Duke, Intel investors, check this out: new EMC network appliance type storage system uses Pentium IIIs, 840 chipsets and RDRAM.
Specs:
emc.com
One of the rave reviews:
12/04/00
By DENI CONNOR
HOPKINTON, MASS. - EMC this week will try to shake up the
network-attached storage market with a fault-tolerant device aimed at customers flocking to high-flying Network
Appliance for its fast, relatively inexpensive storage
appliances.
The EMC ip4700, code-named Chameleon, is a 3.6-terabyte
NAS box for enterprise and service provider networks that
some observers say could be a Network Appliance killer.
Like the 4.5-terabyte NetApp F840 appliance and two-node
F840 cluster, EMC's product will likely be used for file
and print services, possibly replacing NetWare or Windows
NT servers.
Network Appliance, which pulls in less than one-tenth the
annual revenue of EMC, accounts for nearly half of all NAS
sales vs. EMC's 29% market share, according to preliminary
figures from market research firm IDC. But Enterprise
Storage Group, another market watcher, estimates EMC will
match Network Appliance in units shipped in 12 months
thanks in large part to the ip4700 hitting the market.
"EMC has a big winner with this box," says Robert Gray, an
analyst with IDC. "Where EMC is playing, they are coming in at NetApps' high end. EMC has 10 people in the field for every one that Network Appliance has - that virtually
guarantees success for [EMC]."
The ip4700 performs the same as the NetApp F840, sources say. And there's every chance that EMC will undercut
Network Appliance on price to gain market share. "EMC is
not going to come in and lose business on price," Gray
says. The NetApp F840 moves data at about 1G bit/sec and
can perform more than 25,000 operations per second. It
starts at $120,000. The F840c, which is a two-node cluster
with one-half terabyte of disk space, costs $319,000.
"The ip4700 is a killer box because it has the capability
of a two-node NetApps cluster," says Steve Duplessie, an
analyst with Enterprise Storage Group. "The difference is that the ip4700 is tightly integrated and costs half
what the NetApp cluster does. Network Appliance should be
running scared -
"EMC finally has a product that can do battle with them," he adds.
About 100 EMC customers beta tested the ip4700 and those Network World spoke to liked what they saw. "We have looked
at the ip4700 as a replacement for our NetWare and Windows
NT file and print services," says Gary Fox, a vice
president at Union Bank in Charlotte, N.C. "Before we
move to NAS, however, our IT staff wants to validate the
security of the devices [running the Microsoft Common
Internet File System] to make sure that access to files and
directories can be defined exclusively by the user. Once
we've done that, it's possible that we will put one in."
Union Bank already supports database traffic on a Fibre
Channel-based storage-area network (SAN) consisting of McData switches, EMC Symmetrix arrays and Unix hosts. The
ip4700 draws on Clariion NAS technology obtained through
the acquisition of Data General last year and an embedded
operating system obtained via EMC's recent buyout of
CrosStor.
The ip4700 has dual processors and controllers that can
step in for the other in the event of a failure. One
processor contains the CrosStor operating system for file
sharing; the other has RAID 5 capability and handles
traditional block data processing. The ip4700 has redundant
power supplies and fans.
Unlike the NetApp F840, the ip4700 does not support HTTP or
the Direct Access File System (DAFS) standard. DAFS is a
successor to Unix's Network File System, which bypasses the
operating system and increases data transfer speed by
writing directly into the memory of an application. The
ip4700 supports SNAPview/IP, EMC's snapshot back-up software, and will support remote data replication in the
future. The ip4700 also supports the Network Data
Management Protocol, a data back-up standard for removing
traffic from the network.
EMC's sales of the ip4700 have little, if any, chance of
cannibalizing sales of its high-end Celerra NAS or Symmetrix storage array, says Dave Hill, an analyst with
Aberdeen Group. Those existing products are generally
used by large companies for different applications, such as
databases and data warehouses.
"EMC's entry into the midrange gives the company an opportunity in a new market," Hill says. "The effect is
that EMC will be a formidable competitor and give NetApps a good contest."
The midrange market is part of EMC's vision of NAS/SAN convergence, says Chuck Hollis, a product marketing
executive with EMC. "Guys that put in high-end Celerra or Symmetrix devices want to consolidate data into a
single enterprise environment. For every one of those
businesses, there are ones that either can't or don't want
to [consolidate storage] - they want to manage that data
with NAS devices, which may be scattered around their
networks in smaller chunks."
Network Appliance officials are claiming to be unfazed by
the new EMC offering. "From a product point of view, we
compete head-on with the Symmetrix,"EMC's top-of-the-line enterprise storage system, says Thomas Mendoza,president of Network Appliance. "We win at least 60% of our bids against
Symmetrix. A year ago, EMC said the Celerra was going to be its big NAS play. It did nothing to us."
"EMC is coming out with a product based on a Data General Clariion with a CrosStor file system," Mendoza says. "If
EMC's name was not on this product, it [wouldn't have a
chance]."
EMC's ip4700 contains a 10/100/1000M bit/sec Ethernet Interface and supports up to 100 drives. Initially, 3.6-terabyte appliances will ship, but the EMC boxes will
include drives with double the capacity down the
road. EMC will add a Fibre Channel interface in the future.
The NetApp F840, using the Data OnTap 6.0 operating system, has a 10/100/1000M bit/sec Ethernet interface to the LAN and a Fibre Channel interface to the SAN.
Specs:
emc.com |
