By Howard A. Rubin, Product Marketing Manager, EMC Backup Recovery Systems Division
I joined EMC’s Symmetrix division in the fall of 2010. The same iconic & legendary engineering team responsible for the concept and delivery of over 20 years of Symmetrix storage. My first task was bringing the Symmetrix VMAXe (now called VMAX 10K) to market. Thinking back, the impression that comes to mind is “wow”, what a learning adventure that turned out to be. I felt like someone had planted me face-first into a fire-hose of Symmetrix indoctrination– VMAX, FTS, FLM, Enginuity, Virtual Matrix, GDDR, FAST VP, SRDF and Recoverpoint. Add PowerPath, snapshots and clones oh my!
With over 20 years running the world’s most critical applications, EMC’s Symmetrix had a brand that any CIO or CTO would be proud to have in their data center. Symmetrix VMAX with Enginuity is a tried and trusted brand that’s proven the test of time running the world’s most critical business applications. Symmetrix delivered a long list of industry firsts including being the industry’s first storage to offer Intelligent Cached Disk Array (ICDA), first to support mainframe and open systems, first to offer enterprise flash drives and the first storage to have automated storage tiering (FAST).
(Symmetrix: Over 20 years of innovation)
In May, I transferred to EMC’s Backup and Recovery Division Marketing team to focus on EMC NetWorker. NetWorker is another great brand that has been widely successful delivering over 20 years of innovation for mission-critical business operations. NetWorker, like Symmetrix, delivered to the industry a long list of first. First to deliver end-to-end enterprise backups for Microsoft Exchange Servers, Windows NT, Open VMS, IBM’s Lotus Domino on Linux and even mixed open systems environments. The NetWorker solution has been, and continues to be, the industry leader in delivering leading-edge enterprise backup and recovery solutions.
Having completed the Symmetrix brainwashing and finally realizing that “all businesses needed a VMAX”, it hadn’t really dawned on me that VMAX was just part of the solution. I hadn’t comprehended how many different types of storage devices and software backup and recovery applications existed outside of “Symm-land”. While I knew many of the concepts and terms such as storage, de-duplication and backup windows, I found myself yet again swimming in a very deep ocean of backup acronyms like PBBAs, VTLS, NMDP, GLR, AFTD and VADP proxies to name just a few.
As a marketing guy, I envisioned a graphic we built in Symm-land and took it upon myself to create a similar analogy to the 20 years of Symmetrix innovation and map the same timeline to 20 Years of NetWorker innovation.
(NetWorker: Over 20 years of innovation)
It dawned on me that while the backup related acronyms were new to me, their creation, design and intended purpose (by those smarter than I) were evident – Enterprise backup and recovery providing non-stop availability and the highest levels of recoverability. Sounds a lot like VMAX talk to me! In reality, it’s not a Symmetrix or backup theme, but more of an EMC theme that permeates throughout the entire organization. Failure is not an option.
With over 20 years of engineering and year-over-year of innovation and increased functionality, EMC NetWorker delivers what our customers ask for. And with over 23,000 NetWorker users, our product managers and engineers continue to listen to our customers and partner suggestions for new functionality delivering them the best software backup and recovery solution to help them in their IT transformation. I’m diving head-first into this amazing sea of backup and recovery solutions. Feel free to follow my new adventures as I learn to navigate the rip-currents.. Follow me on Twitter as @Howard_a_Rubin.
