DC not possible before

direct connect wasn't possible before w/3PAR because virtual connect uses NPIV and 3PAR did not support NPIV till now.

As for the # of VMs a direct connected 3PAR can support it really depends on what the VMs are doing. With ~450k SPC-1 IOPS that's roughly 18 IOPS/VM with a fully loaded V800 and 25,000 VMs. My company's VMs average around 10 IOPS/VM at my last measurement. With some VMs doing quite a bit more, and even more VMs doing almost nothing.

I just don't get where folks come off saying that X system will support X number of VMs (from a performance standpoint anyways) when the workloads vary wildly. User A may only be able to run half the number of VMs because of their apps, User B may be able to run 5 times more VMs since they have less work per VM.