EMC Unveils New High-End Storage Array

EMC on Monday unveiled the next-generation product in its high-end Symmetrix storage line. The DMX-3 supports up to 960 disk drives, and will be capable of supporting up to 1,920 disk drives in the first half of 2006 and more than 2,000 by the end of 2006.

When fully configured, the system will be capable of storing a petabyte of data. EMC will begin shipping the product in September.

The DMX-3 is designed to support applications that require maximum scalability with minimal downtime. The system features a doubling of internal bandwidth versus its DMX-2 predecessor, and has nearly three times the processing power. The DMX-3 also has more memory power through the addition of fully mirrored global memory directors based on Dual Data Rate memory technology.

EMC continues to expect demand for its Clariion midrange systems to outpace demand for its high-end DMX systems, said president and CEO Joe Tucci in a conference call. However, high-end systems remain important for real-time transaction-processing applications such as airline-reservation systems, credit-card processing, and securities trading. "As information requirements grow, cost per terabyte is very important," said Tucci. "High-end systems have better performance, software functionality, and recoverability."

By putting different classes of disk drives within a single array, EMC is making it easier to create tiered environments for information life-cycle management. "EMC is offering in-the-box tiering capability, such that some applications can run to tier-one storage and others can run on low-cost Fibre Channel storage. No other vendor offers that," says Tony Prigmore, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Customers can increase system performance by adding additional back-end disk directors, and can add capacity by adding modular storage bays. The system includes support for low-cost Fibre Channel drives. "Customers can add capacity and performance simply and non-disruptively, which is what high-end performance is all about," said David Donatelli, EMC's executive VP of storage platform operations, in Monday's conference call. When fully configured, the DMX-3 will allow a petabyte of data storage in a single array, he said.

EMC also debuted two data-migration products. EMC Open Migrator/LM software provides automated online data migration between heterogeneous storage systems in Windows and Unix environments. EMC/Softek Logical Data Migration Facility software, developed jointly by EMC and Softek Storage Solution Corp., enables online relocation of mainframe data at the data-set level.

Open Migrator/LM is ideal for moving application data, migrating internal data to an external storage system, and migrating data between heterogeneous storage systems and from direct-attached storage to a storage area network. Logical Data Migration Facility enables companies to non-disruptively relocate mainframe data to different volumes within a storage system or to another storage system.