EMC and VMware integration

Hi,

I work for an EMC partner selling into the mid-market.

Clearly one of the advantages of selling EMC storage is the strong integration with VMware.

As is always the case there is always more work to do and I wondered what the status of the following was:

1. VMware HA Application integration APIs

I see that Symantec have released a solution (Symantec ApplicationHA), so I wondered when we would see something from EMC.

I was hoping that this kind of functionality would be included in the Enterprise Plus version of vSphere, but if this is not going to be the case then including this with an existing EMC product (i.e. Data Protection Advisor) would be better than have a dedicated solution for this - it seems to lightweight to justify a standalone product.

2. Server, device and application health-monitoring (for both VMs and physical devices)

Products like CapacityIQ are great, but clearly they only address a small part of the infrastructure management technology that is required.

I believe that there is a requirement for a low-cost easy to deploy and manage solution that is integrated with vCenter.

I understand that VMware have aquired much of the Ionix range and some parts have been retainded by EMC.

The net result is great confusion over what EMC and VMware's strategy is.

3. VMware Capacity Planner for sizing storage IO and bandwidth requirements

It is great to now see VMware treating storage IO as important as CPU and memory with the vSphere 4.1 Storage Performance reporting tools and also the new 1.5 release of CapacityIQ.

This just leaves Capacity Planner which for many years has reported on IOPS and MB/s, but for some strange reason does not split these metrics between reads and writes - lets hope we get this soon.

The way VMware has treated storage IO as a second class citizen over the last few years would lead you to believe that they cannot possibly have a parent company that is a storage vendor!!!

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Mark