The VNX 5700 provides a large number of features including the ability to work for both file and block as a unified array. The ability to run a unified array is a great advantage when the company economics would not allow you to have separate arrays for your servers and another one for your file systems and use the unit as NAS. Through a single interface called UNISPHERE™, we manage the array. It allows you to administer both the block and file in a single pane. The process of extending the size of either an LUN or a file system is very intuitive. It also provides a command line interface that you can use to connect using Putty.exe but some of the commands that you can execute through the GUI are not available in CLI, or at least that is what EMC support has told me.

Another great feature is the checkpoints for file systems. We use the checkpoints as backups for our file system instead of having them in a separate product. It is a risk to put the backups and production data in the same array, but we understood it and went with it. We have limited times when our checkpoints become corrupted for some reason (reaching a maximum size of a file system 16TB) or another but the majority of the time works according to plan. For the block, you can use LUN cloning and have the ability to present a copy of the same LUN used for production to your test environment and test applications, programs, OS, or any others without affecting your production environment.

The replication feature provides another functionality to protect your data. In our scenario, we only use it for disaster recovery. Since we have a global presence and we are tasked to protect data from around the globe, we have enabled replication between locations. The replication works well between VNX and Celerra NS480s, NS40s, NS20s or NX4s. You can also set replication between VNXe (1st generation, like VNXe3300, VNX3150, or others) where your VNXe is the source. However, you can not set up a file system replication when the VNXe is the target of your replication job. Also, there are limitations with VNXe replication (second generation, like VNXe3200) since it would not allow you to establish replication partners.

UNISPHERE™ Analyzer allows you to see the hot spots on the block side. When you enable the Analyzer, it collects performance data and then with EMC support you can see the areas of problem in the array. It allows you to justify adding more space or moving your servers around to other LUNs with less saturation. Once the user becomes familiar with how the Analyzer works, he/she could run it without engaging support and identify areas of concern. It is very helpful to show the application teams if the storage is causing the slowness of a particular application hosted in the specific LUN or not.

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The most valuable feature is the auto-tiering, which helps in the speed of data access. We have a big VMware storage pool in each of our three arrays and we have never had users complain about response of any VM in our environment.

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Tiering, because it allows your data to dynamically move among different disk types based on demand in the last 24 hours. This removes the manual work to keep data in certain disk types.

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It is very stable even during multiple power failures.

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One of the best features of the VNX is the ability to combine drives of different types into a virtual Storage Pool. By combining small but fast flash drives, SAS drives, and high-capacity but slower NL-SAS drives, the VNX can intelligently move data to the different tiers of storage based on usage. This maximizes performance and investment by making sure commonly accessed data is stored in flash, while rarely-accessed data can be sent to the NL-SAS drives.

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The most valuable feature is the tight VMware integration, due to the migration from bare metal to virtualized environments and then on to the cloud.

VNX provides the full feature set, automated storage tiering to optimize flash, and file dedupe in what used to be a price-competitive package. That area is now being ceded to Unity as the storage landscape undergoes sweeping changes with HCI.

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It's easy to use, and integrate, I'm not storage-centric, as I just integrate storage along with other things. I can go in there and follow instructions to complete the job. I know all products are different, especially how they’re all clustered differently. For me, I don’t care because not looking at raw data or specifications (e.g. how many SSDs, how tiered), I just follow instructions for the virtualization aspect.

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I really value deduplication and compression to save space.

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Tier configuration between SSD and SAS disks. The blocks with more access are moved to the SSD disk.

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• Its reliability and ease of use.
• Single console for managing block and file (CIFS/NFS)
• Data replication to DR site for both block and file
• Auto tiering - Data movement in-between the pool
• Fast cache - Global cache for low end arrays
• EMC ViPR - A complete insight into the storage performance
• Deduplication and compression

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• Good performance for VM environments
• In one cabinet, we have many environments: VMware, Oracle, Adabas, NAS (CIFS and NFS resources), and mix disks on tier configurations
• Tier configuration with different disks (SAS, SATA, Flash)
• The software for management is very user-friendly
• Snapshots for backup and refresh development on test environments

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It is very stable, even during multiple power failures.

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The replicating of the entire storage unit to a different location was a very useful function. It made disaster recovery possible in hours instead of days.

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• FAST auto-tiering is a great feature.
• FAST cache is very good for performance.
• The unified ability allows us to have a cost effective SAN and NAS storage combined on our smaller sites.

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Block and NAS on multiple VNX's are all managed from the same Unisphere GUI. Plus, it has great data migration tools e.g. EMCopy.

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The cost of the product, because it's considered an entry level product for what it does, but it had everything we needed for a great price.

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They have more different/flexible models in the midrange storage area In comparison with other vendors . They have also built in VMware specific features . Lastly, it has reasonable performance/cost.

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• Auto Tiering: Ability to automatically move data from fast SSD drives to low cost disk drives and vise versa.
• Performance: Increase performance with FAST Cache (SSD), QoS and Auto Tiering.
• Unified storage: Provides capabilities for both block and file storage.

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• Reliability, excellent support by EMC, and VMware integration
• High availability including non-disruptive updates: We cannot afford downtime windows.
• SSD tier: Provided desired performance with fewer disks
• Storage pooling and auto-tiering: Simplified storage management
• Seamless integration with VMware
• Fairly simple administration using Unisphere

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• Fast VP
• Fast cache
• Snap clone
• Snap shot
• RecoverPoint
• SAN copy
• Mirror copy
• Access Logix

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It is hard to say which features are the most valuable. All other arrays can do pretty much the same, so it's hard to tell. At least I haven't used any feature that would be unique to other arrays.

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• FAST (auto-tiering): Doesn't require configuration and is managed by the array itself.
• SNAP feature: Takes only 10% of the space, an improvement compared to the earlier space utilization with RLPs.
• NAS: Using CIFS, NFS, and mixed mode shares is not as cumbersome as when compared with NetApp.

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From my point of view, the configuration that I can sell is restricted to the EMC best practices. It is hard to make a mistake in a solution. It means the configuration has good performance and scalability options.

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The implementation of both block and file system storage in a single GUI provides is better situated than most other storages.

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It’s a great platform that’s evolved very quickly that overtook NetApp with the Vblock initiative. Everything was valuable – HA, SRM, Vplex, metrocluster, entire suite of products

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• Scalability
• High performance
• Easy administration

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When we started the process of looking for a SAN vendor I had four primary criteria: reliability, performance, cost, and simplicity. We were really looking for a unicorn and were fully expected to have to make compromises in one of those areas. The Nimble CS-Series was recommended by our solutions provider, and we were blown away. Not only was it the most affordable option, but it was the easiest to deploy, had the best performance, and has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime.

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• Raid pools
• Snapshots

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• Integration with VMware
• Support for virtualization
• High performance
• Easy management

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It is easy to deploy, has a simple interface, and has all the valuable features a small business would need to get going. It has thin provisioning which means a lower TCO and it has FAST cache support which means that performance is not compromised.

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A new ST VP is significant change introduced with VNX which makes data access considerably fast. Performance is noticeably great as compared to other Celera and Clarion models. SSD are used for caching due to which data reading /writing is quite fast. Database operations are quite fast over this storage with cache and FC channeled connection. It has extremely large and flexible storage size as per the need. View full review »

• Levels of performance
• Protection
• Compliance
• Ease of management

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• Auto Tiering
• It has a good, high-level of storage.

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Multi-tiering, because it positively affects the efficiency of the storage space.

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FAST Cache & FAST Pool are very useful and similar to the SDS solution on a single storage system.

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