A new DMX-4 generation of EMC’s flagship Symmetrix disk array will for the first time run both SATA and Fibre Channel disk drives, and replaces a loop back-end with point-to-point 4GFC end-to-end pipe-work. The Enginuity operating system that drives the DMX-4 and the current DMX-3 boxes has also been updated, to improve performance and security.

The Centera has been subject to a complete redesign that EMC says cuts power consumption by just over two thirds, by bringing in more efficient processors, cooling fans and power supplies and larger disk drives. The redesign, which allows the new lower-power hardware to be mixed with or added to existing Centera systems, does not change the performance of the Centera.

EMC’s range of Celerra NAS boxes has been extended downwards with a new Celerra NS20 device that is tailored for small and mid-sized customers. The Celerra already supported block-level data access via iSCSI, but the new NS20 and the next biggest existing Celerra — the NS40 — have gained block-level Fibre Channel support, via integrated FC ports.

The EMC Clariion mid-range disk arrays have been updated with a new version of the Flare operating system that can be applied to existing Clariion hardware, and delivers remote replication over iSCSI, as well as RAID 6 data protection, and more sophisticated active-active failover.

On the security front, EMC has extended the integration of its RSA security software with the Symmetrix, and completed a first stage of the same sort of integration for the Clariion.

In February EMC integrated RSA authentication and access-control software with the Symmetrix to make it easier to use that software to stop hackers or insider thieves from reaching the array’s control console. This week EMC said it has extended the integration to allow Symmetrix audit logs to be fed to an RSA tool called enVision, which can monitor and analyze activity on the arrays.

The Clariion cannot yet export audit logs to enVision, but access to its GUI and CLI control consoles can now be controlled with RSA’s systems. In February when EMC announced the same integration of RSA into the Symmetrix, it admitted that the RSA software can also be used to protect access to rivals’ disk arrays. But because of EMC’s integration work, it will be easier to do so on the Symmetrix and the Clariion than on say Hitachi’s TagmaStore or IBM’s DS8000 arrays, EMC said.

Asked what further integration of RSA products into EMC disk arrays is planned, EMC said that it is working on integrating advanced security capabilities and RSA technology into all of our platforms where it makes the most sense.

The Symmetrix is the first high-end array to offer an option for SATA drives, in separate SATA trays. Until now EMC has offered only FC or LCFC – Low Cost Fibre Channel – drives for the Symmetrix. LCFC drives combine FC electronic interfaces with ATA-style, slow spinning but high-capacity mechanical components.

EMC said that LCFC drives currently carry a similar price to SATA drives.

But because of their use in servers, laptops and desktop gear, ATA drives ship in much higher volumes than FC drives, and this may well cause the cost of the silicon in ATA drives to fall faster than for it will for the chips in FC drives.

SATA also makes way for serial SCSI [SAS]. I’ll bet EMC will eventually put SAS into the Symmetrix, Greiner said. EMC said simply that it has no SAS announcements to make at present.

While Greiner expects that competition from SAS will soon result in lower prices for FC drives, he predicted that FC drives will hold their high-end ground for some years yet.

EMC said that this launch of the Centera Generation 4 LP – Low Power – is the revamp to the Centera that was rumored earlier this year, and that the company has no more major Centera reworks up its sleeve. That means that although EMC has reduced the power consumption and heat output of the Centera, it is not planning any major reworks to improve performance.

The performance of the Centera, which was first launched five years ago, has come under occasional fire, but EMC argues that much of the criticism overlooks the fact that the device uses content-addressing and authentication, which will make inherently slower than disk archives based on conventional file systems.

Greiner also defended the Centera. The performance criticisms are nonsense. I’ve not seen a lot of performance problems with the Centera. Compared to tape, it flies. Maybe scaling might be an issue, but EMC has just given the box bigger [750GB] disk drives. he said.

Those 750GB drives did not contribute to the reduction in the Centera’s power consumption by as much as might be expected. A Centera LP node running 500GB drives will consume 50% less power per TB capacity than an existing Centera node running the same drives, EMC claimed.

Why did EMC work so hard to reduce the power consumption of the Centera, when there are far more Symmetrix or Clariion arrays sucking in electricity and blowing out hot air into data centers? EMC says that this was because the Symmetrix was already more efficient than its competitors, and because customers are so much less happy to see an archiving device do that than they are for a disk array storing active or maybe even transactional data.

After all, if the data wasn’t on a Centera, it might be on tape, and tape doesn’t consume any energy at all, said EMC marketing vice president Barbara Robidoux. Greiner however said that the reason was simply that there had been plenty of room to improve the efficiency of Centera.

The block-level-access over FC added to the new Celerra NS20 and the existing NS40 is not going to be extended to any larger Celerra variants, EMC said. That is because further up-market, customers buy disk arrays for specific applications and so will not want combined FC-block level and CIFS or NFS file-level data access, EMC said.

Once you get into the data center 50-100TB capacity range, customers tend not to use single multi-purpose appliances. Most customers needing that level of performance will use a specialized NAS gateway. That’s what our high end NS80 and NSX gateways are designed for, the company said.

But if customers are happy to use NAS gateways to allow SAN disk arrays to become multi-purpose appliances storing both file- and block-level data, it not clear to Computer Business Review why they should not be equally happy to use NAS boxes to store block-level data – as Network Appliance claims is done by a significant percentage of its customers. It is possible that EMC is not adding block-over-FC support to the bigger Celerra’s because it cannot make the NAS-originated box provide sufficient block-level performance for high-end customers.

Targeted at mid-range customer, the NS20 will ship with software that will allow it to be installed in just 15 minutes, working through ten screens, according to EMC. The device will scale to 20TB, and will carry a $30,000 list price for a 1TB configuration. As the previous smallest Celerra, the NS40 listed from $40,000.

The Centera Generation 4 LP nodes are shipping now. All of the other new products and hardware and software updates will ship next month.