EMC, IBM Introduce SAN Bundles, Updates

EMC Corp. and IBM separately announced storage networking bundles and speed upgrades this week, acknowledging that installation hassles and performance issues are still among storage administrators top concerns.

EMCs additions apply to its midrange Clariion family, with most features available now. IBMs apply to its high-end Enterprise Storage System 800 series (a k a Shark) and will ship in November.

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EMCs bundles include the Clariion CX200 with 350GB, host-bus adapters, Fibre Channel cables, and Navisphere Web-based management and Access Logix host-management software, officials of the Hopkinton, Mass.-based company said. The package also comes with installation, support, a hardware warranty, and software maintenance, they said.

Users can buy a direct-attached high-availability version for $17,000, or SAN versions starting at $23,000, the company. Later this quarter, the company will let users try out the recently launched VisualSAN and VisualSRM software software for free, activated through a Web site, EMC officials said.

With partner Dell Inc., "Weve been getting some feedback from them that anything we can do to make it easier to buy, easier to sell, easier to deploy would all be important," said Joel Schwartz, EMCs senior vice president for Clariion systems. However, "This whole program is not designed to solve any problem between Dell and ourselves, its really a market expansion program." he added.

Regarding the bundles aimed at smaller companies, Schwartz said the current offerings were "just kind of a start." For example, other software for small organizations storage needs may come through future acquisitions, just as EMCs deals for Prisa Networks Inc.and Astrum Software Corp. resulted in the VisualSAN and VisualSRM products, he said.

eWEEK Labs recently took a look at EMCs VisualSAN 3.0 and VisualSRM 1.5.9 software. Check out their conclusions here.

IBM, meanwhile, is upgrading its Turbo processor to have six controllers running at 750MHz, officials of the Armonk, N.Y. company said. Also new is Fibre Channel connectivity for Sharks remote data movement feature, known as Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC). PPRC currently only uses the Enterprise Systems Connection, which is slower in such applications and uses more channels, they said.

All of IBMs data movement technologies, which include PPRC, Extended Remote Copy, FlashCopy and Parallel Access Volumes, will also receive a Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) application interface, officials said.

In a separate announcement, IBM on Tuesday extended its partnership with Computer Network Technology Corp., to support the Minneapolis companys wide-area networking technology for data replication. In addition, IBM tomorrow will announce provisioning features managed through Cisco Systems Inc.s modular Multilayer DataCenter Switch 9200 and 9500 series, officials of the San Jose, Calif. Cisco added, declining to elaborate.

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