EMC CX4 Redefines the Paradigm of Midrange Storage

EMC just revamped its CLARiiON midrange storage platform with the CX4 generation of products. The CX4 systems employ a new controller design, which features the latest multicore 64-bit Intel processors as well as the new PCI Express-based I/O modules (the UltraFlex technology). With the enhanced controller, CX4 systems support up to twice as many disks as CX3 systems: up to 960 disks on the top-end model, the CX4-960. EMC also claims that CX4 provides up to double the application performance compared to the CX3 generation of products (though no performance details are available at this time).

More importantly, the new CX4 systems have incorporated several innovative features, which appear to be in high customer demand. Each of these features has served as a key differentiating capability for the platform that first introduced it to the market; now together they define a new class of midrange storage product, and present a new paradigm of network storage for customers. Combined with the existing advanced features on CLARiiON, the CX4 systems have raised the bar for midrange competition, offering the most complete set of cutting-edge features, including the following:

• Switched disk subsystem with point-to-point connections to disk drives [Available with CX3]
• Intermixed FC and SATA disks [Available with CX3]
• RAID-6 (Dual-Parity RAID) [Available with CX3]
• Native and concurrent FC/iSCSI host connectivity [Improved over CX3 with the new UltraFlex I/O modules]
• Solid state disk (SSD) [New with CX4, available 3Q08]
• Virtual Provisioning  (thin-provisioning) [New with CX4, available 3Q08]
• Spin-Down Infrequently Accessed Disks [New with CX4, future availability]

Certainly, a typical midrange customer may not require all of the above-listed features today. However, the availability of these features in a single platform enables customers to experiment with various new technologies and deploy the ones that are most effective in their unique environments (or plan future deployments when the need arises). EMC was not necessarily the first-to-market for the individual features, but has indeed made a milestone introduction with the CLARiiON CX4 as the first platform to offer all of them (assuming all features will be generally available soon as planned).

The feature-rich CX4 systems have greatly improved the competitiveness of CLARiiON in the market. In particular, CX4 effectively differentiates CLARiiON against the formidable competition from LSI-based midrange platforms (also resold by many other vendors including IBM and Sun), which are well-known for their robust performance and reliability but currently lack several of these leading-edge features (such as the last four features listed above).

Comments

[Joseph Zhou]

Ok, Paul, I only talk to the EMC technologists, not the product guys. And it happens that you were correct, that this thing does not replicate remotely now. With all the love for EMC engineers, I insist, it will, one day.
:-)

CX4 thin provisioning will be implemented in two phases. Phase 1 will include basic thin pool and thin LUN structures as well as the ability to expand a thin pool with additional disk drives. Phase 1 will support thin LUN technology including LUN migration and support for SnapView™ snapshots and clones. Navisphere Analyzer and Navisphere Quality of Service Manager will also be supported.

Phase 2 will include support for array-based remote replication: MirrorView®/S, MirrorView/A, and SAN Copy™.

Phase 2 will provide the ability to shrink a thin pool by withdrawing disk drives, create and track thin LUN space reservations, and expand thin LUNs. Additional reports detailing thin pool and thin LUN characteristics and relationships will be made available via Taskbar-based reporting

[JosephZhou]

Well Dave, Fujitsu ETERNUS has been “the best kept secret” in the U.S. storage market. ;-)
I am aware of ETERNUS’ impressive feature set, however, I was not aware of the availability of SSD and thin-provisioning. The ETERNUS4000 datasheet today does not indicate those. http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/STRSYS/system/eternus4000_brochure.pdf

[Dave Patton]

Fujitsu's ETERNUS product delivers all these features plus some today.

[JosephZhou]

Paul, based on the latest info, the new features on CX4 are planned to be available in October, except spin-down is planned for 2009. And l don’t see why CX4 Virtual Provisioning won’t replicate. The DMX Virtual Provisioning supports replications. Well, the Celerra Virtual Provisioning is file-based and doesn’t work with block-based replication – maybe you were thinking about Celerra instead of CLARiiON? Anyway, I guess we will soon find out in October. Thanks for sharing your concerns!

[Paul Hughes]

I have confirmed that the CX-4 does NOT have the Virtual Provisioning feature yet! They are selling this even though it's release date is undetermined. It will be released in two phases, and will likely cost more to assign to the CX-4...BEWARE..it will not replicate.