The First Wave of EMC VMAX EOSLs

EMC’s VMAX products—short for Virtual Matrix—are the most recent evolution in EMC’s flagship Symmetrix series, following the DMX-4. Introduced to deliver massive scalability and IOPS and meet the demands of the virtualized cloud and mission critical IT, the VMAX line-up helped beat back naysayers about the viability of legacy storage systems.

Following the introduction of VMAX³, it became clear that the original products were coming to the end of the line for support contracts, and we began recommending that customers seek out alternative, more cost-effective maintenance options. Now a transition is imperative for the following three VMAX storage systems, which reach end of support life (EOSL) with EMC on September 30, 2017:

• VMAX 10K
• VMAX SE
• VMAXe

All three are entry- to mid-level (even self-tuning!) products targeted at the small and mid-sized enterprises and educational, charitable, and similar institutions. In other words, they are used most frequently by IT departments with limited budget to allocate to upgrading their storage arrays.

The good news—a replacement system is not necessary.

A Step Up with VMAX Post-EOSL Support

Third party maintenance providers are available to take over support of these VMAX systems. With contracts available at up to 60% off EMC prices, but incorporating more features, an alternative provider like Park Place Technologies offers significant advantage:

• The opportunity to extend hardware lifespan, without incurring operational risk from going DIY for support
• Greater lifetime value from IT systems investments and a reduction in capital expenditures
• An immediate cut in OPEX costs as the IT organization transitions to lower cost support
• Full protection, including 24/7 monitoring, immediate escalation to Level 3 engineers for troubleshooting, 100% component coverage, and rapid-response spare parts installation and on-site assistance, to name just a few of the most popular contract benefits
• Talented engineering assistance to help with issues ranging from configuration questions to component failures

With this type of support available at a fraction of the cost EMC was charging, it doesn’t make sense to swap out a VMAX system that is installed, stable, reliable, and paid for, just because the OEM would prefer you to buy something new.

Stay Up-to-Date

Park Place Technologies provides a wide range of data center hardware support services, and we never end support on products our clients need and want to keep in service. Find out the OEM support status for key systems in your environment by monitoring our blog, where we post alerts about newly announced and upcoming EOSLs.

We also maintain OEM-specific pages with EOSL information. You can check out all available dates on our EMC page or find any other OEMs here.