EMC has announced a smorgasbord of hardware refreshes for
its data storage platforms, which include performance updates to
the Symmetrix high-enddisc array, active-active
controllers and new replication support for the Clariion midrange
disc array, a new model and setup wizard for the Celerra
network attached storage (NAS) product, a scaled down model of
the Rainfinity file
virtualisation box and a complete hardware overhaul of the
Centera
content-addressed storage (CAS) archive."You're starting to see EMC emerge out of its acquisition phase
from last year, and they're now making this coordinated technology
refresh across a large number of separate product lines," said
Steve Norall, analyst with the Taneja Group. "This is a good sign
for EMC users."
He added that it is especially encouraging to see signs of
integration in this update, citing new support for Centera with
Rainfinity and new integration between Symmetrix and products from
security subsidiary RSA Inc.
Symmetrix DMX-4
"First, you make it work, then you make it faster." That's how
EMC's director of technology analysis Ken Steinhardt described the
updates to the Symmetrix microcode that make up the new DMX-4. The
new DMX doesn't have many new functions over the old version, but
EMC said operations, such as copy on first write, cache management,
target restore operations, performance times for full clone
creation and TimeFinder sync performance have all been brushed up
thanks to code improvements in Symmetrix microcode and its
Engenuity management software.
EMC is claiming 30% performance improvements in RAID 5 and RAID
6 provisioning, and up to 33% better SRDF/S replication response
time. Another update means that users can double the maximum
synchronous replication distance from 100km to 200 km, but users
must pick between the distance or the performance boost. Also, the
number of snapshots per volume has been increased from 16 snapshots
to 128 snapshots.
As with the DMX-3 line, a "baby" model 950 will be available for
the DMX-4, and this will support FICON. Symmetrix will also now
support 500 GB and 750 GB SATA drives, 4 Gbps Fibre Channel
connections have been added to both the front and back end, and the
back-end loop has been revised to have a point-to-point connection
between the controller and each disc for easier maintenance.
Finally, the audit logging added in the last Symmetrix refresh can
now be fed into RSA's enVision audit log management software.
EMC was mum when it came to exactly what's been improved about
the Symm code and refused to give actual numbers when it came to
its claims about percentage performance improvements. "The core of
these improvements gets into our secret sauce, and to even describe
them conceptually would be to give away critical proprietary
information," Steinhardt said.
While users say performance improvements are always welcome,
there are other long-standing items on the wish list, including
physical weight, power and cooling, and encryption that haven't
been added yet, according to Shane McLaughlin, a storage
administrator for a large financial institution who asked that his
company not be named because of policies prohibiting him from
representing it in the press.
McLaughlin said his company had to completely replace a
wood-core floor in its data center with a cement-core floor to
support the Symmetrix, and that he'd like to see EMC take steps to
reduce the weight of the system, as well as the space it takes up.
"The new Symmetrix footprint is bigger than a floor tile," he said.
"That makes space management more complicated in the data
center."
With the addition of higher capacity SATA drives, EMC is touting
the "greenness" of the DMX-4, but McLaughlin said he'd like to see
more done to improve the power consumption of the Symm. "The
three-bay DMX we have installed requires six power feeds, two per
rack, compared to only two on our 8830 [and needs] two additional
feeds for every additional drive bay." However, the newer DMX model
at least allows him to add those feeds when the drive bays are
added. The older version required full power even with a
half-populated rack.
Clariion: Active-active controllers a long-anticipated
feature
Prior to last year's Clariion refreshes, users were already
talking about the addition of more processing power and
active-active controllers, but it's taken until now to see it
happen.
"Active-active arrays are the biggest item on my EMC wish list,"
McLaughlin said. "An active-active array will be easier to manage
-- no more balancing LUNs across server paths and having only two
logical paths per server versus four, and I suspect that there
would be a performance increase since there will be two active
buses to the physical drive."
EMC has also added RAID 6 support to Clariion, support for 750
GB SATA II drives, and native iSCSI support for its MirrorView and
SanCopy replication software -- previous versions required
FCIP.
Celerra: Following in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HP) footsteps
with setup wizard; scaling down to face Network Appliance Inc.
(NetApp)
EMC has also given its NAS line a boost with the addition of a
new scaled-down model, the NS20, which has a maximum capacity of 20
terabytes (TB) usable, compared with 32 TB maximum capacity for the
next biggest model, the NS40. The NS20 and NS40 will also now
support full multiprotocol access, including iSCSI, Fibre Channel
and NAS in a single chassis -- an update that puts it in a position
to compete better with NetApp, particularly in the midmarket,
according to Norall, who compared the NS20 in scale to the
FAS270.
New users for the Celerra line will also be able to set up their
new box a little more easily, the company claims, thanks to the
addition of a new software setup wizard to replace the old method
of command-line scripting for set up.
Rainfinity: New SMB offering
Also on the NAS front, EMC announced it is adding a new small
and midsized business (SMB) model of its Rainfinity file
virtualisation product. The scaled down version will have file
migration and archiving capabilities only, which represent just one
of seven possible software modules contained in the full product,
though at just over $42,000 it's priced at about half of the full
version. Also new for Rainfinity is support for migration to the
Centera archive, but the Fibre Channel support in the new Celerra
is not supported.
Centera: Complete hardware refresh
EMC has totally overhauled its Centera CAS archiving hardware,
adding new, more compact 1U storage nodes that allow more capacity
in the same chassis, and it follows better power efficiency. A
further power boost will come from support for 750 GB discs. Each
node will now hold 3 TB, as opposed to 2 TB in the previous
version. Each rack can now hold 96 TB per rack, as opposed to 64 TB
in the previous model. Thus it will require 41 watts per terabyte
as opposed to 125W per TB, EMC claims. Also, despite rumors in the
industry that the next generation of Centera would require a
disruptive upgrade, the new Centera nodes will be backward
compatible with previous nodes and management software. Newer 1 TB
SATA drives are available, which presumably would boost the power
equation even more, but EMC declined comment as to when and if it
will add support for those drives.
Stay tuned for in-depth follow-ups on these announcements later
this week.