What do you like and hate about ViPR?

Well, though part of the bunch, I would like to see additional third-party array and device support (e.g. backup, archiving). Be interesting to see what customers want in terms of priorities. Should we add support for IBM or HP next....or?

Hi Allen,

Not sure if you know me but we met at the EMC World a few years ago

If I understand your response correctly, you are suggesting that we provide Object services on top of block arrays in addition to File that we already do. Is my understanding correct? If so, could you help share a use case or 2 on how you expect to use object services on block?

Vinay

I would like to see the ability to layer Object services on top of Block as well as File. I see it as a way of simplifying the environment and complicating things just to simplify them is counterintuitive.

Yes, I do understand that a lot of shops already have File based arrays in place that can offer this service more easily, but not all do.

I agree this would make trying it out a lot easier for those of us with no lab environment. I would never get approval to try this out on any of my production environments.

Hi Vinay -

I think it would be tremendously helpful to ViPR adoption if there was a simplified "ViPR in a box" that could be downloaded and run under VMWare that included the controller and one or more virtual arrays from EMC, for experimentation and demonstration purposes. There are a lot of folks in this community who like to "play&learn" with new technology and can serve as a vanguard/catalyst within their organizations.

As it is, you need to commit your companies real production storage assets for experimentation (very hard to do for most orgs), or spend a lot of time trying to get the various simulators tested with ViPR 1.0. A cohesive, tested "Virtual ViPR Lab Edition" would be great.

Regards,

Mike Horgan

Hi Vinay,

I vaguely remember that, but it's been a while and I don't have the best memory for names in the world. We'll have to meet up again this year and spend more time :-)

The use case I'm thinking is still future state as it relies on the still to be released Centera CAS functionality. We have Centera on the floor for some compliance based CAS functionality, but because of the licensing on it (compliance and replication) the capacity is more expensive than we want for some smaller CAS use cases. If we could virtualize the CAS functionality on an NL-SAS based pool from one of our VNX arrays there might be a few point solutions we could take advantage of this for. I would like to be able to do that without adding in a Filer component to my currently Block arrays.

This would only be for a few smaller niche applications that don't need the extras we have on the existing Centera arrays, but I can see it be being useful for that.

Hi Vinay,

as Mike said i think this would be a great Deal to set up a PlugnPlay Vipr Solution. I got 2 Customer Calls this Week where they asked about any kind of Demo's or PoC's. So offering potential Customers a Simple Playground to get used to Vipr and show them "hands on" whats the big advantage on this Product would be a big advantage.

Keep me up to Date

Regards

Phil

Hi Mike,

Great suggestion! We started off the free download capability with providing a free download of ViPR via this community.

It certainly crossed our minds to provide something to similar "ViPR in a box". It certainly is very helpful for the product and for people like yourself to have first hand experience with the product with minimal resources.

To be honest, we thought it would risky, as you might expect the home grown simulators could be flaky and result in more questions and frustrations. If there is active interest in this community and people are going to be maybe OK to deal with "not so perfect" simulators, we could certainly revisit our decision.

If there people out there reading this post, please post your thoughts and comments on this topic, so we can make a decision.

Vinay

Thanks for the feedback Allen

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the response. For plug and play, I just realized that we have the ViPR vlabs. Is that something our customers can get access to?

Vinay

Hi Allen,

We will certainly try to meet up at the upcoming EMC World I hope to be there and I hope you can make it too!

Thanks for the great explanation on your use case for object services on block. We will certainly review it further internally.

Vinay