EMC Offers Larger-Capacity Flash Drives For Symmetrix Systems

EMC on Wednesday introduced larger-capacity solid-state drives for its Symmetrix DMX-4 storage systems.

The new 200-GB and 400-GB enterprise flash memory drives are aimed at applications requiring faster performance than what's available through traditional disk arrays, EMC said. The drives are available for EMC's Symmetrix's storage systems first, but will be available for the company's Clariion midrange systems and Celerra unified systems later in the year.

The new products are the second-generation enterprise flash drives for EMC, which didn't disclose pricing.

"Customer demand for enterprise flash drives has exceeded expectations and we are seeing a wide range of deployment scenarios at sites around the world," Barbara Robidoux, VP of storage marketing for EMC, said in a statement. "Whether they are part of Symmetrix, Clariion, or Celerra systems, flash is becoming a key part of information infrastructures of all types and sizes."

SSDs, which have no moving parts, are being pitched as faster, more-reliable devices than traditional disk drives. Because SSDs are far more expensive than traditional disk arrays, experts recommend they be used in applications where it makes sense to spend more for the faster performance, such as for use in processing-intensive applications, such as database backup and replication, for data that's frequently accessed. While a conventional 1-TB hard drive costs about $550, an SSD of similar capacity can run more than $10,000.

EMC isn't the only vendor offering large-capacity SSDs for the data center. Fusion-io this month introduced PCI Express-based SSDs in capacities of 160 GB, 320 GB, and 640 GB. In the second half of the year, the ioDrive Duo product will available with 1.28 TB of storage.

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