EMC isn’t backing down from its aggressive
upgrade strategy.
The information systems vendor today unveiled a new high-end Symmetrix
system, along with refreshes for its midrange, network-attached storage
(NAS) and disk library systems.
The Symmetrix DMX-3 model 950 offers twice the performance and three times
the capacity of the DMX-2 800 it’s replacing, said Barbara Robidoux, EMC’s
vice president of platforms marketing.
Available now, the smaller is geared for data centers that don’t have a lot
of space and need to conserve power. However, the machine is no lightweight,
scaling from 32 to 360 drives capable of storing 180 terabytes
Moreover, the company upgraded Symmetrix Management Console, which now
allows users to set up EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility/synchronous
(SRDF/S) and SRDF/A (asynchronous) software without requiring another user
interface to mirror data at a remote site.
EMC also trotted out Clariion CX3 UltraScale midrange systems with the
ability to run both Fibre Channel
Previously, EMC had only offered Clariion machines with the ability to run
either Fibre Channel, which tends to be used to save more important,
frequently used data or iSCSI, typically used to store rarely accessed data,
Robidoux said.
The new combo offering should put EMC right in the mix with Network
Appliance for customers who want to do both.
“Many of the folks who were buying iSCSI systems from us… were the same
folks that were buying Fibre Channel for us,” Robidoux said.
EMC is also giving the Clariion systems a boost with new Navisphere Quality
of Service Manager (NQM) software, which lets users consolidate multiple
applications in one box.
The company isn’t about to ignore its NAS line, either, rolling out new
models of the Celerra NS series IP systems. The new Celerra NS40 and NS40G
replace the NS500 and come in one- or two-blade configurations and store as
much as 32 terabytes.
The larger NS80 and NS80G systems replace the NS700 and NS704 and employ two
to four blades and store up to 64 terabytes. There is also an X-Blade 65 for
Celerra NSX, which supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet and stores 24 terabytes per
blade.
Finally, EMC overhauled its disk library systems, unveiling the DL4100,
DL4200 and DL440O. EMC hopes the DL line will subsume traditional tape
storage systems.
One of the core features of the DL line is consolidated media management
software, which offers a single point of control to manage virtual and
physical tape pools.
“What this consolidated media management allows you to do is take the media
server software out of the back-up application and run it on the disk
library in a coordinated fashion so that you are still using the disk
library resources to do cloning and bar-coding, Robidoux explained.
“But it’s coordinated, so your back-up application has the catalog the keeps
track of all of your data whether it’s on physical or virtual tapes.”
The new DLs also now support Symantec NetBackup in addition to EMC
Networker.
Taken together, the moves point to EMC’s fast and furious upgrade strategy
to not let older models get stale, and to keep ahead of NetApp , IBM
, HP
, HDS and other
makers of storage systems.
On a practical level, product refreshes and new features are meant to help
corporations compensate for the explosion in e-mail and other types of
information, Robidoux said.
“They’re looking not just to store more, but to store more intelligently,”
Robidoux said. “That requires choice and breadth and depth…”
The upgrades also come a week after the company announced
its third-quarter profit dropped a third, and said it would lay off 1,250
staffers by the end of 2007.
EMC Refreshes Core Storage Systems
