EMC touts storage virtualisation breakthrough

EMC VPlex promises to consolidate storage into a single-tier view

EMC World 2010: EMC has unveiled a platform that aims to expand the reach of storage virtualisation by virtualising datacentre storage across metropolitan areas and eventually the entire globe.

The VPlex platform is designed to bring the current capabilities of application virtualisation platforms such as VMware VMotion to the storage space, the firm explained.

"While today I can move VMotion over a distance, I can't move terabytes of data over a distance," said EMC infrastructure products chief operating officer Pat Gelsinger. "Storage becomes this large infrastructure I can't move around."

VPlex promises to consolidate storage into a single-tier view, and allow multiple datacentre locations to operate as a coherent system, EMC said.

A VPlex Local network appliance will target datacentres within a single location, in particular companies seeking to reduce data migration and technology refreshes.

EMC claimed that companies had been able to reduce data migration times by as much as 94 per cent in early trials.

The VPlex Metro system, meanwhile, is aimed at companies looking for workload balancing and disaster preparedness for datacentres in different locations. The appliance will allow VPlex storage virtualisation between synchronous datacentres running as much as 100km apart, EMC said.

The company hopes to expand the synchronous management of VPlex Metro into an asynchronous cross-continental platform and ultimately to turn VPlex into a system which will allow companies to manage global storage arrays as a single system.

By then, Gelsinger sees VPlex allowing companies to take advantage of geography in storage management with moves such as shifting batch processing or other high demand tasks between datacentres where the cost of energy is lower.

"[VPlex] is a set of resources that we believe enables new models of computing," he said.