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The New VNX-F All Flash Array – Whopping Density Combined with Speed and Affordability

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Recently, Gartner released their first ever Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays (SSAs), also known as all-flash arrays, and recognized EMC in the ”Leaders” quadrant, rarified air indeed and a testament to EMC’s flash strategy and the execution of bringing products like XtremIO and VNX-F to market.

So what should the market leader do upon reaching the top of the all-flash array heap? Keep innovating of course! Today EMC announces updates to the VNX-F – including new VNX-F5000 and VNX-F7000 models that deliver higher density and a lower entry price than ever before. These new offerings are designed for today’s mission-critical apps that require their own dedicated storage arrays.

VNXF App use casesStarting as low as 2.8 TB, the VNX-F5000 provides a new lower price point.  Complementing this is the new VNX-F7000, featuring unprecedented density with 120 flash drives per 3U shelf and will scale up to a whopping 172 TB of all-flash storage.

Targeted for physical and virtualized application environments, both models will be available for less than $5/GB guaranteed, even without the need for deduplication and compression which are not always effective for certain workloads.

Check out this video highlighting the benefits of the new VNX-F

Achieve the lowest storage cost per I/O and per GB

A Little About the VNX-F Use Case

Customers globally deploy VNX-F where price and density matter most. Use cases range from accelerating SQL and Oracle transactions to speeding the search and capture of business intelligence data. The VNX-F is well suited to address the “Noisy Neighbor Effect” where apps require their own controllers (dedicated array). In these situations, where there’s a resource-intensive application that can’t risk being part of a mixed workload array, it’s better to give the application its own resources with concentrated IOPS/GB. So whether you need to accelerate certain database workloads such as a data warehouse, achieve high rack density flash configurations, or need a low cost entry into the All-Flash marketplace, the VNX-F is a great solution.

So What’s In a VNX-F and When?

The new VNX-F models, based on enterprise-proven VNX technology with MCx, are pre-configured with a single storage pool and RAID 5 protection, expediting time to productivity. These systems are block-only (Fibre Channel, FCoE or iSCSI) and designed for five nines availability. They’re also simple to manage, featuring the award-winning EMC Unisphere Management Suite that includes QoS Manager, allowing customers to prioritize applications and set specific performance targets to achieve desired service levels for mission-critical applications. QoS Manager can also monitor and present storage system performance on an application-by-application basis with performance analysis and trending. The VNX-F also has tight integration with VMware and Microsoft environments. Optional add-ons include support for snapshots, replication and controller-based data-at-rest-encryption.

Both new VNX-F models are available today, scaling up to 40TB. The new 120-drive dense shelf arrays are expected to ship later this year, and the 1.6TB drives that will enable the VNX-F7000 to scale up to 172 TB are coming soon.

Learn more about how EMC tailors Flash solutions to fit specific needs at:www.emc.com/flash

For more information about the VNX-F, visit: https://store.emc.com/vnxf

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.