Live from Las Vegas, It's the Cube. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners (techno music) >> Welcome back to the Cube. We are live on Day 2 in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo Center. Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman and we are welcoming to the Cube, for the first time, distinguished engineer and VMAX Product Group CTO, Adnan Sahin. Adnan, it's great to have you on the Cube. >> Thank you, great to be here. >> So, big announcements going on at the event this week. Talk to us about the modern data center. Saw that press release this morning. What does the modern data center, how does Dell Technologies define it? And how are you seeing and helping customers implement it? >> Again, it goes into, like when you have, are running an application you need compute, storage and network so that really had to have a modern infrastructure to cover all those bases. So, that's really during the Keynote we heard today from Jeff Clark on our compute capabilities new servers as well as new storage offering from Dell EMC, the PowerMax >> All right, Adnan, PowerMAx, let's start there. (Adnan) Yes. So one of the flagship announcements here at this show, building on the VMAX which of course builds on the Symmetrix history. Why don't you give us a little overview and then we'll dig into some questions I have? >> So, yeah, we've been really following the industry trends. So, we introduced VMAX All Flash a couple years back. And then we are also looking at the industry trends and what we realized is that the industry is transitioning in terms of media interface, from SAS connected drives into NVMe and PCIE connected drives. And the main driver for that one is two-fold. One, is reducing the latency. And with NVMe you can get much leaner, softer layers that really gives you lower latency. And the other one is the media transition that changes from a NAM based non-withheld memories technology into newer and emerging low latency, ultra low latency technology. So with NVMe we can get both at the same time. >> All right, so Adnan, you know, we remember back when it was EMC at the time. It came with the Flash Technologies. Everybody's doing Flash. Now anybody in the storage industry, NVMe, NVMe over fabric. Everyone's talking about it. PowerMax Bob, up on stage, Bob DeCrescenzo (Adnan) Correct, yes, yes. Spent many, many years working on this said, there's a big difference between just having it and really being able to utilize it. So, without going too deep, explain to us some architectural things that have to happen, from a hardware and software standpoint to take advantage of this transition. >> Sure, so VMAX and PowerMax is really a scale-out, multi-controller architecture therefore, we need to have persistent storage, accessible through multiple controllers, at least two. So, in order to really be highly resilient and highly available to system, we need multi ported, dual ported drives available to us. One of the things that we spend quite a lot of time is to really make sure that dual ported NVMe drives are ready for our highly demanding, enterprise resilient storage system. So we spend a lot of time improving drive quality as well as our software to handle all the NVMe related concerns. >> So, at the event, the theme, Make It Real, yesterday Michael Dell kicked things off and talked about these four transformative elements where customers need to transform to be successful. Digital, IT, security, workforce. With what you just talked about and the new enhancements some of the technologies, how is that helping customers make their digital transformations effective, so that they can deliver different shades of products. I know you just came from a customer meeting. Maybe an give us an example of what you're seeing applied out there. >> The important thing is the applications. The customers have been databases, many different variants. There's been some traditional databases and new and emerging databases. Main driver is, of course, available to resilience but at the same time operational simplicity because we have simplified our user interface and overall use experience significantly over years. So that with fewer people, they can manage many, many larger capacities of the systems. And then with latency is an important aspect of application experience. If you lower the latency, either through caching or lower latency media, you give better experience to end user and therefore they can do more with what they have as infrastructure. >> Adnan, are there any specific use cases or verticals where you're finding that, especially the NVMe offering is going to be most helpful at day one. >> I think, any traditional application that has like journals that will benefit. But on top of that, if you are running large queries of random IO access storage they will get lower latency out of NVMe based systems. They could be real-time analytics, for example. You can get ultra-low latency from the back hand. And also if you are using some of the database, data warehouse type of application you can get massive band width out of VMAX and PowerMax systems that helps you process more in shorter time. >> So analytics as a use case attach the storages, of course, really interesting one, heavily growing. One of the other interesting things about PowerMax, is I think it was discussed, predictive analytics inside. So, I think back to, I mean, disclosure, I worked at EMC for 10 years. We think of intelligent storage was something we've been talking about for a long time. Explain what's different about this generation of analytics and predictive compared to previous storage innovations. >> Sure, sure. So we have the infrastructure to keep track of work loads as they find address granularity. So, we keep track of access types and access sizes in as small as five megabytes a piece. So in a larger system that could be 40 million data sets for a 200 terabyte system. And once we have data we can analyze and we have some linear regression, time series analysis that we can predict whether an active address space will remain active or whether if a cold address space will remain cold. And based on that we can make decisions. Previously, we were able to make, use those decisions for queuing in hard drives and flash drives. More recently, we are using it for data reduction technologies. For compression, for example, duplication. If data set is highly active, we don't necessarily compress them because they will be updated frequently therefore the CPUs used will not be effective. So then taking to the next level the storage class memory becomes available. We will be able to use the media based on the strengths. So if for storage class memory, low latency, we can place read heavy and write heavy work loads into storage class memory. >> So giving customers, presumably, the ability to take data, use it as a catalyst in many different lines of the business to combine it, recombine it and be able to use the analytics that are built in, it sounds like, to not just get insights they can take action on but actually act on them. (Adnan) Correct. >> Give us an example of a customer that's maybe doing that to be able to deliver a differentiated product or service to their customer. >> So part of the important features that they are introducing is available both in PowerMax and VMAX systems is service levels. So that's very relevant to all or most of our customers because, for example, if you are a service provider, customer service provider, even though all the data resides on very fast NAM flash media they can still provide differentiated performance to their own tenants. For example, if the tenant is paying a certain amount they may get silver or bronze service level. They may no see the full benefit of Flash with that service level but when they upsold into a higher performance level or service level. With a simple change in Unisphere, for example, they can get Flash response time right away. So it's basic changes and simplify their business models makes it more predictable for them. Another one is also the prioritization. They can also set priorities for applications as long as high priority service level gets it is response time, expected target response time everybody will get enjoy low response time. But if the high priority group or application does not meet its targets then we start to increase response time of lower priority applications to give more resources for high priority applications. So that's really a way that customers can capitalize with this feature. >> All right, Adnan, I wonder if you can give us a little bit, dig into NVMe, NMVe over fabric and you talked about storage class memory. Specifically looking at availability, maturity and what kind of pricing considerations for these that we can expect kind of today and the next 12 months. >> So, NVMe as the interface drives themselves, this day they may be at a premium compared to SAS but the expectation when we talk to industry leaders and vendors there will be crossover expected very soon. So that really is the positioning that we just want to be in this market. Get the product out. And then really be ready when that crossover happens. In terms of storage class memory, again, it comes at a premium. But then we, using our intelligence, if we can direct most of the eyeOS to this premium source media then we can let customers enjoy benefits of that extra premium that would endure. They would help to pay but over time, just remember, early days of Flash, when the first Flash came out. It was very expensive at the time but over time it became more and more prevalent. So what our expectation is storage type class of memory, over time will follow similar path. And it will become very possible in the near future that we will see all storage class memory systems coming out of vendors. >> All right, how about the NVMe over Fabric? >> NVMe over Fabrics, we are looking, definitely we have plans for NVMe over Fabrics. Of course, standards are still evolving and also for enterprise customers there's concerns around multi pathing, support and not sure of that. We are working with standards bodies and other vendors on improving that aspect. >> Okay, so there's one thing about this transition that's a little different than most. It has an impact on the application. So where is Dell getting involved or how are you working with your customers? You talked about getting ready for that storage class memory. This is not just, we've been skuzzy for a long time. So, how do we get ready as an industry? What's Dell's positioning in that discussion of applications? >> I mean, Dell seems very so close to participating in standards bodies and with the industry thought leaders on really getting to come up with standard based solutions. I think that is one direction that we are going after with this. >> Anything on the application side, though? Or is that more on the pivotal VM? >> Application side of course, we have VM we have very deep discussions with VM and NVM over fabrics and how we can work with them more efficiently. >> So, Adnan, when we kicked off this segment we talked about it being the first Dell Technologies World. Indicator of the absorption of the EMC federation. Over your shoulder is the Dell EMC Partner Program. What are some of the feedback that you're hearing from partners, technology partners who are collaborating. You mentioned VMWare. What's some of the feedback that you're hearing at the event in terms of what you have announced and how do your partners influence design of these leading technologies? >> There's great excitement. We've been working with them, listening to them, learning from them and I think overall, everybody is excited with the new product. And we are also, as a group very excited with and been working for awhile. And we are happy to be able to release the product today. >> Adnan, one of the other product lines that, there were a bunch announced around the xtrem IO and the X2. Can you just help us make sure we understand positioning today of things like VMAX and PowerMax and the xtremIO Family. >> Each product platform has strengths. If customers are happy with what they are using, they should continue with the same product line. It think that really makes it easier for everyone. Xtreme, I believe, announced a remote application, as well. So, it's great. >> From a foundational perspective, what are these technologies going to be able to do to enable enterprises to start taking advantage and realizing the possibilities of emerging technologies machine learning, artificial intelligence, IOT? >> I think, important part is. If you look at all those things, what is really needed is ultra low latency high band width, capabilities from storage. Because you have massive compute capability sometimes customers use in memory applications as well. And we need to be close to compute as close as possible to memory. It's not always possible but we want to get to be there. We have significant value add to be clear. For example, we have local and remote reapplication capable. If you're running any of those applications in a mission critical in mind. You want to make sure that you have local application capability as well as remote application disaster recovery. Business continues models built around. And what we have with our infrastructure to really give customers that type of mission critical. You can not take in chances in this day and age with these applications. >> Adnan, I got to talk to Jeff Clark, earlier today on the Cube and he talked about the engineering culture. From the EMC side, I'm curious if working with your Dell team, you've got that whole server team. Has that changed some of the processes there? How does that impact the development and the viewpoint of the engineering team? >> There's very clear, much better communication. We're been talking to the server team very easily and very frequently actually. Just to make sure that, for example, we understand their challenges and then type of solace that they come up with on the service side and we can apply on our storage. And the same from our side. We give feedback on our experiences on the storage to them. And not only with the server side but also across different portfolio components in our storage in our business units as well. >> So last question: Customers that are here in the early stages of transformation and are looking for best practices, where do we start? Do we start with transforming IT to make it into a profit center. What are your recommendations? >> Can you repeat? I could not hear the last one. IT? >> Yeah, what are your recommendations for customers that might be at the very beginning of their transformation journey. What do you recommend? Where do they start, in terms of going, 'hey we've got our business leaders, recognize IET should become a part of our business strategy. It shouldn't be a cost center. It should be a profit center." How do you recommend they start these conversations with Dell EMC/ Dell Technologies to get... >> They just need to talk to their representative about business need and application needs. We have a large portfolio of products available to our customers. Again, on the high end there's the resilient storage with more capabilities that might be VMAX. On the mid range it could be either unity or storage center. And on the sever side, again, similar types of options available. They just need to talk about their application needs, virtualization needs, storage needs, hyper converge says traditional lock storage versus file storage connectivity. Those make all the difference and I think our field people have experience in really helping customers out. >> Well, Adnan, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing with us what's new with the technologies. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you. Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. We are here live Day 2 of Dell Technologies World from Vegas. Stick around. We'll be right back after a short break. (techno music)