EMC VNXe Spurs Thinking Outside the Box

Chad Sakac mentions on his blog that VNXe “uses a completely homegrown EMC innovation (C4LX and CSX) to virtualize, encapsulate whole kernels and other multiple high performance storage services into a tight, integrated package.” Well this has gotten me to thinking about other uses of VNXe. If EMC could manage to “refactor” or encapsulate a few more technologies, I think we have the makings of a killer virtualization security appliance. Why would a storage appliance spur on thinking about virtualization security?

Acadia and Its Place in the World

I can remember, in what seems like a really long time ago, about the creation of a new company, Acadia, that will support the coalition of VMware, Cisco and EMC’s vBlock product. I had really long forgotten about the new company that was going to be formed when EMC really started their hiring blitz and campaign to get all the well known talent that EMC could get their hand on. That had been the news and buzz in the industry, as well as a nonstop twitter topic speculation about who was going to be the next person to enroll in Chad’s Army as a vSpecialist. It really appeared that the EMC crew was going to be in the best position to support and sell vBlock technology.

GestaltIT Tech Field Day: Virtualization Line Up

I participated in GestaltIT’s TechFieldDay which is a sort of inverse conference, where the bloggers and independent analysts go to the vendors and then discuss the information they have received. We visited the following virtualization vendors:
* vKernel where we were introduced to their Predictive Capacity Planning tools
* EMC where we discussed integration of storage into the virtualization management tools as well as other hypervisor integrations
* Cisco where CVN and CVE were discussed in detail.

GestaltIT Tech Field Day: Storage Line Up

I participated in GestaltIT’s TechFieldDay which is a sort of inverse conference, where the bloggers and independent analysts go to the vendors and then discuss the information they have received. We visited the following storage vendors:
* Data Robotics where we were introduced to the new Drobo FS
* EMC where we discussed stretched storage and other interesting futures
* HP where we were introduced to the IBRIX products

EMC/Cisco/VMware vBlock – The Data Center Virtualization Perspective

Well the cat is well and truly out of the bag now, after several months of serious courting and getting caught behind the bike shed a few time, the worse kept secret in IT has arrived. Cisco, EMC, and VMware have entered into a joint venture arrangement called V-block, so what is it and how exactly does it affect the state of play?