From Legacy Systems to EMC Unity All-Flash: Modernizing Your Storage Infrastructure
Introduction to EMC Unity All-Flash
EMC Unity All-Flash arrays are designed to deliver a robust, versatile, and efficient storage solution. These systems provide high performance, usability, and flexibility in a compact 2U form factor, ideal for both midmarket IT environments and enterprise applications. By adopting a modern storage infrastructure like Unity All-Flash, organizations can streamline their operations, enhance storage performance, and minimize complexity.
Key Features of EMC Unity All-Flash
- All-Flash Performance: Offers high performance and low latency through all-flash storage, optimized for workloads with demanding performance requirements.
- Inline Data Reduction: Capabilities such as deduplication and compression optimize storage efficiency without impacting performance.
- Unified Storage Support: Handles file, block, and VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols) in a single array.
- Cloud Tiering: Enables extension to cloud storage for advanced data management, reducing on-premises storage costs.
- Proactive Maintenance: CloudIQ analytics offer insights and predictive analytics to prevent issues before they occur.
Architecture and Design
The EMC Unity All-Flash architecture is based on a modular design, built to support a wide range of storage and data management features.
Hardware Components
- Storage Processors: Dual storage processors with multi-core architectures manage all I/O paths, ensuring high performance and availability.
- Memory: Configuration options support up to 256GB of DRAM per system, supporting high-speed data caching.
- Flash Drives: Scalable with multiple flash drive options, allowing up to hundreds of terabytes of effective capacity.
Software Components
- Operating Environment: Unity Operating Environment (OE), with a RESTful API for streamlined integrations and centralized management.
- Data Services: Unified snapshots, replications, and encryption support, ensuring data protection and security.
Technical Specifications
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Maximum Drives | Up to 500 drives per array |
| Maximum Effective Capacity | Petabytes in a single 2U enclosure with data reduction technologies |
| RAID Configurations | RAID 5/6 options for redundancy and data protection |
| Network Protocols Supported | Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, SMB |
Data Flow and Underlying Mechanisms
EMC Unity utilizes a 12Gb SAS backplane for transferring data between the storage processors and flash drives, ensuring smooth data flows. I/O operations are balanced across dual-active controllers to avoid bottlenecks. Inline data reduction processes run directly in the primary storage path, ensuring minimal latency impacts during data ingestion and retrieval.
Comparative Analysis with Competing Technologies
EMC Unity competes with solutions like NetApp AFF and HPE Nimble Storage. The key distinctions:
Strengths
- Simplicity and Integration: Unity’s integration with cloud tiers and centralized management via Unisphere makes it simpler than some alternatives, offering a unified platform rather than disparate systems.
- Performance: Offers consistent performance in mixed workload environments, enhanced by advanced cache and data reduction technologies.
Weaknesses
- Scalability: While suitable for mid-size enterprises, very large deployments might find the scaling options behind some competing high-end arrays.
- Feature Complexity: May require additional learning curve due to the breadth of features offered out-of-the-box.
Use Cases and Real-World Scenarios
EMC Unity All-Flash arrays are used across various industries to handle demanding workloads:
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
In VDI implementations, the low-latency, high IOPS capabilities of Unity handle boot storms and improve user experience with instant logins and fast application load times.
Database Management
Unity All-Flash optimizes database performance for transactional and analytical processing, supporting high-throughput applications with minimal downtime.
Converged and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Delivering flexibility for modern data centers, Unity acts as a foundational technology in VxBlock Systems for an integrated stack that simplifies deployment and footprint reduction.
