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Project Liberty Comes To Life: Introducing Software-Defined vVNX Community Edition

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Today’s IT deployment model is different.  It’s less about racking and stacking, and more about virtualized deployments and the agile movement of virtualized containers within and between physical equipment, like a virtualization-optimized hybrid flash VNX storage array.   We see a bright future in the virtualization of not only servers but also storage, which provides businesses with the agility to rapidly deploy test and development environments.

That’s why today we are bringing Project Liberty to market and offering a free downloadable version of our trusted VNX array, vVNX Community Edition. vVNX is a software-only instantiation of EMC’s VNX storage that can be easily deployed on a VMware ESX server, providing a consistent management interface, support for NAS and SAN storage protocols and data services familiar to VNX users such as snapshots and remote replication.

It’s not uncommon for someone to start with a free trial version of software and later upgrade to the paid edition – “the freemium model.”  If we like the capabilities offered in the base product, we can then decide to go purchase the full version to realize the full list of capabilities offered.   We’ve seen companies do this for many years now: Flickr, Hulu, Evernote.

vVNX Community Edition is a freely downloadable  virtual storage appliance (VSA), that can be downloaded onto ESX 5 or 6 servers, to run a software-defined unified VNX array. Once installed, you can leverage the vVNX vApp to provide storage services and apply VMware-based availability and protection tools to maintain it.  One of the more exciting demonstrations to showcase the future of vVNX, we will be showing at EMC World will be vVNX Community Edition running VVOLs –a great way to get exposure to new technology.

vVNX Community Edition is intended for a few primary use cases, all of them for simple storage deployments for non-production workloads.

One customer told us they wanted every developer to have his or her own VNX, as development cycles are becoming increasingly shorter.  Once applications are developed, they can be easily spun up on a physical VNX. This allows customers to seamlessly deploy applications while enjoying a consistent management and user experience.

Another customer told us they wanted to create a rich storage environment (snapshots, replication) that would enable them to develop and test vApps, create multiple VNX instances cost-effectively without hardware.

Finally, customers can test VNX-based data replication without requiring the purchase of multiple storage hardware platforms.

The future direction of this product is even more exciting as you consider the needs of a growing yet resource-constrained IT department – remote office and branch office storage, cloud deployments, cloud bursting during seasonal workload shifts and even cloud protection.

Click on the picture below to download your trial version of vVNX today.

VNX box logo

Download it now: bit.ly/EMCvVNX

More information can be found on the VNX product line here.

Jeff Boudreau

About the Author: Jeff Boudreau

As chief AI officer at Dell Technologies, Jeff Boudreau leads the company’s AI and data strategy including accelerating AI-driven outcomes and scaling generative AI initiatives across the organization. Leaning on his versatility, deep engineering and infrastructure expertise, Jeff leads Dell’s Center for AI Innovation, a team which is responsible for enterprise-wide AI strategy, education, governance, and policies. This includes prioritizing and implementing domain-specific use cases, building, defining and standardizing architectures, integrating and embedding AI across Dell's product portfolio and core business operations – as well as cultivating strategic partnerships across the AI ecosystem. Tapping into the value inherent in data to drive progress is a passion of Jeff’s that has driven him during his more than 25 years at Dell Technologies. Prior to becoming chief AI officer in September 2023, Jeff spent four years serving as president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) at Dell. In this position he led a global team of over 23,000 innovators that accelerated data insights and helped Dell Technologies become the largest infrastructure provider in the world – across the data center, cloud and at the edge. He has held executive positions spanning engineering, operations, services, and business management with a passion for inspiring team members and driving real-world outcomes for customers. Jeff completed his undergraduate studies at Wentworth Institute of Technology and received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.