EMC Corp this week refreshes its Symmetrix disk storage line, adding new 3.25 9Gb and 5.25 23Gb high-performance drives as well as adding ‘ew’ converted capacity such as RAID-S mirroring. It’ targeting the new offerings at its installed base, now reckoned to total more than 750 terabytes, at prices of less than $1 per Mb to encourage conversions to its RAID-S technologies using the new drives. Mirrored configurations using the 9Gb drives include the 3430-9M, 5430-9M and 5330-9M targeted at high-performance OLTP and data warehouse customers. New RAID-S parity protected configurations for business applications such as customers service, payroll and finance include the 3430-9S, 5430- 9S, 330-9S and 5330-9S. New subsystems using the 23Gb drives are the 3700-23M and 5700-23M, claimed to deliver the world’ highest single-system capacity, though it doesn’t say what that is. Symmetrix 3000 system series are open systems units; 5700s for mainframes. Prices go from $260,000 for an entry-level symmetrix 3330 to $3.4m for a fully-loaded 5700. Analysts at the Meta Group describe the offerings as aggressive, but pricey. They estimate a 360Gb requirement can be satisfied by converting a mirrored 360Gb system to RAID-S (540Gb) plus adding a new, high- performance mirrored 180Gb offering. That blend would cost $0.85 per Mb. Despite the premium EMC is asking for the new high- performance offerings, Meta thinks price/performance mix rate will prove attractive for most EMC users.
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