Today at EMC World 2016, EMC Corporation introduced a new family of storage systems, including all-flash, that is designed to help simplify and modernize the data center, Unity. Unity marks the newest edition of all-flash with EMC (the existing all-flash include XtremIO, VMAX All Flash and DSSD D5). The main difference this time is that Unity is made to deliver highly affordable file and block storage for small and medium-sized IT departments.
Today at EMC World 2016, EMC Corporation introduced a new family of storage systems, including all-flash, that is designed to help simplify and modernize the data center, Unity. Unity marks the newest edition of all-flash with EMC (the existing all-flash include XtremIO, VMAX All Flash and DSSD D5). The main difference this time is that Unity is made to deliver highly affordable file and block storage for small and medium-sized IT departments.
Unity is designed to be simple. The new solution offers offers cloud-like proactive management and monitoring through a modern HTML5 task-oriented interface that leads the user through daily operations and integrates with VMware and Microsoft ecosystems for easy third-party management. Featuring new Proactive Assist capabilities, Unity is also designed to give IT control, visibility and automated management. Service data from Unity can be viewed within EMC MyService360 also announced today. The all-flash version of Unity has three times the performance of the previous generation VNX arrays, up to 300K IOPS.
Other features include:
- True dual-active controller architecture
- Support for file, block and VVols
- Snapshots and remote sync/async replication
- Native, controller-based encryption
- New scalable file-system for transactional and traditional file use cases
- VMware VASA 2.0, VAAI, VVols, VMware-Aware Integration
- Complete REST-API for automation and DevOps use cases
- Integrated Copy Data Management with EMC iCDM
- Zero-impact garbage collection
All businesses have their own specific storage needs. This is why one-size-fits-all doesn’t work with most companies. In order to make solutions attractive to the widest possible audience, solutions have to be flexible. Unity can scale up to 3PB and can deliver 300K IOPS in performance. It is also widely flexible available in the following unified configurations:
- Purpose-built: Unity is available as a purpose-built all-flash array, designed from the ground up for the flash data center. Additionally, Unity can be deployed in a hybrid configuration to meet individual business requirements
- Software-Defined: UnityVSA offers the advanced file and block storage and data management features of Unity to be easily deployed as a virtual appliance
- Converged: VCE Vblock and VxBlock System 350 configurations are orderable immediately
The most flexible and easiest to use solution isn’t any good if a company can’t afford to buy it. The all-flash Unity starts at less than $18,000 for up to a 80TB, 2U array. EMC states that additional inline data services will be added in the future to further lower effective price per GB. The hybrid version of Unity starts under $10,000.
Unity has tight integration with EMC Data Domain and EMC Data Protection Suite and the all-flash version qualifies for EMC’s Xpect More program, offering lifetime maintenance price protection, flash endurance protection and three-year money-back warranty.
While at EMC World this year, we were able to grab several live podcasts. We spoke with both Peter Smails, VP Product Marketing, and Chris Ratcliffe, SVP of Marketing within EMC's Core Technologies Division, about unity.
Availability
EMC Unity solutions are available now. While all configurations start for less than $18,000 the hybrid models start for less than $10,000.
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