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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (10778)	7/31/2000 9:46:53 AM
From: bob gauthier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

Full text of Celerra announcement. EMC Shatters Speed Records, Raises Stakes With Enterprise-level Network-attached Storage New Celerra Performance Ratings Extend EMC's Lead in NAS Connectivity Solutions For The ``Now'' Economy HOPKINTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 2000-- Meeting the demands imposed by Internet-driven growth for rapid information sharing, EMC Corporation today announced that its EMC Celerra network file server has achieved ratings of at least triple the performance of the closest competitive NAS (network-attached storage) offerings, according to the most recent ratings posted by Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). SPEC is a non-profit corporation formed to establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set of relevant computing benchmarks (http://www.spec.org/). EMC Celerra, the world's most highly available, scalable and fastest NAS connectivity solution, has been enhanced to increase overall system performance by more than 60% over its previous version. This enhancement dramatically improves network connectivity to an organization's information infrastructure. In the first six months of 2000, EMC revenue from NAS deployments rose nearly tenfold compared with the first half of 1999, making EMC the fastest-growing participant in this emerging market segment. ``The new economy has become the `now' economy as people demand immediate access to increasing amounts of information,'' said Jim Rothnie, EMC's Senior Vice President of Product Management. ``Today, EMC is answering that demand by providing the fastest network access available to information living on the world's most secure and highly scalable storage foundation. Celerra's high-performance capabilities work within the EMC Enterprise Storage Network to deliver an information infrastructure capable of managing the data needs of a Net-driven market.'' First introduced in October 1996, Celerra is an integrated part of the EMC Enterprise Storage Network, connecting clients on the local- or wide-area network either to a storage area network (SAN) or directly to EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems, for seamless file sharing and management. Continued Rothnie, ``Suppliers who sell network attached storage as appliances have repeatedly made the mistake of building storage directly into the appliance itself. This may be adequate when deployed on a small scale, but it quickly turns to chaos at the multi-terabyte enterprise level. In the early '90s, forward-looking companies recognized the value of consolidating their information into one easily protected and managed storage infrastructure. Celerra's diskless architecture takes advantage of this now-accepted model by providing the benefits of NAS without the disadvantages of separate, isolated pools of data.'' Demand for Celerra's high-end, enterprise-NAS capabilities continues to surge as more businesses look to extend the value of their storage infrastructure across the public network. NonStopNet, a provider of managed Internet infrastructure based in Oakland, California has selected Celerra to provide network access to over 60 terabytes of SAN-enabled EMC Enterprise Storage. The company is deploying both Celerra and EMC Connectrix--EMC's Fibre Channel enterprise director--at points of presence (POPs) around the world. ``We spend time worrying about the technology running our customers' business so they won't have to,'' said John Yung, Vice President of Engineering at NonStopNet. ``To provide NSN customers with managed, fast and secure access to all of their information assets, NSN is deploying a robust, integrated EMC storage infrastructure that combines the benefits of both NAS and SAN with the world's most comprehensive suite of information management and protection software'' EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC - news) is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing the information infrastructure for a connected world. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

To: JDN who wrote (10778)	7/31/2000 9:54:47 AM
From: BI*RI	Respond to of 17183

JDN, I don't know what the folks at NTAP are thinking, but I know what I'm thinking, and that's how good it is to see these two go after each other. Keeps them both on their toes trying to gain market share and customers in this area of storage. As the market is increasing significantly, there is room for both to add significant sales. Since I hold both I perceive it as win-win. As far as EMC is concerned it's good to see that they see the importance of NAS in today's information age. Marc

To: JDN who wrote (10778)	8/1/2000 3:04:38 AM
From: Allegoria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

JDN, Here is a little of the talk about the EMC announcement: siliconinvestor.com Benchmark Shenanigans... Here's a write-up from a former NTAP insider of the latest EMC press. The configuration for this benchmark was basically put together to yield good numbers at a very high price for the configuration. EMC's SPEC numbers have been out at the SPEC site for a week now, they either timed the press release to take away from the Compaq NAS release today, or maybe because NTAP will be announcing soon. -------- See: messages.yahoo.com. -------- Inside the EMC Celerra Numbers by: sirbruce70 (30/M/San Jose, CA) 7/31/00 10:35 am Msg: 26627 of 26643 Okay, let's dissect the latest EMC Celerra NAS results. Their press release claims it has "at least triple the performance of the closest competitive NAS (network- attached storage) offerings" which is of course false. While it is true that in terms of raw NFS ops it has greater throughput that other NAS offerings, that's using a 14 CPU cluster solution. Other NAS vendors can spread their loads across multiple CPUs, so this is nothing unique, but most haven't submitted results for that many CPUs. They submit results for smaller clusters and the user can use the figures to scale. But let's go inside the numbers and see how Celerra compares to the NTAP F760. We'll compare the new EMC results "to scale" with the NTAP F760 results, using NFS v3 over TCP: spec.org. and spec.org. The F760 delivers 7428 Ops/Sec @ 3.09ms. It does this by using 2 CPUs, 2 GB of RAM, 64 MB of NVRAM, 42 18GB disks, and 2 filesystems. That's 3714 Ops/CPU, 3714 Ops/GB of RAM, 116.1 Ops/MB of NVRAM, 176.9 Ops/Disk, and 3714 Ops/FS. Oh, and that's with RAID-4. The Celerra 507 Cluster delivers 104067 Ops/Sec @ 2.87ms. It does this by using 14 Data Mover CPUs, but each Symmetrix (there are 6) also had 6 Channel Directors, and each Channel Director has 2 CPUs. Channel Directors are not the same as SCSI cards; those are called Disk Directors. So 6x6x2 + 14 = 86 CPUs total. It also used 7 GB of RAM, 98304 MB of NVRAM (16 GB in each Symmetrix), 433 (!) disks, and 14 filesystems. That works out to about 1210 Ops/CPU, 14866 Ops/GB RAM, 1.1 Ops/MB NVRAM, 240.3 Ops/Disk, and 7433.4 Ops/FS. The EMC results are certainly impressive, as they deliver more Ops per CPU, RAM, Disk, and FS. But how do they do it? They use a HUUUUUUUUGE amount of NVRAM in the Symmetrix. Enourmous, really. (Actually, it's battery-backed up RAM.) The affordability of such a configuration is out of the question. They get less than 1.1 Ops/MB! Oh, and did I mention the EMC results are without RAID protection, just simple striping. If you wanted the same performance with RAID protection, you'd have to buy twice as many disks, which means only 120.1 Ops/Disk and 3716.7 Ops/FS. You could go with RAID-S, but the performance for RAID-S is far less. In other words, if you wanted to get 100000+ Ops with RAID protection, you could buy this one huge EMC Cluster or several smaller F760 clusters. You would pay a little more for more CPUs and RAM, but you'd have to buy MORE disks with the EMC model to get data protection, and WAY more memory. If we add the RAM and NVRAM together to be fair (because NTAP requires more RAM with the above figures and EMC's NVRAM is really just RAM), you're talking 29568 MB for NTAP and 98311 MB for EMC. That's 3.3 times as much memory - 3.3 times as much money! There's no comparison... NTAP gives you a lot more bang for the buck! Bruce --------

To: JDN who wrote (10778)	8/1/2000 3:06:09 AM
From: Allegoria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17183

And...http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=14137835 EMC's benchmarking... The previous post was maybe a little more technical than people want to see, so here's the deal in hopefully, non- technical talk. EMC's benchmarking for SPEC hides a couple performance problems for their Celerra NAS product by one thing they don't do for the benchmark and one thing they do, do, for the benchmark: 1. EMC benchmarks with RAID turned off. RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks) allows a system to have data duplicated, so if one disk fails the data can be regenerated from other disks. Obviously, with RAID on, you spend more time creating the duplicated data so your numbers may not be as good. EMC always benchmarks with RAID off, NTAP always benchmarks with RAID on. 2. EMC benchmarks with lots of memory and NVRAM. Memory is used to store data so you don't have to go to the disks as often, thereby getting better numbers. NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random Access Memory) is just another kind of memory that keeps its information stored even if you lose power to the system - it is used in addition to memory by both NTAP and EMC so the data remains consistent on disk if power fails to the system. EMC puts lots of memory in the Celerra and also puts lots of memory and NVRAM in the Symmetrix (where the disks are) to get better benchmark numbers. NTAP benchmarks with much smaller memory and NVRAM configurations. Basically EMC creates a very costly configuration because of all the memory/NVRAM and disks to bump up their numbers. Benchmarks are good for comparing technology as long as you are comparing apples and apples. EMC and other companies rarely want to compare apple-to-apple with NTAP because they know the results will not be flattering. NTAP really does have the best technology - the best use of software on a given hardware platform. This is just benchmarking though, I think the more important point is the ease-of-use features of a product that was built from the ground up as a "data appliance", there isn't anything comparable out there.