EMC's hardware 'quantum leap' is more of a brisk catchup stroll EMC's VCE converged systems unit is heading into hyperconverged country with new VxRail appliances that look and behave an awful lot like existing products from upstart rivals, but are promised to be simpler and cheaper. The Register foreshadowed the launch of VxRail. Forgive us a little smugness because we mostly got it right …
A lot of noise about next to nothing. Intro node - 6 cores, 64 GB RAM and 3.4 TB of disk for $50K. The DIY hardware is probably less than $4K ... Must buy 4 for $200K . Plus the Windows Server Data Center licenses which means customers will be paying for 16 cores and wasting money for Server 2016. Gonna be a hard sell at the low end. " You want me to spend how much? And, I get what?"
Well is that 60K list for 1 node or for 4 nodes? .. since the minimum configuration is 4 nodes. If it's 60K list for 4 nodes, and Street price is like 25-30K for 4 low end servers with some disk, that's not expensive. If that is for 1 node, then the pricing discount would have to be really high in order to make sense.
A "quantum leap" is actually a change of an electron from one quantum state to another within an atom - essentially an electron jumping from one energy level to another. That means an actual "quantum leap" is the smallest distance that it is physically possible for any entity to "jump". That would seem to be entirely appropriate for this announcement ...
"and a natural for existing VMware users who want to keep using the tools they know rather than skilling up on something new.
That's a shot at Nutanix and SimpliVity, both of which are doing very well with hyper-converged appliances that don't put vCenter or ESX front and centre."
Above not correct - Simplivity's management portal is a plug-in to vCenter, no skilling up of any sort required. From what I've seen it actually improves vCenter, certainly less clicks required for backup.
Meanwhile... In the real world shouldn't an entry-level appliance actually provide some performance and ROI for the company? $60k for 6-core per node list price isn't a small business or ROBO cost.
Small companies are embracing the benefits of Storage Spaces and flocking to the Microsoft-Defined DataCenter architecture. It's easy to grab a higher performing appliance with minimal SW (Standard Edition) costs when comparing VM and storage. Just look at these kind of hyper-converged appliances promoted by HGST.
https://www.hgst.com/company/media-room/press-releases/dataon-storage-unveils-12gb-s-cluster-in-a-box-shared-storage-appliance
ps... and oh yeah, it was released nearly 2 yrs ago these came out.
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The big thing is: VBLOCK, VSPEX, VXRAIL, VSPEX BLUE, VRACK, VSAN, EVO:RAIL, EVO:RACK, EVO:SDDC... and so many things thrown at the market at once...makes it is impossible to choose. Not because of how to make sense of which option for which use case (although it will be a funny thing to watch too) but MOSTLY because anyone knowing EMC's ... I mean who on Earth believes all those things will still be around in 3 years?
How do you pick something out of this for your business to depend on, and not be afraid its dead in 2 years. I mean EVO:RACK didn't even come out, and EVO:RAIL was the most important thing ... until yesterday!
Make your bets!
First, you are mixing OEM programs, old&new product names. VxRail, VPEX Blue, VSAN and EVO:RAIL are just a way of saying "appliance based on VSAN" are are essentially the same entity. If you remove duplicates you will see three distinct categories: "blocks", "racks", "appliances"
Second, you are mixing solutions from two different vendors: EMC and VMWare. These are two separate companies.
Third, Gartner is on Earth and they believe that there are three different categories under Integrated Systems. Hyper-converged is just one of them. See the first page of their Magic Quadrant: http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/magic-quadrant-for-integrate-266749-2.pdf. IDC has the same opinion: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40861015
I tend to agree that all three categories will still be around in 3 years.
Sure, I think the 3 categories might be around even longer than that.
But certainly NOT all of the boxes that keep falling from the "Federation" dumper truck! Not even half I would bet!
And yes... very very very different companies. In fact all EMC sales reps I know never remind their customer that VMware is part of the house... as sales argument! Oh no, ...I bet I'm the only one who was told that, wasn't I?
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