EMC Brings High-End Data Management To The Midrange Market

Small and midsize companies are often locked out of the best system features. Owners of mainframe and top-of-the-line Unix systems have seamless methods to manage data, increase storage capacity, and process multiple workloads on a single system. EMC Corp. is trying to even things up a bit by taking the high costs of such features out of the purchasing equation and make them available to smaller businesses.

On Wednesday, EMC unveiled UltraPoint Technology, which boosts the availability and reliability of midrange storage systems. The company also expanded the capabilities of its Clariion software to help companies manage and protect information from creation to deletion. The new Clariion CX300, CX500, and CX700 models that incorporate UltraPoint and the new software let storage administrators manage individual storage drives within a storage array and, if necessary, troubleshoot problems with individual drives.

Also new from EMC is Clariion Virtual LUN (for Logical Unit Number) Technology, which lets administrators easily move data around a storage network to compensate for spiking data volumes or for backup and recovery processes. EMC also unveiled new Clariion systems powered by direct current that can be operated in mobile and remote environments, retaining data availability and reliability throughout the data life cycle.

All the new Clariion technology and products will be available by the end of September. The new systems at the lowest capacity are priced around $110,000 and UltraPoint will be priced around $15,000.

"With Virtual LUN, customers can manage data easily within a Clariion array, and add drives without taking systems down," says Charles King, an analyst at IT research firm PundIT Research. "I don't know of such a current option in a midrange system."