EMC Corporation introduced Monday a new system as part of its line of midrange products with the CLARiiON UltraScale architecture and CX3 series of networked storage systems. The new series is based on a new architecture to support customers' information lifecycle management (ILM) that will allow for consolidation of multiple tiers of information onto a single array. The architecture – with 45 patents pending – is the industry's first platform with full end-to-end 4 gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) Fibre Channel technology, EMC said.

CLARiiON UltraScale features up to double the performance and capacity of its predecessor and enables customers to consolidate the workload of two competitive systems onto a single new CLARiiON CX3 system. The new architecture redefines midrange storage economics by allowing customers to simply upgrade from prior generations of CLARiiON, run existing management and protection software and scale single system capacity, and performance up to 239 terabytes (TBs). The new CLARiiON UltraScale architecture simultaneously supports high-speed 2 and 4Gb/s Fibre Channel disk drives as well as high-capacity 2Gb/s Low-Cost Fibre Channel (LC/FC).

"To provide customers and partners with leading midrange solutions, you fundamentally need a great architecture. The new CLARiiON UltraScale architecture was specifically designed to deliver the industry's best performance, throughput and scalability — eliminating the bottlenecks customers face with other midrange systems,” said David Donatelli, executive VP, Storage Platforms Operations, EMC.

Additional features include:

• CLARiiON UltraScale can accelerate 4Gb/s scalability and data throughput with native multi-lane PCI Express interconnect technology;
  
  
• Simplifies replacement of disk drives, power supplies, cooling fans and small form-factor pluggable (SFP) optical transceivers via a new Disk Replacement Utility wizard;
  
  
• Increased levels of uptime through n+1+1 redundant power and cooling; improved fault detection; isolation and error-correction tasks; and the continued ability to conduct non-disruptive code upgrades;
  
  
• The CLARiiON UltraScale architecture also features EMC's Virtual LUN (logical unit number) technology that enables online movement of data;

Additionally, the new CLARiiON CX3 UltraScale series of networked storage systems can be configured for direct-attach and SAN deployments. iSCSI connectivity, along with NEBS (Network Equipment Building System) certification for use in public switched networks, will be available later this year. The new models include:

• CLARiiON CX3-20 — ideal for mail/messaging, departmental applications and databases, Web services, distributed applications, remote replication and workgroup productivity.
  
  
• CLARiiON CX3-40 — for mail/messaging, heavy databases, transactional workloads, bandwidth applications, video streaming and remote replication.
  
  
• CLARiiON CX3-80 — for tiered storage, backup-to-disk and data warehousing.