Guild Companies

Server maker Dell and disk storage array vendor EMC have announced a new midrange disk array, the CX400, that the two companies will co-market into midrange server shops. The CX400 is a follow-on to the Clariion FC4700 arrays that the two companies have been selling since last year and are a streamlined version of the CX600 arrays that debuted earlier this year.

Dell and EMC signed a five year, multi-billion dollar agreement in October 2001 that allows Dell to rebrand and sell EMC's Clariion midrange disk arrays, which EMC gained through its acquisition of Unix server and disk array maker Data General several years ago. Dell was looking to buy that Clariion unit from Data General before EMC wisely snapped it up to bolster its midrange disk offerings and to allow it to market less expensive disk arrays than its flagship Symmetrix arrays. Symmetrix is a much more sophisticated offering than the CX line in terms storage capacity, I/O bandwidth, and software functionality and is much more expensive to make and sell. It is overkill for a lot of midrange shops, and that is why EMC makes the CX line. Dell is becoming a player in the midrange, and does not have its own storage business to protect (unlike IBM, Hewlett-Packard, or Sun Microsystems). Dell does not really have a high-end enterprise server business like the big Unix server vendors, who sell 32-way, 64-way, or larger machines, do and concentrates on selling eight-way and smaller Intel-based servers for the most part. So Dell, except for a few big Wintel application cluster or Linux-based supercomputer cluster deals that it has taken down, does not really need to offer its customers an array like Symmetrix. So partnering on midrange storage makes sense for both companies. Right now, the CX arrays bear both the Dell and EMC monikers and are built by EMC, but Dell is apparently angling to be able to make the CX arrays in its own factories, presumably because it believes that it can drive manufacturing costs out of the machines and thereby make more money or drop prices.

The CX400 array has two disk controllers, each based on an 800 MHz Pentium III processor. This controller, which is essentially an Intel-based server and, more importantly, almost certainly a Dell PowerEdge server that has a special operating system that converts it into a disk array, can be fitted with up to 2 GB of disk cache memory. The CX400 can support up to 60 disk drives (with a total capacity of 4.3 TB), up to 512 logical disk units, and up to 64 host server connections. It has a peak performance of 60,000 I/O operations per second and an I/O bandwidth of 680 MB/sec. The FC4700 array that the CX400 replaces had four controllers based on 733 MHz Pentium III chips and 2 GB of disk cache memory; it also supported 120 disk drives, 223 logical units, and 64 host attachments. While the FC4700 could support a lot more capacity than the CX400, with up to 21.7 TB of disk, this capacity expansion is overkill for midrange shops and, more importantly, the FC4700 could only handle 48,000 I/O operations per second and offered I/O bandwidth of about 350 MB/sec. The CX400 takes up less space, runs faster, and costs less than the FC4700. Prices start at $66,000 for a 180 GB configuration; a 1 TB configuration costs $94,000.

The Dell-EMC CX600, announced earlier this year, has four 2 GHz Intel-based disk controllers, supports up to 17.2 TB of disk capacity, 240 disk drives, 1,024 logical units, and 128 host server attachments. The CX600 can support up to 150,000 I/O operations per second and up to 1,300 MB/sec in I/O bandwidth. This is a big box for a midrange shop, which is why Dell and EMC created the CX400 and why the two companies will launch an even smaller array--presumably called the CX200 and having a single disk controller--sometime in the first quarter. Customers can upgrade within the CX line by swapping out disk controllers and leaving their existing drives in place.

All of the CX arrays and the FC4700 array support Windows NT, Windows 2000, Linux, NetWare, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, and Irix operating systems.