EMC crams Clariions full of high-end goodness

EMC this week wrapped a few upgrades for the Clariion line of storage systems around a common theme - making midrange to low-end boxes stronger.

Most notably, EMC will ship the Clariion CX300, CX500 and CX700 systems with UltraPoint hardware and software that permits "point-to-point" links between disk drives and storage controllers. The upshot of this addition is that customers can isolate and fix drive issues faster. The new models will be sold as "s series" systems marked, for example, as the CX300-s.

Customers will still be able to buy older disk array enclosures (DAEs) and to mix and match old and new DAEs in the same system.

Next on the list is Virtual LUN technology for the Clariion kit. This lets administrators move volumes from one part of an array to another without shutting the storage system down. It's an addition in line with a shared goal among the major vendors to add more flexibility - or virtualization - to their products.

Customers could, for example, move less crucial volumes from high-performing Fibre Channel drives to ATA drives. In addition, they could upgrade volumes to the latest and greatest drives EMC ships.

"This is a unique feature in the midrange marketplace," said Barry Ader, EMC's senior director of Clariion marketing.

Then in a broad set of software upgrades EMC made it possible for customers to take multiple volumes of data and treat them as one volume during replication, which is key for database management. In addition, EMC doubled the LUN limits for SnapView from 100 to 200 and for MirrorView from 50 to 100. Its VMware software will now work with Clariion's replication software as well, and EMC has tweaked SAN Copy to support high-end systems from Hitachi and IBM in addition to existing support for HP, IBM FaST and Sun T3 gear.

But, friends, that's not all.

EMC also rolled out an entire new fleet of disk libraries that it bills as options to tape. EMC had sold the DL300 and DL700 systems. It has upgraded both of those with more capacity and will sell the new models as the DL310 and DL710 and then added one more midrange system and a high-end box - the DL720 and DL740. On the low-end, the DL310 starts at 3.8TB and stretches to 37.5TB, while on the high-end the DL740 goes up to 348TB.

Last on the list are new DC versions of the Clariion boxes that are NEBS Level 3 certified and aimed at telcos or other customers in need of rugged kit.

The UltraPoint technology will be available in September. The Virtual LUN technology and the rest of the software upgrades arrive this month in an upgrade to the Flare operating system. The disk libraries ship this month, and the DC models are available today. ®

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