New EMC Unified Storage Delivers Unmatched Simplicity And Efficiency In Virtual Environments

HOPKINTON, Mass., Aug. 24. Customers virtualizing their data centers and beginning their journey to the private cloud require a storage infrastructure that is both simple and efficient. EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced the availability of new capabilities for its market leading EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra midrange storage platforms to meet those requirements.

Simplicity begins with ease of management. Through new EMC Unisphere management software, EMC enables storage administrators to perform common tasks with 90 percent fewer clicks. Unisphere is integrated with VMware vCenter(TM) to also make life easier for VMware administrators. Simplicity continues with integration. EMC unified storage integrates out-of-the-box with VMware vSphere and VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). FCoE is also built into these midrange arrays. EMC unified storage is not just simple, it's also more efficient -- and faster too. New Block Data Compression reduces storage capacity requirements by up to 50 percent, and new FAST Cache performance optimization technology enables applications to run twice as fast, and is fully automated -- no administrator intervention required.

EMC Unisphere, a fresh approach to managing storage, and VMware vCenter Server integration and VAAI, provide a simple, integrated experience for managing both EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra storage systems in physical and virtual environments. These technologies are proven to:
  --  Perform "set it and forget it" tuning for application workloads like
      SQL OLTP in 80 percent less time
  --  Lower the number of "clicks" to manage common tasks by more than 90 percent
  --  Provision storage from a VMware vCenter Server in only 2 clicks
  --  Accelerate VMware server performance with 10-times less I/O for common
      tasks, enable 10-times more virtual machines per data store, and
      10-times faster virtual machine deployment, clone, snapshot, and
      VMware Storage vMotion migrations

Additionally, customers will benefit from new FCoE support built into EMC CLARiiON and EMC Celerra unified storage systems for a complete Ethernet storage solution. Native FCoE fulfills EMC's commitment to deliver customers a non-disruptive path to exploiting the advantages of FCoE, while continuing to offer online upgrades to FCoE for existing CLARiiON and Celerra customers. Native support helps customers minimize infrastructure costs associated with multiple Fibre Channel HBA's and multiple NICs, consolidates cabling, and improves savings associated with power and cooling expenses dramatically.

Virtualization and the consolidation of applications puts extreme strain on storage arrays. The adoption of SSDs -- coupled with SATA drives -- is the best practice for satisfying these heightened demands. EMC pioneered the integration of SSD technology across its storage portfolio, understands it, and is building unique capabilities like the EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) Suite, FAST Cache and Block Data Compression, that automatically optimize the use of high-capacity SATA drives and high-performance SSDs to deliver better performance at the lowest cost with the availability of new 100GB and 200GB SSDs -- an industry first -- delivering up to 30 percent list price savings, EMC is making SSDs more affordable than ever before. As SSDs become more affordable only EMC's architecture can take full advantage of the savings, helping customers to:
  --  Increase performance two-fold in Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server
      environments
  --  Improve response time for VMware View(TM) by over 80 percent
  --  Achieve up to 50 percent improvement in storage consumption for less active
      data
  --  Improve the total cost of ownership by up-to 30 percent
 
Additionally, customers can also benefit from the doubled performance of new Celerra storage gateways -- the Celerra VG2 and VG8. The new storage gateways, armed with EMC efficiency and simplicity software capabilities, is also the first midrange storage platform in the industry leveraging cutting edge 64 bit Intel Xeon?? 5600 processors.Customers testing and leveraging these capabilities are measuring the potential impact on lowering costs, eliminating management complexity, and improving their application performance. For example, Itron Inc., a leading technology provider to the global energy and water industries, provides smart metering, data collection and utility software solutions. Approximately 8,000 utilities worldwide rely on Itron to optimize the delivery and use of energy and water. Itron is testing EMC Unisphere, EMC FAST Cache, EMC FAST within its IT infrastructure.

"Itron delivers products and services to the world's biggest energy and water companies," said Joshua Lukes, IT Support Manager at Itron. "With the combination of EMC Unisphere and EMC's integration with VMware software, we were able to dramatically simplify the management of our virtual environment across our Celerra and CLARiiON storage systems. We tested provisioning storage from VMware vCenter Server with the new EMC plug-ins -- which took only two clicks. The overall impact that FAST and FAST Cache has on the efficiency of the system is staggering. We tested this combination with our Oracle and SQL databases and achieved dramatic results."

All capabilities included in this announcement are available worldwide with the exception of native FCoE, which will be available in the fourth quarter of 2010. Availability for 200GB Flash drives is expected in the fourth quarter of 2010 on EMC Symmetrix VMAX.