Dell EMC VMAX All Flash – Product Brief

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.