EMC Adds Mid-tier NAS Boxes

EMC said it has completed development on new products for the networked-attached storage (NAS) market, adding mid-tier boxes and a few other enhancements to its NAS family.

The Hopkinton, Mass. storage systems vendor announced the upgrades Wednesday, less than
a week after rival Network Appliance announced
similar products to fill out lower ends of their product lines.

Both EMC and Network Appliance had already offered high-end NAS boxes but
in accordance with customer demand, both vendors realized the importance of
providing solutions for smaller companies who still require scalable file
servers.

Tom Joyce, senior director of NAS product marketing at EMC, said the market
is changing in the companies are asking for enterprise-level NAS
capabilities in the mid-tier.

Joyce told internetnews.com EMC aims to accommodate the evolution
with the Celerra NS600G, a new NAS gateway that makes it possible for
customers to integrate NAS functions into CLARiiON CX600 and CX400 storage
systems. By offering both NAS and SAN on the same box, EMC is
appealing to a broader range of customers who often have one or the other.
The NS600G is offered in both single- and dual-data mover configurations.

Meanwhile, the NS600S is the new mid-tier entry-level model for the Celerra
NS600 series, first launched last December. It includes a single data mover
but may be upgraded to a dual-data mover configuration online.

“This is high-performance datacenter class stuff,” Joyce said. “Scalability
is hard thing to do no matter how you do it. This joins the first NS600 in
taking war horse work in tough environments.”

The enhanced Celerra line also boasts new features, including lower cost ATA
disk drives, in the NS600 systems and Celerra CNS clustered environments.
This means every Celerra model now offers ATA disk drives for new
applications such as back-up to disk from partners such as CommVault,
Computer Associates, Legato and Veritas.

Lastly, EMC said the EMC NetWin 200 NAS system is generally available.
NetWin 200 is a combination of the Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003
operating system with EMC’s CLARiiON CX200 networked storage platform. It is
designed for those customers operating in a Microsoft Windows environment
who require seamless integration of NAS.

Joyce said that although the mid-tier systems are geared to an attractive
price point customers have been requesting that the company offer high-end
capabilities at the mid-tier, which is essentially what the NS600 line is
about. However, the first NS600 retailed for $167,000 for a 1 terabyte
configuration.

The new NAS products are available now at list prices of $97,000 for the
NS600G, $63,000 for the NS600GS, $114,000 for the NS600S (1TB
configuration), and an estimated end user price of $32,000 for the NetWin
200 (500GB). The new NAS boxes include CIFS protocol, SnapSure software, Web
Manager and warranty.