EMC unveils slew of product upgrades, new VMAX array

Computerworld - At its annual user conference today, EMC announced upgrades across most of its major product lines, including a new high-end Symmetrix VMAX array with up to 4PB capacity and twice the performance of its predecessor.

In all, the company said that at EMC World in Las Vegas this week it is announcing 42 new product capabilities or upgrades.

"It's a horizontal improvement across their entire portfolio. That's hard to do when you have that many products," said Steve Duplessie, founder and lead analyst of market research firm ESG.

EMC said the product upgrades support its ongoing strategy of enabling private and public cloud computing deployments.

Among the new products EMC introduced a new version of its new entry-level VNXe hybrid storage array. The new VNXe 3150 storage system offers up to 50% more performance and capacity compared with its predecessor. VNX and VNXe combine the EMC Clariion block storage and Celerra file storage system in one array.

Perhaps most significantly, the company today announced a new model of its high-end Symmetrix VMAX storage array that doubles both the maximum capacity and performance over its predecessor. The company also also gave the names of its existing VMAX lineup addendums, to help classify them for use cases ranging from lower-end to midrange enterprises.

"VMAX for the first time ever becomes a family. We typically had the approach that we'd build a VMAX and three years later build a new VMAX, and the old VMAX would become ... obsolete," said Jeremy Burton, EMC's chief marketing officer.

Now, the current high-end VMAX hardware becomes the VMAX 20K and the VMAXe, a midrange to lower-end enterprise array, becomes the VMAX 10K, Burton said. The VMAX 20K scales to 2PB of usable capacity and the 10K scales to 1.5PB.

The VMAX 40K

The new VMAX 40K uses up to 32 2.8GHz Intel Xeon six-core processors, and has as much as 2TB of mirrored (1TB usable) and ECC-protected DDR3 DRAM, and twice as much internal fabric bandwidth as the original EMC VMAX.

The new high density option for the VMAX 40K utilizes 2.5-in SAS drives to support up to 3.2PB in a footprint that is one-third smaller and uses one-third less power than the equivalent configuration using 3.5-in. drives.

The array also offers new 2.5-in. enterprise-class MLC (multi-level cell) solid-state drives. The new SSDs offer the performance, reliability and life expectancy of EMC's previous 3.5-in. SLC (single-level cell) SSDs and at a lower price point.

EMC's VMAX operating system, Enginuity, also gives all three arrays -- the 10K, 20K and 40K a similar look and feel but with differing capabilities, Burton said.