EMC has announced enhancements to its high-end storage
Symmetrix DMX line, assuring customers the company is listening to
demands.
The Symmetrix DMX, announced first in February, appears to be
the booster shot EMC needed to regain lost market share, according
to IDC’s Alan Freedman, research manager of infrastructure
hardware.
The DMX3000 offers up to 576 drives, providing a maximum raw
capacity of more than 84TBytes, doubling the performance for
certain applications of its predecessor, the DMX2000.
EMC announced the Symmetrix DM800 entry-level configuration,
which comes with scalable raw capacities of 580GBytes to more than
17TBytes, and carries a price tag that is about a third less than
the previous version.
EMC is also offering native iSCSI through the Multi-protocol
Channel Director for high-end storage systems, giving customers a
way to consolidate and network previously stranded servers.
According to EMC, iSCSI offers the value of networked storage
without the cost associated with Fibre Channel installations.
Although iSCSI will only be offered for the Symmetrix DMX line, EMC
said customers can expect its Clariion and additional systems to
carry the transport protocol in the near future.
The company has given mainframe customers something to talk
about as well. EMC is now offering enhanced compatibility with
IBM’s mainframe feature set. As part of the mainframe offering, the
company has announced a DMX-based implementation of IBM’s XRC
Version 3 replication software.
"Mainframes are still the core of the data centre," said David
Donatelli, EMC executive vice-president of storage platforms
operations. "With our two new DMX models, we can offer mainframe
customers the broadest range of price performance in the
industry."
EMC is also enhancing mainframe environments through 2GB FICON
connectivity, the highest performance transport protocol.
"With our offerings, customers can consolidate with confidence
because they have got both the ability to scale their capacity as
well as their performance as well as the best non-disruptive
capabilities in the business," Donatelli continued. "They can get
the scalability an flexibility to scale up and down and can manage
everything with EMC software. It is all there in DMX."
IDC’s Freedman said the launch of DMX has done wonders for EMC
and he expected the enhanced functionality will continue to make
the offering appealing to enterprise customers.
"Before, [EMC] was using the old Symmetrix and they had started
to lose market share and lose their momentum because it didn’t have
the features or performance that someone like Hitachi Data Systems
was coming out with," Freedman explained.
"Then they introduced the DMX and it re-energised the product
line and sales force and gave EMC a shot in the arm, which was what
they needed."
All products will be available this September. The DXM800 comes
with a list price of $284,000 (£176,530), and the Symmetrix DMX3000
starts at $1.7m (£1.1bn).
Carly Suppa writes for ITWorldCanada.com