EMC Overhauls Its Assets

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EMC on Monday unveiled a number of changes to its core storage systems, including a new high-end Symmetrix system and 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 system 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 of data.

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 and iSCSI concurrently in the same array.

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 and other competitors 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 from 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 that keeps track of all of your data, whether it’s on physical or virtual tapes.”

The new DLs also now supports Symantec NetBackup in addition to EMC Networker.

Taken together, the moves continue EMC’s upgrade strategy to not let older models get stale, to compete with the likes 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 come a week after the company announced its third-quarter results, and said it would lay off 1,250 staffers by the end of 2007.

In other EMC news, George Symons, the company’s former CTO, was named CEO of backup specialist Yosemite Technologies.

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com

Clint Boulton
Clint Boulton
Clint Boulton is an Enterprise Storage Forum contributor and a senior writer for CIO.com covering IT leadership, the CIO role, and digital transformation.

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