EMC to Move Enterprise Storage to the SSD Battleground

Solid-state drives are becoming an usual presence in our lives, as the multi-cell technology is continually perfecting. Flash-based storage is much more expensive than the conventional hard-disk drives because flash devices are mostly based on an expensive technology, called single-level cell Flash. As the much cheaper alternative, multi-level cell memory is perfecting, the prices are expected to drop significantly.

The advantage in using flash-based storage are obvious: SSDs are much faster than the spinning platters since they do not have to move the read/write heads across the platters. Moreover, the lack of a motor keeps the power cost at a minimum.

EMC Corporation announced that its Symmetrix DMX-4 enterprise storage system is now ready to be used with solid-state drives. The DMX systems are compatible with Fibre Channel drives, SATA drives, and, more recently, with SSD drives. The company is producing its very own line of solid-state drives to perfectly integrate with the DMX storage device.

According to EMC officials, a SSD equipped DMX-4 system can compete with thirty 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel drives in terms of speed. Power consumption is another essential aspect of data storage, and the SSD version of the DMX-4 require 38% less power than the classic HDD approach, to store a terabyte of data.

"With this announcement [SSD storage system], EMC has again revolutionized the storage industry. The introduction of flash drive technology builds on EMC's long history of storage industry firsts, including the pioneering use of small form factor disk drives and ATA disk drives in enterprise storage systems. Then as now, EMC is helping customers gain a competitive advantage and tackle information challenges that no other vendor's technology can," said David Donatelli, president of EMC Storage Division.

The SSD version of the DMX-4 storage unit will be available in 73GB and 146GB capacities during the first quarter of the year. EMC did not mention an estimative price, but we expect it to be pretty bulky, since the SSDs are far from becoming mainstream.