VMworld 2011 Session Recap: Next Generation Backup and Storage for VMware (SPO3977)

This session was on the topic of what are the 2nd and 3rd order effects on backup and storage architectures that VMware is driving. 

I was frankly a little shocked at how many people came to the session (401) – hope you all found it interesting!

It discussed both the near term (state of the art VADP, CBT and other backup topics – and also state of the art on VAAI, VASA, and other storage topics), but more interestingly the long term – discussing questions like:

• What will be the effect of cloud and multitenancy on backup – and what’s needed for “Backup-as-a-service”
• What is the state of the art around VMware-integration in storage, and VM-awareness?  What’s next?  (think beyond the current “integrate UIs” and “vCenter plugins” a-la Tintri or what EMC VNX/VMAX do today) – this is all about the topic in VSP3205 (which I’ll be doing a blog post on after VMworld Copenhagen)
• What is the effect on “traditional storage clusters” (think VNX, NetApp FAS, HP EVA, Nexenta, etc) vs. “scale out models” (think VMAX, 3PAR for block and things like Isilon for NAS).
• What are the latency challenges inherent in “loosely coupled” distributed storage systems (both file and object) – and what are we doing about it?
• What are the challenges with NAS scale-out models with VMware (ergo the NFSv3 limitations) – how will this change over time
• What’s next re host-side Flash – and how will that change things?
• What’s next re: storage/server hybrid models?

Thanks all who attended and gave feedback. While CLEARLY an EMC session, as always Itry to be as balanced as I can be – though on this one, since I’m so close to the VMware/EMC efforts, I think it’s probably a little more biased than others.