{"id":3969,"date":"2012-04-12T19:04:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T18:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vmdamentals.com\/?p=3969"},"modified":"2012-04-17T09:03:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T08:03:19","slug":"emc-vspex-inbetween-cardboard-boxes-and-vblock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vmdamentals.com\/?p=3969","title":{"rendered":"EMC VSPEX: Inbetween cardboard boxes and Vblock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though this blog mainly focusses on technical geeky things, it cannot be denied that as infrastructures grow, the deep-down technical details get covered up more and more by the sheer size of things. As customers need to grow their environments more and faster, they have a need to make things decide for themselves, automate more and more. Yesterday you bought boxes and cables. Tomorrow you buy a converged infrastructure like VCE’s Vblock. But what about today? EMC is about to fill that gap…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n



\nThe Cake Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

To explain the difference between a build-your-own and a Vblock, there is this great story where the parallel is drawn to birthday cakes:
\n

\nSo I needed a cake for my daughters birthday. It had to be a chocolate cake and, as you may have guessed, had to be purple, bling and over the top. So I went to the store to buy me an amazing, over the top, purple, bling chocolate birthday cake. <\/p>\n

They had a book, featuring all their cakes. Going through the book, as you might suspect, they did have chocolate cakes, and they did have over the top bling purple cakes… But no chocolate<\/strong> purple bling over the top cakes… So it was down to two options:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Build a cake - DIY or prefab?<\/p><\/div>\n

So I either bought the purple, bling, over the top non-chocolate birthday cake, or I built one myself. Knowing myself, you can probably imagine what would come out if I had choosen the left option:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Fail!<\/p><\/div>\n

So I made the smart choice – I went for the second option, and bought the complete cake shown at the right. It wasn’t chocolate, but a huge success nonetheless.<\/em>
\n

\nWhere am I going with this? This is exactly the difference between a solution where you buy all of your components yourself, or you buy a converged infrastructure like a Vblock. Building your own can get you in a heap of trouble if you do not exactly know what you are doing. On the other hand, buying a Vblock might not be exactly to your specifications, but it will be a complete appliance that looks awesome and tastes great!<\/p>\n

So “yesterday” everyone bought boxes and cables, and they built themselves an infrastructure. Today, some people buy a converged infrastructure – But a lot of people will see that as something they’ll buy “tomorrow”, today just not yet.
\n

\nSo what about TODAY?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So if I do not want to build my own cake (see previous figure why), but I do not want a completely prebuild cake as well, what do I do? Simple, I’d just visit my wife’s website www.cakemuis.nl<\/a> and place my order with all the details and flavors I like. Will I have control as to what ingredients are used? Up to some degree, yes… But only the ingredients that go well together… And that may just be what I need! No worries on the assembly, no worries on the combination of ingredients. But a freedom to choose color, taste and finish with the certainty it will come out great. <\/p>\n

Drawing the parallel to the infrastructure world, EMC today introduced VSPEX. Just like my order at Cakemuis, it is something inbetween DIY and fully pre-assembled: With VSPEX you can now place your order at a partner and get something with your preferred stuff inside! As long as it tastes good of course \ud83d\ude09
\n

\nMore details on VSPEX<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what is VSPEX? Is it a converged infrastructure like a Vblock? No. Is it a Reference Architecture? No. It is something inbetween. You can basically order your cake built out of several components from various vendors:<\/p>\n