EMC Claims Thermal Dominance in High-End SANs

Published: October 24, 2006

by Alex Woodie

EMC yesterday announced the general availability of a new SAN array that it claims offers better thermal properties than equivalent high-end arrays from Hewlett-Packard and IBM. The new Symmetrix DMX-3 model 950 consumes anywhere from 10 to 30 percent less electricity than used on its competitors' arrays.

The new Symmetrix DMX-3 model 950, which relies on 500 GB "low-cost Fibre Channel" drives for its thermal properties (but which also can run 300 GB drives simultaneously), is designed for high-end computing facilities, as well as mid size organizations requiring high levels of performance, EMC says. It can be equipped with 32 to 360 disk drives, giving it a total capacity of 180 TB, and connects to servers via Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, or iSCSI.

EMC says when 300 GB drives are used, it consumes 10 to 30 percent less power than competing systems. However, when 500 GB disk drives are loaded into the DMX-3, it can deliver up to 70 percent greater "power efficiency" compared to its competitors. The machines cited by the hardware maker for comparison were the HDS/HP XP 12000 and the IBM DS8300 systems, each configured with 300 GB drives.

EMC referenced the iSeries in its announcement by noting the new machine, along with other Symmetrix arrays for many years, supports the current i5/OS-System i platform--along with 900 other operating systems, the vendor pointed out.