EMC Manages Distributed Cache

At the EMC World 2010conference today, EMC outlined an architecture for caching distributing data across local data centers and eventually federated IT environments.

Called VPLEX, the EMC approach to managing distributed cache relies on a dedicated appliance that keeps track of the relationships between distributed sets of applications as applications use that data.

According to Barry Burke, EMC chief strategy officer for Symmetrix and virtualization technologies, VPLEX, which supports throughput rates of up to 8 gigabits-per-second, is designed to allow applications to access data stored in cache. The VPLEX appliance will then check with the rest of the EMC storage environment to determine if there is a more current version of that data stored on the network. Then, depending on the need to have access to that data, VPLEX will either update the distributed cache or synchronize the updates at a later time.

As more data is processed in memory, the need to manage the synchonization of that data across distributed environments is becoming more challenging. The first iteration of the VPLEX appliance are Local and Metro editions that can support up to 8,000 and 16,000 virtual data volumes, respectively. Next year, EMC will deliver VPLEX Geo, a version that supports asynchronous updates of distributed cache across federated environments, and VPLEX Global, an implementation that supports synchronous and asynchronous updates across global networks.

Also at EMC World, EMC announced plans to resell 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches manufactured by Brocade as part of an effort to unify network storage protocols as data centers evolve toward private cloud computing architectures.