EMC Unity or VNX3?

Whats in a
Name?
Posted 4 May 2016 by Chris Evans under Storage
The big announcement at EMC World this week has been VNX3 or EMC Unity
as we now have to call it. The EMC Marketing Reality Distortion Field is in full
effect, with EMC at pains to claim that Unity is a brand new product
designed from the ground up, yet appears to be significantly based on the
previous VNX and VNXe platforms. This is evident from the specifications,
mode of operating and configuration, more of which well get onto later. Is
Unity really that radical or is it simply keeping up with the competition?

Speeds & Feeds

There are many articles and blogs out there discussing speeds and feeds for
the platform, so I wont go into this in too much detail. If you want a quick
run down, check out Chris Mellors article at The Register, or follow the links
to the specification sheets at the end of this post. Whats interesting to note
though is that Unity comes in both hybrid and all-flash configurations. The
flash in both models is based on 3D-NAND TLC technology, currently shipping
with 3.2TB drives, with EMC claiming to have 15/16TB drives available by
year end 2016. Its not clear how Unity manages the lifetime of flash,
however EMC are offering flash endurance protection with the product,
presumably while systems remain under maintenance.

Whats New?
So whats new and better about the platform? Weve already discussed the
all-flash and hybrid options but this isnt new ground for VNX there was
previous an all-flash version known as VNX-F. What has changed is the way
in which the block and file interfaces are managed. VNX was always a
kludge of Clariion and Celerra, with one component providing block (Clariion)
and the other (Celerra) delivering NAS. The NAS component was described
as the data mover but was simply another controller that had access to a
segmented disk pool of storage on the array. With Unity, EMC has virtualised
the data mover functionality and moved it into software. This vastly
simplifies the hardware setup and provides the ability to upgrade the filesystem support, with file-system size extended to 64TB and support for
around 32 billion files per file system. About time, many people are probably
saying.
Another about time feature is the migration away from Java to HTML5 in
the management GUI. The new interface looks much more elegant and
refined, but then it should be; other vendors have been doing this for years.
EMC has also extended the management platform into the public cloud with
the release of CloudIQ, a monitoring and management dashboard. Other
new features include native VVOL support and integration of ESRS

functionality directly into the platform (ESRS is EMCs Secure Remote

Services diagnostics feature).

The Unsaid
As a new customer coming to EMC, the Unity platform certainly looks
attractive. Following the Microsoft mantra that says it takes until at least
version 3 to get things right, Unity certainly corrects some of the previous
hardware issues of VNX1/2. However as with any new product
announcement, its often whats not said that is of more interest.
Specifically:

Migration Ive seen no mention of how customers will migrate from

VNX1, VNX2 or VNXe onto the new Unity platform. Currently the
recommended route appears to be to purchase RecoverPoint. Some of
the blogs and background reading Ive done implies that the platform
is more VNXe than VNX and so replication from VNXe directly may be
possible.

VNX Legacy it seems that the underlying architecture is still based

on VNX(e). That means storage pools, RAID 0,1,5/6 support only and a
hybrid model that relies on FASTVP to place data onto a mix of flash
and spinning media. There are other hybrid solutions on the
market that use flash more effectively than EMCs reactive tiering
approach.

No Data Services at initial release there is no compression or deduplication to reduce data sizes. In my opinion this is a huge omission
and one that places Unity way behind other vendors in terms of cost
efficiency. Data services are apparently due later this year, but we
have to wonder what caveats there will be. Remember XtremIO
supposedly offered non-disruptive upgrades until they were disruptive.

New CLI the CLI in Unity is new and isnt compatible with navseccli,
so all those management scripts will require rewriting or at least
modification.

One-time encryption encryption is controller rather than diskbased. The decision to implement it has to be made at system
deployment time and cannot be changed afterwards e.g. cannot be
enabled or disabled.

I suspect over time we will see more issues raised as the detail of the new
platform becomes apparent.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

The development of Unity is explained in a post by Chad Sakac through the
analogy of changing all the components of a car while on the move.
Unfortunately this metaphor highlights a few issues; first VNX was a car
and Unity is still a car. The fundamental dual controller architecture based

on disk pools and reactive tiering still exists. The engine might be bigger
and theres a new fancy GUI on the dashboard, but at its heart it is the same
VNX car. Second there are no big advancements here like creating a flying
car. Unity doesnt manage virtual machines more intelligently like Tintri; it
doesnt use flash more effectively like Tegile or Nimble. Unity doesnt offer
the end to end scale and single platform support of HPE 3PAR.

The Architects View

Mid-range storage is commoditising. We can see that by looking at the entry
pricing EMC is quoting (although we have no specifics on $/GB pricing or
what the $10K/$18K entry pricing actually provides). Customers and end
users will care less about the herculean effort of EMCs engineering team to
bring VNX into the present day and more on how the new platform helps
them deliver more efficiently to their customers. On that basis, Unity fixes
some of the issues with VNX rather than offering a radical new approach to
mid-range storage. Whats possibly more concerning for customers is how
each of EMCs products will now be positioned. Mid-range customers now
have the choice of VNXe, VNX2 and Unity with the two former platforms
having no official EOL. In a matter of months these will be joined by Dell
Equallogic and Compellent, providing a plethora of products to confuse
customers even further.
Looking at the wider market, Unity has many features already adopted by
other vendors, like the move to HTML5, CloudIQ, VVOL support and QoS.
EMC used to be a leader in this space but is now spending time catching up
to the competition. Ironically, that competition also comes from inside, with
products like Virtual SAN.
Upgrading VNX(e) makes sense for EMC as a separate entity, although there
is still some blurring of the boundaries between Unity and VMAX. Introducing
yet another GUI and CLI format seems massively shortsighted EMC could
have chosen this time to create a standardised REST API and CLI then
gradually move all other products to it. Unfortunately the company still sees
ViPR as the harmonised management route. Whats most bizarre is the lack
of data optimisation. EMC has no lack of IP to implement these features, so if
this is truly a new architecture, why arent they there from day 1?
Im sure EMC will sell lots of Unity, if nothing else, simply to their existing
VNX install base. I doubt though that the competition will be worried from a
technical perspective, but instead how far EMC will be prepared to drop their
prices to maintain market share.