EMC Soups Up Symm

NEW YORK -- EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) today ripped the wraps off its next-generation Symmetrix systems, called the DMX line, with which it hopes to reverse its decline in the high-end storage market (see EMC Launches Symmetrix DMX).

Joe Tucci, EMC's president and CEO, introduced the new product line at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Manhattan today. He said the Symmetrix DMX sets new industry benchmarks in terms of price, performance, and flexible deployment options.

"It's a fundamentally new architecture that we believe changes the industry," he said. "What we're offering is superior technology at market pricing."

The new Symmetrix family, available in three different models, is built around a dedicated, point-to-point, passive "matrix" architecture that EMC claims boosts its overall internal bandwidth to 64 GByte/s. That's 40 times greater than Symmetrix's previous bus-based architecture, which provided 1.6 Gbyte/s of aggregate internal bandwidth (see EMC Debuts Matrix Architecture and EMC Enters the Matrix).

Three years in the making, the Symmetrix DMX -- which stands for "Direct Matrix Architecture" [ed. note: guess the "architecture" part is silent] -- offers up to 128 direct, non-blocking connections within a single array, instead of the traditional bus or crossbar switch, which can become choke points in the data path.Dave Donatelli, EVP of platform operations at EMC, told the audience of around 400 analysts, reporters, and customers that the DMX represents the storage industry's first non-blocking architecture. "All we need to do is add more boards; and by adding more boards, we get more bandwidth," he said. "That's really the beauty of the architecture... Everybody gets their own dedicated path."

EMC gets to that 64-Gbyte/s bandwidth figure like this: A fully loaded two-bay DMX 2000 has eight front-end controllers and eight back-end disk controllers. Each one of those has a dedicated connection to the cache controllers in the middle, for a total of 128 connections of 500 MByte/s each.

Initial reaction from analysts has been positive. "It's impressive -- it's a major step forward on bandwidth," says Glen Ingalls, analyst with SoundView Technology Group. "This looks like a system that gives them an edge. I think it will take their competitors one or two years to respond to this, if they choose to do so."

Not everyone is sold on the new matrix architecture. "I'm confused why this matrix architecture is a step forward," says William Bender, infrastructure manager at Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU), which is a large Symmetrix shop. "I think this is about [EMC] keeping costs down."

But EMC insists that the matrix architecture allows it to handily outpace its two main competitors in the high-end space -- Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) -- in real-world applications.On an OLTP transaction processing test, which compared similarly configured Symmetrix DMX 2000, HDS Lightning 9980, and IBM Shark 800T systems, EMC showed two-times better response time than HDS and 3.5 times better than IBM, according to Donatelli. On a data warehousing benchmark, the DMX 2000's response time was three times faster than the Lightning and four times the Shark.

EMC also said the DMX line, known internally as Symmetrix 6, will be less expensive than previous versions of Symmetrix: The DMX systems will carry list prices of between 4 and 8 cents per MByte, Tucci said. "With the DMX family, we're doing something new for EMC: to have the best cost structure in the industry. We've kind of had a reputation of having a high-priced offering." [Ed. note: Not just kind of, Joe.] EMC says its storage arrays are now priced exactly the same all the way up and down the line, starting from the lowest-end, 15-drive Clariion CX200 all the way up to the DMX 2000.

Here's the breakdown on the specs of the three DMX models:

Table 1: Symmetrix DMX Models

While the initial DMX 2000 boxes will support only a maximum of 288 drives -- compared with 384 in the Symmetrix 5 -- EMC claims the matrix architecture can support up to 2,048 drives. "We know from our tests that it will continue to perform faster, and faster, and faster, and you can count on us doing that if our customers require that," Tucci said.So doesn't the DMX initially offer lower total maximum capacity than previous Symmetrix models? No, says Tucci: Total usable capacity with the Symmetrix 8830 with mirroring turned on was 34 Tbytes. While it does offer less raw capacity than the Symm 5, the DMX line provides more total usable capacity because it now supports parity RAID, EMC maintains.

As far as the threat that the DMX 800 -- the first rack-mountable, modular Symmetrix from EMC -- would be cannibalized by the Clariion CX 600, Tucci said there was enough differentiation that it wouldn't be an issue: "When I talk to customers they have this pretty square in their minds."

[Ed. note: Pause the tape here. We thought EMC was supposed to be in the process of transforming into a software company? Guess not really.]

Other improvements with the DMX: EMC says it's made high availability a top priority and that it has already logged 3 million hours of runtime on the DMX systems without a failure. Among other enhancements, the DMX systems isolate components so that if one of them fails it doesn't affect other elements.

Furthermore, according to EMC, right out of the gate the DMX works with all the existing Symmetrix software, including Symmetrix Data Replication Facility (SRDF). "Typically when new architectures are developed, you have to make a brutal tradeoff -- either move to a new system but leave software behind" or vice versa, Donatelli said. "We're able to move all the customers' software forward seamlessly."DMX provides Fibre Channel connectivity, with the 1000 and 2000 models supporting Escon. EMC says Ficon support for the 1000 and 2000 will be available this summer. Officials also announced the Symmetrix z8000, a new version of the previous generation Symm optimized for mainframe environments that supports both Escon and Ficon.

Tucci revealed that EMC was originally planning to have an interim Symmetrix product between the Symmetrix 5.5 and 6. But about a year ago the company cancelled it to concentrate on the DMX development, he said. "More than a year ago, we cancelled the other product, and we bet the ranch [on DMX]," Tucci said.

Was it worth the wait? Analysts say the jury is still out -- depending on how well the DMX is received -- but noted that EMC would probably have lost share to HDS regardless of whether it had released that midlife kicker to the Symm. "Sun Microsystems Inc. [Nasdaq: SUNW] would have sold lots of HDS arrays regardless of what EMC did," says Ingalls.

EMC expects half its Symmetrix sales in the current quarter to be DMX, with the other half coming from its existing Symmetrix 8000 product line.

In anticipation of EMC's Symmetrix DMX launch, HDS last week announced expanded options for its Lightning 9900 V series, which now provides up to 146 Tbytes of raw storage and 64 Fibre Channel ports. IBM, meanwhile, today announced that it has released the first interface for Shark that's compatible with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)'s Bluefin specification, designed to provide vendor-independent SAN management (see HDS Launches Preemptive Strike and IBM's Shark Gets Bluefin).Tucci said there were "several dozen" beta sites for the Symmetrix DMX and that the "vast, vast majority of them" will convert into paying customers, which he said EMC has already factored into its outlook (see EMC's Q4 Stars Clariion).

Meanwhile, EMC officials said none of the technology it acquired from Cereva Networks was used in the DMX family, although Donatelli told Byte and Switch it may play into future product roadmaps. "There are some good ideas there," he said. "The IP [intellectual property] we got on that was so inexpensive." (See Cereva Sells Out to EMC.)

On a different note, we have to say we were disappointed that EMC failed to fully capitalize on the potential tie-in to The Matrix