14 DAY TRIAL // EMC is expected to announce its line of major upgrades for the Symmetrix, Clariion and Centera storage systems, on Monday in a webcast. The enhancements will include higher capacities, greater energy efficiency, additional data and access security and some other new features. A brand new high end storage system named Symmetrix DMX-4 (an end-to-end 4Gbps array mixing both Fibre Channel and SATA drives) will soon come on sale and EMC plans for improvements on the mid-range Clariion array, Celerra network-attached storage bos and its content-addressable Centera system. DMX-4 will also offer bigger storage capacity as it uses 750GB hard drives with increased replication performance.
The EMC Clariion line will now receive a much needed overhaul, supporting thin provisioning, where physical disk capacity is used only as needed for virtual volumes. This replaces the original method where a large storage space was allocated to applications, but only a fraction was actively used, the rest being wasted. A new RAID 6 protection (sometimes called double parity) will be included as well. Using RAID 6, if two disk fail in a single RAID group, data can be rebuilt. Symmetrix already has RAID 6 support. Just like the DMX-4, the Clariion line will be more tightly integrated with security features like RSA.
The NAS Centera array will receive the capability of adding block level storage-area networking without the need of an additional NAS gateway. Centera will support thin provisioning too and, according to some, it will be easy to set up and configure. The NS20 single controller node from existing Centeras will be upgraded to match the existing NS40, which holds up to 32TB of storage capacity. Its MD5 hashing algorithm will be upgraded as well, in order to increase security and support for 750Gb hard drives as planned. Centera will be backwards compatible to the previous versions.
Sources indicate that EMC will possibly upgrade its Invista virtualization platform to include increased scalability and performance. "EMC is overdue for enhancements to some of its platforms including Invista, Celera NAS, Centera and the Symmetrix DMX, particularly support for 750GB Fibre Channel disk drives and full 4GB Fibre Channel support," says Greg Schulz, senior analyst for StorageIO, as cited by NetworkWorld. "It would only make sense for EMC to refresh or update those platforms that were not updated or enhanced earlier this year so as to give their sales force and partners plenty of time during the second half of this year to drive revenue and expand their presence," said Schulz.