EMC Sets Symm 6 Debut

After slipping its schedule by at least a year, EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) is planning to officially launch the Symmetrix 6 -- the next generation of its high-end enterprise storage array -- next month, sources tell Byte and Switch.

EMC today issued an advisory for an event scheduled for Feb. 3, 2003, hosted by president and CEO Joe Tucci, in New York. Sources knowledgeable about the company's plans say this will be the kickoff for the Symmetrix 6, which represents EMC's largest product category in terms of revenue.

Symm 6's major change is that it adopts a modular architecture, replacing the previous monolithic one. The change promises to give customers greater flexibility in adding more storage when they need it. It will be able to handle up to 768 drives in a single system image, for a total capacity of around 112 Tbytes. It uses Seagate Technology Inc.'s (NYSE: STX) 146-Gbyte drives, sources say.

The system will use a Disk Array Enclosure (DAE) design similar to that used with the Clariion CX family, reducing EMC's manufacturing costs and thus improving margins on the Symm 6, according to sources (see EMC Readies Symmetrix Upgrade and EMC Revs Up Clariion).

Another interesting new feature of the Symm 6 will be an optional "eBlade," developed in conjunction with Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), that will extend EMC's Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) replication software over IP. The Symmetrix eBlade, which EMC and Cisco have supposedly been developing over the last three years, will be backward-compatible with the Symm 5."This doesn't bode well for people like CNT [Nasdaq: CMNT] and Inrange Technologies Corp. [Nasdaq: INRG]," says a source. Both CNT and Inrange sell networking devices that extend Fibre Channel data over IP networks. The source notes, however, that "whether EMC sells a lot of the eBlade is another question."

The EMC/Cisco codevelopment work on the Symm 6 raises interesting implications for EMC's expected qualification and resale of Cisco's MDS 9000 Fibre Channel switches. There have been no official announcements from EMC on this front yet (see HP Next to Green-Light Cisco? and IBM Tells Cisco: 'Let's Go!').

EMC representatives did not confirm or deny that the Symmetrix 6 will be the subject of the Feb. 3 event. However, says EMC spokesman Mike O'Malley, "this quarter we'll address the high end."

"Without getting into details, you'll see an entirely new trajectory in performance, availability, functionality, and economics," he says.

Industry observers say the Symm 6 is at least a year late. In the meantime, both IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) have released newer versions of their high-end storage systems -- resulting in EMC losing share and seeing its sales of Symmetrix decline in the back half of 2002 (see HDS Gains on EMC, HDS Switches On 'BlackLight', IBM Gives Shark a Kick, and EMC Stagnates