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Rethink storage


Johannesburg, 11 Sep 2015
Whitepaper: Rethink storage
Whitepaper: Rethink storage

The past decade-and-a-half has seen virtualisation technology transform applications, servers and networks into software abstractions that enable data centre and IT managers to build adaptive and agile date centres. The rise of the software-defined data centre (SDDC) promises to build on the progress of virtualisation by completely abstracting every component of the data centre from its underlying hardware so that IT can truly deliver IT resources as customisable, on-demand services. This is the transformative potential. However, the reality is that storage still acts as a headwind to a truly virtual data centre. Unlike applications, servers and networking, storage and its valuable data is still too often tied to proprietary hardware.

A major reason that storage has lagged behind server and network virtualisation is its inherent heterogeneity. Storage hardware and operating systems vary much more than server, client or network platforms. Storage platforms are incredibly diverse; even different arrays from the same vendor will feature different operating systems, proprietary APIs and unique feature sets. Storage naturally evolved this way over decades as a response to new and different application workloads that require unique performance and protection characteristics. Every new IT endeavour required a new storage array - be it block, file or object-based - optimised for that purpose. Out of necessity, storage administrators have become storage managers who spend most of their time managing arrays rather than optimising information storage for the business. If enterprises and service providers are going to break from this pattern and be part of the evolution to an SDDC, they need to fundamentally rethink storage.

Disruption in storage is here. EMC ViPR brings the same virtualisation benefits enjoyed by the compute and network elements of SDDC to storage. EMC ViPR is a revolutionary approach to storage automation and management that transforms existing heterogeneous physical storage into a simple, extensible and open virtual storage platform. The value proposition of the SDDC and cloud computing - easily consumed IT services, simple API access, and single management view - is now available for storage.

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