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EMC Ratchets Up Replication
Plans replication between three sites, which "isn't simple stuff"
October 5, 2004
3 Min Read
EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) today moved to strengthen replication software for its Symmetrix systems that are coming under attack from new releases by Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM).
EMCs high-end Symmetrix is the target for the Tagmastore Universal Storage Platform (USP) that Hitachi launched last month, and the next-generation Shark that IBM will announce next week (see Hitachi Struts Mr. Universal).
With that one-two punch imminent, EMC upgraded its Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) replication software, including a feature called Star that allows distance replication among three data centers. If the primary center goes down, the two secondary data centers can continue to replicate data. Previously, the primary data center had to be involved in the replication.
"Now if the primary site fails, the two survivors can find each other," says Chuck Hollis, EMC's VP of storage platforms.
EMC is the first vendor to announce this feature.“This is state of the art,” Meta Group Inc.
SVP Carl Greiner says. “Hitachi didn’t connect the second and third centers. I don’t know what IBM is going to do, but it’s not simple stuff. It’s harder to do than people make it sound.”
Hitachi chief scientist Claus Mikkelsen says HDS will offer three-way replication by the end of the year, though.
Three-way replication isn't for everybody. The feature will appeal mainly to financial institutions and global organizations. EMC’s integration of VMware’s server virtualization software into SRDF will have a broader appeal (see EMC Gobbles VMware). VMware can be used to create virtual servers at a remote data site. Each virtual server can access replicas of production data on a Symmetrix in the data center. This allows asynchronous replication to a remote site with fewer servers than are running at the data center. Previously, SRDF required the same amount of servers on each end for asynchronous replication.
In other areas, EMC is catching up to the competition. Its Open Replicator allows replication between Symmetrix and storage arrays from IBM, Hitachi, and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ). HDS already announced it would replicate to other vendors’ hardware with its Tagmastore. EMC also says it will begin allowing Symmetrix to support IBM's Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC), Extended Remote Copy (XRC), and FlashCopy early next year. This is the result of a licensing agreement with IBM last October, but EMC hasn’t said when it will be available (see EMC, IBM Swallow Their Pride).
Except for the VMware capability, the new replication features won’t be available until the first quarter of next year. VMware can be used with SRDF now.EMC also:
Introduced EMC Celerra FileMover, which supports policy engines from Legato DiskXtender, Arkivio Inc., and Enigma Data Systems for automatically moving file-based data between storage systems. This will be a standard feature on Celerra NAS systems by the end of the year.
Added Exchange 2003 support to its Legato EmailXtender archiving software. This is a catch-up feature to the Enterprise Vault archiving product that Veritas recently acquired when it purchased KVS (see No Brainer: Veritas Buys KVS).
Besides strengthening its replication software, today’s moves show EMC putting to use software it picked up in 2003 acquisitions of Legato, VMware, and Documentum (see EMC Swings Into Software Big Leagues). It recently unveiled Documentum CSS, which automates the movement of unstructured content across storage platforms (see Documentum Does ILM).
“After spending $3 billion, we’ve shown the integration of all three acquisitions,” Hollis says.
“They’re definitely making progress integrating the software they purchased,” says Mike Fisch, The Clipper Group Inc.'s director of storage and networking. “I think we’ll see even broader integration.”
— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch0
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