As a result of the dropping price in storage capacity, EMC announced an upgrade to its popular Clariion line of storage systems which it says doubles the size and speed but costs about 30% less than similar products.
On Monday, EMC introduced 181G Byte, 7,200 RPM and 36G Byte, 15,000 RPM disk drives for its midrange Clariion storage systems, just as it did with its high-end Symmetrix products last September.
The Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC said these two additions to the Clariion drive portfolio complement its current 73G Byte drives.
The 181G Byte drives more than double the Clariion's maximum capacity, boosting it from 9T Bytes to a possible 22T Bytes per system.
EMC said customers can purchase a typical Clariion FC4700 configuration for 30% less cost.
Steve Duplessie, founder and analyst for the Enterprise Storage Group Inc., Milford, Mass., said the drive upgrade is just a function of the technology curve. As drives get bigger the cost per megabyte plummets, he said.
EMC's chief technology officer, James Rothnie, foreshadowed the news last week at the Storage Networking World Conference in Palm Desert Calif. Rothnie predicted that hard drive prices would continue to drop over time. Rothnie said hard drive prices could fall as far as $.01 per megabyte by 2005.
He said the affordability of disk makes it an obvious choice for new applications such as disk-to-disk backup. "We ought to be thinking about
Requires Free Membership to View
When you register for SearchStorage.com, you’ll also receive targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics, the latest news and the biggest challenges you face as a storage professional today.
Rich Castagna, Editorial Director
the use of this resource in a fundamentally different way," Rothnie said.
The 181G Byte drives are available now with Clariion FC4500 and FC4700 enterprise storage systems.
The speedy, 36G Byte drives are geared toward high-performance Input/Output (I/O) environments like online transaction processing (OLTP). They are available with Clariion FC5300, FC4500 and FC4700 systems.
Both drives are available through all of EMC's channel partners and can be intermixed in FC4500 and FC4700 systems.
Let us know what you think about the story, e-mail Kevin Komiega, assistant news editorFOR MORE INFORMATION:
EMC upgrades Symmetrix storage line Check out the Best Web Links on Disk Drives TidalWire bringing EMC Clariion connectivity to midrange storage space Comment on this article in the SearchStorage Discussion forums