EMC Rolls Out New Clariion to Meet Scalability Demands

Targeting the mushrooming scalability and availability demands within enterprise mid-range storage environments that are growing in complexity, EMC rolled out new Clariion models and disk library products on Monday.

The new products feature EMC Corp.s UltraPoint technology configurations, virtual LUN software enhancements and new mobility-based DC power support capabilities.

The new Clariion CX series of arrays, comprising the CX300-s, the CX500-s and CX700-s models, are built with new EMCs UltraPoint software and hardware architecture providing point-to-point connectivity between disk drives and storage controllers. This allows the Clariion boxes to isolate and solve disk drive issues faster by moving data to Fiber Channel or ATA-based disks within the array to improve performance and levels of reliability, according to officials of Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC.

Available in September, the New UltraPoint-based Clariion CX arrays provide backward and forward compatibility allowing the technology to be shared across the entire Clariion CX series and integrated with previous versions of the Clariion CX arrays.

IBM to support EMCs wares. Click here to read more.

Currently available, Clariions new Virtual LUN software allows data volumes within a Clariion frame to be shifted across systems without any application interruption. Astolfo Rueda, network administrator for Seattle-based Preston Gates & Ellis LLP, said the new Clariion Virtual LUN technology is being used in his environment to automate disaster-recovery capabilities and ensure data integrity for critical applications and database functions.

"The nice thing about this new technology on the arrays is youll be able to guarantee data consistency for front-end applications, including Oracle and Microsoft for SQL [Server] and Exchange," said Rueda. "It puts at rest the question of whether creating virtual LUNs of databases will create a consistent copy of the databases."

He continued,"[Virtual LUN software] automates disaster recovery options. Before, it was a manual process that not many people knew how to do. Now everyone is going to be able to get that functionality. [The software] will help quite a bit and make it easier for both the storage administrator and application administrator to work together." Ruedas law firm is running four production arrays featuring EMCs Clariion CX 600 and CX 700, and four beta arrays: the AX100, CX 300, CX 400 and CX 600.

Resource Library:

Software upgrades to EMCs new Clariion CX series is geared toward providing improved consistency in conjunction with information protection, said EMC officials. The arrays include new SnapView and EMC MirrorView synchronous capabilities to receive point-in-time restartable copies for remote replication and local backup, as well as doubling MirrorView and SnapView LUN counts to protect larger amounts of customer data.

Additionally, EMC announced on Tuesday that it has completed interoperability with VMWares ESX Server environment to run all of Clariions replication products with VMWare virtual servers. While SAN Copy, EMCs third-party data migration tool has been offers expanded array support, SAN Copy/E has been updated with new soft-ware to allow data movement between Clariion AX100 and CX Series storage sys-tems for improved backup and recovery. EMC has added Navisphere Manager support for AX100 to allow greater centralized management for EMC customers run-ning both AX and CX systems.

To afford vertical industries such as telecommunications, federal, and oil businesses greater Clariion mobility, EMCs new Clariion CX arrays feature built-in support for DC or battery power, ranging from -36 volts to -72 volts. The systems are in full compliance with the NEBS (Network Equipment Building System) Level-3 and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) EN 300 386.

In terms of EMCs new Clariion disk libraries, the storage giant on Monday unveiled its new disk library models replacing its DL300 and DL700 predecessors with twice the performance and capacity improvements.

Available this month and containing active engine failover and write cache consolidation technology, the new Clariion disk library models include: the single-engine DL310 with capacity from 3.8TB to 37.5 TB; single-engine DL710 offering up to 174 TB; the dual-engine DL720 with capacity scaling up to 174 TB; and the dual-engine DL740, packaged with two EMC Clariion CX700 systems providing up to 348 TB and performance of 1,200 megabytes per second, said EMC officials.

Support for the new disk libraries has been expanded to include tape library environ-ments such as Storage Technology Corp.s PowderHorn, Sony Corp.s PetaSite, and Advanced Digital Information Corp. i200.

Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis on enterprise and small business storage hardware and software.