Vblock [EOL] Reviews

In case you have not heard, the joint initiative (JV) founded in the fall of 2009 between Intel VMware Cisco and EMC called VCE had a change of ownership today.

Well, kind of…

Who is VCE and what’s this Zen stuff?

For those not familiar or who need a recap, VCE was created to create converged server, storage I/O networking hardware and software solutions combing technologies from its investors resulting in solutions called vBlocks.

The major investors were Cisco who provides the converged servers and I/O networking along with associated management tools as well as EMC who provides the storage systems along with their associated management tools. Minority investors include VMware (who is majority owned by EMC) who provides the server virtualization aka software defined data center management tools and Intel whose’s processor chip technologies are used in the vBlocks. What has changed from Zen (e.g. yesterday or in the past) and now is that Cisco has sold the majority (they are retaining about 10%) of its investment ownership in VCE to EMC. Learn more about VCE, their solutions and valueware in this post here (VCE revisited, now and Zen).

Activist activating activity?

EMC pulling VCE in-house which should prop up its own internal sales figures by perhaps a few billion USDs within a year or so (if not sooner) is not as appealing to activists investors who want results now such as selling off parts of the company (e.g. EMC, VMware or other assets) or the entire company.

However EMC has been under pressure from activist shareholder Elliot Management to divest or sell-off portions of this business such as VMware so that the investors (including the activist) can make more money. For example there have been the recent stories about EMC looking to sell or merge with the likes of HP (who is now buying back shares and splitting up its own business) among others which certainly must make the activist investors happy.

However to the activist investors who want to see things sold to make money they are not happy with EMC off buying or investing it appears.

Via Bloomberg

“The last thing on investors’ minds is the future of VCE,” Daniel Ives, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets, wrote in a note today. “EMC has a fire in its house right now and the company appears focused on painting its bedroom (e.g. VCE), while the Street wants a resolution on the strategic ownership situation sooner rather than later.”

Read more at Bloomberg

Whats this EMC Federation stuff?

Note that EMC has organized itself into a federation that consists of EMC Information Infrastructure (EMCII) or what you might know a traditional EMC based storage and related software solutions, VMware, Pivotal and RSA. Also note that each of those federated companies have their own CEO as well as have holdings or ownership of other companies. However all report to a common federated leadership aka EMC. Thus when you hear EMC that could mean depending on the context the federation mother ship which controls the individual companies, or it could also be used to refer to EMCII aka the traditional EMC. Click here to learn more about the EMC federation.

Converging Markets and Opportunities

Looking beyond near-term or quick gains, EMC could be simply doing something others do to take ownership and control over certain things while reducing complexities associated with joint initiatives. For example with EMC and Cisco in a close partnership with VCE, both parties have been free to explore and take part in other joint initiatives such as Cisco with EMC competitors NetApp, HDS among others. Otoh EMC partners with Arista for networking, not to mention via VMware acquired virtual network or software defined network Nicira now called NSX.

EMC is also in a partnership with Lenovo for developing servers to be used by EMC for various platforms to support storage, data and information services while shifting the lower-end SMB storage offerings such as Iomega to the Lenovo channel.

Note that Lenovo is in the process of absorbing the IBM xSeries (e.g. x86 based) business unit that started closing earlier in October (will take several months to completely close in all countries around the world). For its part Cisco is also partnering with hyper-converged solution provider Simplivity while EMC has announced its statement of direction to bring to market its own hyper-converged platform by end of the year. For those not familiar, Hyper-converged solutions are simply the next evolution of converged or pre-bundled turnkey systems (some of you might have just had a Dejavu moment) that today tend to be targeted for SMBs and ROBOs however used for targeted applications such as VDI in larger environments.

What does this have to do with VCE?

IF EMC is about to release as it has made statement of direction statements of a hyper-converged solution by year-end to compete head-on with those from Nutanix, Simplivity and Tintri as well as perhaps to a lesser extent VMwares EVO:Rail, by having more control over VCE means reducing if not eliminating complexity around vBlocks which are Cisco based with EMC storage vs. what ever EMC brings to market for hyper-converged. In the past under the VCE initiatives storage was limited to EMC and servers along with networking from Cisco, hypervisors from VMware, however what happens in the future remains to be seen.

Does this mean EMC is moving even more into servers than just virtual servers?

Tough to say as EMC can not afford to have its sales force lose focus on its traditional core products while ramping up other business, however, the EMC direct and partner teams want and need to keep up account control which means gaining market share and footprint in those accounts. 

This also means EMC needs to find ways to take cost out of the sales and marketing process where possible to streamline which perhaps brining VCE will help do.

Will this perhaps give the EMC direct and partner sales teams a new carrot or incentive to promote converged and hyper-converged at the cost of other competitors or incumbents? Perhaps, lets see what happens in the coming weeks.

What does this all mean?

In a nut shell, IMHO EMC is doing a couple of things here one of which is cleaning up some ownership in JVs to give it self more control, as well as options for doing other business transactions (mergers and acquisitions (M&A), sales or divestiture’s, new joint initiatives, etc). Then there is streamline its business from decision-making to quickly respond to new opportunities as well as routes to markets and other activities (e.g. removing complexity and cost vs. simply cutting cost).

Does this signal the prelude to something else? Perhaps, we know that EMC has made a statement of direction about hyper-converged which with VCE now more under EMC control, perhaps we will see more options from under the VCE umbrella both for lower-end and entry SMB as well as SME and large enterprise organizations.

What about the activist investors?

They are going to make noise as long as they can continue to make more money or get what they want. Publicly I would be shocked if the activist investors were not making statements that EMC should be selling assets not buying or investing.

On the other hand, any smart investor, financial or other analyst should see though the fog of what this relatively simple transaction means in terms of EMC getting further control of its future.

Of course the question will stay does EMC remain in control of its current federation of EMC, VMware, Pivotal, RSA along each of their respective holdings, does EMC doe a block buster merger, divestiture or acquisition?

Take a step back, look at the big picture!

Some things to keep an eye on:

• Will this move help streamline decision-making enabling new solutions to be brought to market and customers quicker?
• While there is a VMware focus, don’t forget about the long-running decades old relationship with Microsoft and how that plays into the equation
• Watch for what EMC releases with their hyper-converged solution as well as where it is focused, not to mention how sold
• Also watch the EMC and Lenovo join initiative, both for the Iomega storage activity as well as what EMC and Lenovo do with and for servers
• Speaking of Lenovo, unless I missed something as of the time of writing this, have you noticed that Lenovo is not yet part of the VMware EVO:Rail initiative?

What is our primary use case?

How has it helped my organization?

What is most valuable?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What other advice do I have?

What is our primary use case?

How has it helped my organization?

What is most valuable?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What other advice do I have?

What is our primary use case?

How has it helped my organization?

What is most valuable?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

Well we have just passed a year of Vblock ownership and the last year has passed rather painlessly.

Our Vblock was one of the first out there, delivered in November 2011. I wanted to provide some pros and cons of Vblock ownership. Some of the themes are not Vblock specific, but worth bearing in mind because there will always be a gap between what you hear from pre-sales and what the reality is.

Pros:

VCE – The company has been constantly improving which is good to see. Not content to rest on their laurels, they really have grabbed the bull by the horns and they are innovating in a lot of areas.

Vblock – The concept of the Vblock itself deserves a mention. VCE are definitely on the right path… it’s like the first generation Model T Ford. I’m sure old Henry had hundred’s of suppliers that provided the components for his Model T and he came along with the assembly line production and he put it all together. This is like what is happening over at VCE. Over time I’m hoping that the integration between components will become more and more seamless as the demand for pre-configured virtualisation platforms grows and grows and the designers behind each of the components are forced to work closer together.

Management and Support - If you have a bloated IT support team in large sprawling organisation, a Vblock can help reduce your head count by simplifying your environment. One thing converged infrastructure platforms are good for, is breaking down the traditional support silos with regards to storage, network, compute, virtualisation. When all the components are so tightly integrated, your silo’d operations team morphs into one.

Compatibility Matrix – This has to be the biggest selling point in my book. Taking away the pain of ensuring compatibility between so many different components. The VCE matrix is far more stringent than individual vendor product testing and therefore far more trust worthy. Try getting a complete infrastructure upgrade over a single weekend across storage, network, compute and virtualisation components through your change management team. It’s not going to happen unless it’s been pre-tested.

Single line of support – Being able to call a single number when there is any issue, immensely simplifies fault finding and problem resolution. Worth it alone just for this and the matrix.

Single pain of glass – This is where UIMp is starting to come into its own. It’s been a long road, but the future looks good. VCE’s goal is to replace each of the individual management consoles so that VCE customers can use UIMp for all their automated provisioning. When it works, it really does simplify provisioning.

Customer Advocate – In my experience the customer advocate offers great value. Extremely useful when managing high severity incidents and ensuring your environment remains up to date and in support, with regular services reviews and providing an easy path into VCE to organise training sessions, bodies to fill gaps in support, provide direct line of contact to escalation engineers and just deal with any queries and questions you may have about your environment.

Cons:

The AMP – the major design flaw in the AMP for me is the 1GB network. Data transfers between VMs in our 10GB service cluster can achieve 300 Mbps; as soon as the AMP is involved it drops to 30Mbps. Really annoying and what is in the AMP' vCenter, which is used to import virtual machines. Let’s say you are doing a migration of 1000 VMs for example… that 30Mbps is going to get really annoying and it has.

Cost – The Vblock hardware isn’t so bad, but what really surprised me is the amount of and cost of the licenses. Want to add a UCS Blade' No problem, that will be £5k for the blade and about £3k for the licenses – UCS, UIMp, VNX, vSphere,  etc. It all adds up pretty quickly. Ensuring you adequately size your UCS blades up front, i.e. plenty of memory and CPU is really important.

Management & Support – Converged Infrastructure Platforms require a lot of ongoing support and management. This is an issue not limited to VCE. It’s just the nature of the beast. If you have  an immature IT organisation and have had a fairly piecemeal IT infrastructure and support team up until now, you will be in for a shock when you purchase a converged infrastructure platform. There’s no doubt a Vblock is an excellent product, but it’s excellent because it uses the latest and greatest, which can be complex. It also comprises multiple products  from 3 different vendors – EMC, Cisco and VMware, so you need the right skillset to manage it, which can be expensive to find and train. It takes at least a year for someone to become familiar with all components of the Vblock  You’re always going to have employees with core skills like virtualisation, storage, network, compute, etc, but you do want people to broaden their skills and be comfortable with the entire stack.

Integration between products – See above, multiple products from 3 different vendors. At the moment the VCE wrapper is just that, little more than a well designed wrapper, lots of testing and a single line of support. Ok, so EMC own VMware, but it seems to make little difference. EMC can’t even align products within their own company, how on earth can they expect to align products with a subsidiary'  If the Vblock is going to be a single vendor product, then all 3x vendors need to invest in closer co-operation to align product lifecycles and integration. VMware release vCenter 5.1 and Powerpath have to release an emergency patch to support it' Going back to my Model T analogy, the Vblock is never going to become a real Model T until Cisco buys EMC or EMC drop Cisco and start making the compute\network components. Not so far fetched.

Complexity – The VCE wrapper hasn’t changed the complexity. (This is the same with HP or Flexpod.) This is another myth. “We’ve made it simple!”. Er, no, you haven’t. You’ve just done all the design work and testing for us. Until the integration above takes places, which will allow for simplification of the overall package its going to remain just a wrapper and it’s still going to remain an extremely complex piece of kit. VCE have focused efforts on improving UIMp to simplify Vblock provisioning and to simplify Vblock management through a single interface but really these are just band aids if the individual components are made by separate companies.

Patching – Even though there is a compatibility matrix, which does the integration and regression testing for you, it still doesn’t take away the pain\effort of actually deploying the patches. Having a Vblock doesn’t mean there is no patching required. This is a common pre-sales myth, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll do all the patching for you.’ Sure, but at what cost' Security patches, bug fixes and feature enhancements come out more or less monthly and this has to be factored in to your budget and over time costs.

Monitoring and Reporting – This is a pain and I know there are plans afoot at VCE to simplify this, but currently there is no single management point you can query to monitor the vitals of a Vblock  If you want to know the status of UCS: UCS manager, VNX: Unisphere, ESXi: vCenter, etc. For example, you buy VCOps but that only plugs into vCenter, so you are only aware of what resources vCenter has been assigned. To get a helicopter view of the entire Vblock from a single console is impossible. UIMp gives you a bit of a storage overview: available vs provisioned, but does not give you much more than that. So you end up buying these tactical solutions for each of the individual components, like VNX Monitoring and Reporting. Hopefully soon we will be able to query a single device and get up to date health checks and alerting for all Vblock components.

Niggles – There have been a few small niggles, mainly issues between vCenter/Cisco 1000V and vCenter/VNX 7500 but overall for the amount of kit we purchased it has not been bad. I think a lot of these issues had to do with vCenter 5\ESXi 5. As soon as Upgrade 1 came out, everything settled down. Note to self don’t be quick up upgrade to vCenter 6/ESXi 6!

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

What was our ROI?

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Which other solutions did I evaluate?