The Dell EMC VMAX All Flash system as the name indicates is an all-flash version of the Dell EMC high-end enterprise storage system based on VMAX. More specifically, this is a further evolution of the VMAX³ system with optimizations for use of flash and some functionality changes. The VMAX All Flash system uses the embedded operating environment called HYPERMAX, InfiniBand for interconnect technology, ProtectPoint for direct backup of volumes, IBM mainframe and system-i support, and file access support with eNAS data services based on VNX NAS.
The Virtual Matrix architecture continues the evolution with the ability to dynamically allocate resources for workloads. Three models of the VMAX All Flash system are available with differences in the number of engines, DRAM cache, connectivity, and capacity scaling. As with earlier versions, VMAX All Flash supports IBM mainframe environments (except for the VMAX 250F), open systems, and IBM System i.
The foundation of the VMAX All Flash is the Virtual Matrix Architecture utilizing the VMAX Engine as the core element and optimizations that were made to adapt the existing design for flash. The VMAX All Flash is sold in V-Bricks, which combine a VMAX engine with storage capacity. The engines are comprised of multi-core processors, cache, front-end and back-end connectivity allowing the Virtual Matrix to scale from the entry-level configuration with one V-Brick to an aggregate up to eight V-Bricks in the largest model. Each V-Brick contains two directors, cross-director communication path linking them and redundant interfaces to the Virtual Matrix Interconnect and SSD capacity. Each director consolidates front-end, global memory, and back-end functions, enabling direct memory access to data.
HYPERMAX, the embedded operating environment for VMAX³ and VMAX All Flash, is a storage hypervisor providing internal virtual machines for running functional elements such as block storage, management, data protection, and other future advanced capabilities. Optimizations for All Flash include Write Folding, which aggregates the latest update of data to minimize the number of writes to flash.
VMAX All Flash enables direct backup of data with the optional software feature ProtectPoint. With ProtectPoint, agents on application servers allow application administrators to direct the VMAX system to backup volumes directly to a Data Domain system. The VMAX uses changed block tracking to send only changed blocks (from the last full backup) to the Data Domain system. The Data Domain system will create a full backup from the changed data. Application administrators can direct the VMAX to restore a volume or a specific object in a volume and VMAX will communicate directly with the Data Domain system to perform the restore.
A hypervisor is included with the HYPERMAX OS to allow data services functions to execute internal to VMAX All Flash. File access support is a data service that is adapted from the VNX file access support where data movers and control stations can execute as containers in virtual machines.
Inline hardware data compression is supported as of October 2016 for VMAX all flash systems. The compression is selectively enabled at the group level and automatically targets less active data. Highly active data will not be compressed.
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