Beneath (and Beyond) 'Simple and Easy' GUIs & Boxes...

Powerful Architecture and Features Matter too!

When it comes to today’s modern, digital transformation IT hardware and software solution platforms...architecture, features, functionality, performance and application coverage all matter!

But “Simple and Easy” GUIs and appliance boxes have clearly resonated across the IT industry and user community. And why not?  Macros, siloed command line interfaces, scripts and other ‘high touch’ multiple user input and management conventions are not only tedious, they’re yesterday’s news. We at #DellTechnologies certainly get that....

"Quite often something that is simple is easy, but being simple isn't necessarily easy...or powerful. Easy is something that can be done without difficulty. It is "easy" because it's "simple" (i.e., it has few and/or straightforward steps or moving parts), but not necessarily so in all cases. Sometimes being "easy" belies highly capable and complex operations going on beyond view. Example? Dell EMC’s ‘Powerfully Simple’ integrated appliances….”

How's that for a mind twister? :-)

Indeed, “Simple and Easy” rolls off the tongue easy…and has a nice ring to it.   Kind of like “Frick & Frack”; “Dick & Jane”; “Jack & Jill”; “Tom & Jerry”; “Open & Shut”; “Black & White”; "Down and Out", etc.” right? Not only does “Simple and Easy” ring nice to IT admin and user ears alike, it’s a good introductory conversational mantra for broad brushing and sprinkling throughout elevator speeches, sales meetings, demos, written proposals and feature knock-off sales "checklists".  Who among us marketing and sales types haven’t…and what vendors don’t emphasize “Simple and Easy” when it comes their product or solution? 

The reality is, however, a vendor’s claims and invoking of “Simple and Easy” can often cloud, distort and/or conveniently obfuscate what’s really going on “beneath the hood” and "outside the box" with IT storage platforms in general; and data protection software and -- in particular. I'm referring specifically to those alluring 'Simple and Easy' to [fill in the blank with suitable verb] integrated storage and data protection appliances. Here, IT management and intended users can be suitably enticed and impressed by those “Simple and Easy” demos showcasing "Simple and Easy" installs, intuitive HTML-based UIs and ‘less complex’ monitoring, reporting, management of a few “key, but good enough" architectural features and feature/functions. 

But for fully functional primary storage and #dataprotection hardware solutions (backup & recovery…and cyber recovery), “Simple and Easy” can indeed gloss over a lot of things. Hence, the BIG (and telling) questions decision makers should ask vendors is: “does your product/solution – and your complete/comprehensive portfolio -- have ALL the features, functionality, performance and capabilities my #datacenter and biz ops need or SHOULD have for on-prem AND #Multicloud sphere deployments?" That's where the real "beef" lies...

So, for purposes of discussion here, let’s assume ALL IT professionals, users, clients, customers, analysts, consultants, etc. looking at various data protection and cloud data management solutions today accept the notion (and premise) that claiming and “Simple and Easy” to deploy and use is 'simply' table stakes. What else really matters and what should they -- and you and your org -- be looking at?  What is THE most important differentiation here?

Answer: The actual architecture design and approach of a vendor’s overall solution portfolio (both software and hardware) and how effective, efficient, productive and economical it really is as experienced by users. 

Indeed, most of us don’t care about (or can appreciate) all the “bits/bytes”, “speeds/feeds”, “duplication and compression” and other inherent architectural complexities going on under that proverbial (and sometimes mysterious) appliance ‘hood’. As long as it’s “Simple and Easy".  But how a backup and recovery hardware and/or software solution actually protects data; consumes compute, storage and networking resources; handles real-world use cases and physical or virtual workloads and delivers SLA compliance consistency (i.e., actual/consistent RPO and RTO performance) and lowers your real cost to serve and TCO numbers really matters. And this “rest of the story” is driven by architecture and features…especially when it comes to a data protection solution’s true capability, efficiency, throughput performance, execution times, value proposition and usefulness. Anything is more or less gravy…

#DellEMCProtect #PowerProtect data protection and cloud data management solutions are “Simple and Easy” to use…and/or improving all the time. #IDPA (Integrated Data Protection Appliances), for example, feature a very intuitive user interface called Data Protection Central (DPC). Our IDPA #DP4400 also features ACM, too (Appliance Configuration Manager. ACM is a user interface tool for configuring the DP4400 integrated appliance and licensing of various pre-installed software.

They also are highly efficient and reliable with it comes to data protection and data integrity -- for both data storage within the box OR up in the cloud or #Multicloud. In addition, #DellTechnologies even has a true, physically and electrically isolated Cyber Recovery solution to protect against data corruption from virus, malware, ransomware or targeted cyber-attacks.  Cyber protection way beyond other vendors' immutable snap shots... And because #PowerProtectSoftware and #Data Domain or IDPA platforms yield superior data reduction results (i.e, data storage compression and de-duplication), they provide very fast backup and recovery times and performance – for full and complete backups (not just snapshot based backups).

So what should you also care about when evaluating vendors’ true data protection, real-world capabilities for your actual datacenter and use case needs? Here’s a few for you to check off…

1. Time required for actual time-to-protect, with fast deployment options – for your real-world data, use cases and production workloads (physical AND virtual)
2. Complete and reliable integrated data backup, replication, recovery, and very efficient de-dupe in a single appliance or DiY hardware and/orsoftware configuration/install flexibility
3. Private AND public cloud data protection with long-term retention to cloud for archival, offload tiering and cloud disaster recovery; including seamless native, public in-cloud support across major public cloud services and data protocols
4. A wide variety of ‘flexible consumption’ offerings…from socket based through subscription based licensing…or even “pay as you grow” flexible billing options for private and hybrid cloud deployments (i.e. VXrack Flex on Demand)
5. Complete and robust VMware file-level recovery, dynamic policies for VMs, and application-consistent VMware image backups -- not to mention, “how many VMs”, backup streams and “how long” it takes to perform backup AND restore operations/windows
6. Single pane-of-glass management console; management integration with management tools, with full vSphere integration along with support for Oracle, SQL…and other DBs and apps
7. Complete, predictable and consistent monitoring, analytics, and reporting…tools and report summaries for 100% of data and operations (not just partial or spotty reporting)
8. Accelerated read/write I/O performance and instant recovery for both primary storage platforms and data protection appliances with industry standard SSD, NVMe and HDD devices -- as opposed to vendor lock-in proprietary flash storage modules, firmware and/or blades -- with seamless, policy driven storage tier and pooling optimization and automation tools across same       
9. Client-side deduplication for efficient use of storage…and compute and network resources...with resulting high performance and low data backup and recovery times
10. Appliances that actually scale (both internally and externally) readily and easily over a wide usable storage min/max platform(s) and portfolio capacity range...and dimension; from single digit usable terabytes to multiple petabytes physical capacity (and > 150 PB logical capacity)...without needing to add nodes with both compute and storage resources whether you need both or not

Incidentally, Dell EMC also offers a Future-Proof Loyalty Program, which provides investment protection through guaranteed data protection deduplication rates, satisfaction guarantees, cloud-enabled consumption, trade-in allowances and predictable support pricing. Check it out…

Then, of course, there’s #VMware’s ground breaking, highly productive #vSphere, #vCenter, #vCloud, #vRealize, #VXrail; and #VCF (#VMware Cloud Foundation) to name a few of their standard environment, tools and UIs for virtual environments and true multi-cloud deployments. And there’s no question here about their “Simple & Easy” attributes, either -- and how well #DellEMC data protection and #DellEMCStorage platforms such as #Unity and #PowerMax storage arrays are integrated within VMware.   

But again, “Simple and Easy” doesn’t begin to tell the complete story. Using a car analogy, what good is “Simple and Easy” if what’s underneath the hood is merely a four cylinder engine opposed to a high powered V-6 or V-8 block with sophisticated integrated physical and 'virtual' electronic, fly-by-wire automation, monitoring and other ‘turbocharged’ highly capable AND productive features built-in. Yugos and Pintos were pretty simple, too…

So next time a recently emerged ‘modern’ #HCI or ‘unique’ all flash storage array vendor [i.e. a Rubrik, Cohesity, Nutanix, Pure, Veeam, Zerto, etc.] sells you on their “Simple and Easy” and “Good Enough” data protection, primary storage or VM/cloud management story, challenge them! Make sure their solution – and architecture – really does meet ALL your #IT DP use case, workload demands, SLA, user/business community(ies) and TCO requirements. Not saying they won't necessarily. But it pays to make sure. #DellEMC can …and will...meet your IT data storage and protection needs across the board! 

So, hopefully you’ll consult with #DellTechnologies expert professionals during your due diligence platform solution and vendor info gathering phase...and let them prove beyond a doubt why architecture, high performance and powerful features all matter (in addition, of course, to being "Simple and Easy").

“Over and out”. ?? #Iwork4Dell!