EMC announces high-end array, IP storage products

EMC last week announced an array for customers whose organizations have the largest of storage needs.

At an event in London, the company rolled out its Symmetrix DMX-3, which can be configured with 96 to 2,400 drives. The company also announced new IP-replication support and iSCSI technology for its network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

The DMX-3 array can support three Fibre Channel drive types within the same box, a feature analysts say is important in implementing an information life-cycle management strategy.

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EMC last week announced an array for customers whose organizations have the largest of storage needs.

At an event in London, the company rolled out its Symmetrix DMX-3, which can be configured with 96 to 2,400 drives. The company also announced new IP-replication support and iSCSI technology for its network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

The DMX-3 array can support three Fibre Channel drive types within the same box, a feature analysts say is important in implementing an information life-cycle management strategy.

"The new DMX-3 makes it easier to manage storage inside the box than outside the box," says Steve Duplessie, senior analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "If you ask anybody managing a disk environment what they want, it's a single box that contains all the tiers of storage and has a single point of management for anything."

The three drives EMC supplies in the DMX are pricey and fast 146GB, 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel; less expensive 300GB, 10,000 RPM Fibre Channel; and inexpensive, slower-access 500GB, 7,200 RPM Fibre Channel. The array, scheduled to be available in March, starts at $250,000 and costs millions of dollars at the high end.

With support for three drive types, customers can migrate data from one tier of storage to another. They can use 146GB, 15,000 RPM drives for their business-critical data and migrate it to less expensive and slower drives as its value to the business decreases.

DMX sales accounted for one-third of all Symmetrix sales in the fourth quarter, EMC reported. EMC says the average system ships with 60TB.

The company also announced a new technology for IP connectivity called the Multipath File System for iSCSI (MPFSI) for its Celerra NAS platform. MPFSI supports either standard NAS file transport or iSCSI block transport to send data over the IP network using the faster block protocols or the slower file protocols.

MPFSI is like EMC's HighRoad technology, which automatically decides whether data will be transported across the IP or Fibre Channel network. MPFSI works with EMC's Celerra NAS arrays.

"You can buy a NAS box that also has iSCSI, but the transport of data is either/or," Duplessie says. "Part of it responds to file-system calls; the other [iSCSI] responds to block calls over IP. MPFSI does both. If you ask for a big file, it will automatically use iSCSI as a block transport. Blocks move faster than files."

EMC also announced that its Rainfinity Global File Virtualization now includes enhanced global namespace management and synchronous IP-replication capability, which provide customers with improved management and protection capabilities for their file-based information.

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