments.

The simple, efficient and flexible VSPEX for SharePoint configuration can scale from 1,000 users up to 10,000 users and can be used with all of the private cloud solutions in the VSPEX catalog. Since its April 2012 launch, EMC partners have sold hundreds of VSPEX, which offer configurations enabling channel partners to accommodate customer deployment preferences.

EMC also announced updates for all 14 of the original VSPEX configurations to ensure customers can choose from the latest technology when deploying their VSPEX, as well as an online education and sales enablement center and simplified technical documentation for partners.

Organizations implement SharePoint to improve internal and external productivity and collaboration. For many customers, SharePoint is often deployed in a highly distributed model that can result in significant data growth, management complexity and isolated islands of information and infrastructure. VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint environments enables customers to consolidate or deploy new SharePoint environments and leverage the power of virtualization to lower costs and simplify management. VSPEX includes EMC’s unified storage systems, which according to IDC are most preferred by SharePoint customers over other vendors (IDC’s Storage Users Demand Survey 2011 – Fall Edition: Customers Still Want Choice, #234651.)

Available in early 2013 exclusively through partners in the EMC Velocity partner program, the new VSPEX for SharePoint simplifies infrastructure design and deployment so partners can focus on consolidating existing or deploying new SharePoint environments for their customers. VSPEX enables EMC and Microsoft’s mutual customers to take advantage of the power of SharePoint.

VSPEX in Virtualized SharePoint Environments:
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SharePoint is designed for customers looking to consolidate storage and infrastructure and lower costs associated with SharePoint use cases such as Document Repository (file shares replacement) and Enterprise Content Management. Customers can realize efficiency, flexibility, higher availability, faster and simplified backup and recovery and reduce TCO. VSPEX provides Microsoft customers and others a choice of virtualization technologies for their private cloud infrastructures.

EMC unified storage solutions deliver predictable performance and reduce the planning, sizing and configuration burdens of adopting a private cloud environment. EMC backup and recovery solutions leverage deduplication technologies to reduce backup storage requirements and enable fast, reliable data protection.

Validated in tests and studies
conducted by EMC and analyst firms,
these technologies combined in VSPEX
can help users in virtualized SharePoint environments:

tune SharePoint storage performance in 80% less time
shorten SharePoint provisioning by 4X with EMC Storage Integrator (ESI)
accelerate SQL Server transactions per second by 4X
cut time to manage backup by 81%
reduce backup storage by 10-30X

Extends VSPEX Value for Customers and Partners
With Enhanced Solutions, New Enablement Center,
and Simplified Technical Documentation

New Technical Integration – To ensure customers can choose from the latest technology when deploying their VSPEX EMC announced that the original VSPEX Private Cloud and End User Computing solutions are now updated with VMware vSphere 5.1, Windows Server 2012, FAST Cache, FAST VP, and specific to the VSPEX End User Computing solutions, RSA SecurID two-factor authentication.
New Online VSPEX Enablement Center for Partners – Velocity partners can now access information about becoming a VSPEX-enabled partner. Current partners can use the enablement center to help identify the best solution to address customer challenges, as well other resources to support their VSPEX sales and development efforts such as reference architectures, solution overviews, training, vLabs, and instructional videos.
Simplified VSPEX Technical Documentation – Technical documentation for the VSPEX Private Cloud and VSPEX End User Computing solutions are now delivered as a single document – The VSPEX reference architecture, sizing guide and deployment guide are now a single document that can be accessed on EMC Community Network here.

Nigel Farr, client services director, Equiniti ICS Ltd, said: "Consolidating and virtualizing SharePoint and other mission-critical applications on an EMC VNX unified storage solution has helped Equiniti ICS deliver our hosted services customers improved performance, agility, reduced costs, increased data protection, and rapid recovery. EMC’s ability to address our quality of services requirements has also enabled us to provide these customers with a confident solution that’s simple and efficient. Solutions like VSPEX will make our future deployments easier."

Tony Jimenez, president and CEO, MicroTech, said: "SharePoint is a mission-critical application that our customers rely on for many things, such as sharing ideas and expertise so they can make the right decisions for their business. All of this collaboration results in data that needs to be managed, secure, and highly-available in the cloud. Our customers like VSPEX because it’s simple, efficient, and it gives them the flexibility they need for their unique IT requirements. Another added benefit is that the customer can rely on their value-added reseller to configure a customized, complete VSPEX solution that can be deployed in no time. We believe VSPEX will gain significant momentum in virtualized SharePoint environments because it’s based on EMC unified storage and backup and recovery technologies that can help them significantly reduce backup storage and tune and provision SharePoint in less time."

Jeremy Burton, EVP, product operations and marketing, EMC, said: "EMC VSPEX is a simple, efficient, and flexible reference architecture optimized for the most popular use cases for customers moving to cloud computing. Virtualized SharePoint has become a mission-critical application and therefore needs to be managed and protected – the new EMC VSPEX for SharePoint enables customers to accelerate their IT transformation with faster deployments, simplified management, backup, and storage provisioning while decreasing data volume, lowering the cost and complexity of management as well as data security and governance risk."