Next Generation Celerra — Unified Storage with Deduplication

After NetApp’s recent (February 2009) announcement of V-Series SSD support and IBM’s (February 2009) announcement of DS8000, EMC is on the roll next with the announcement of its Next Generation NAS product Celerra.

As usual, expected from EMC, the Big Bang!!!!!

So after a lot of speculation, finally the Next Generation Celerra is released now. Again this time around, EMC is pushing the technology towards unified storage, deduplication and virtual provisioning giving away some bells and whistles at no cost.

Here are the highlights of the product.

Celerra Next Generation Ultra Scale Architecture, Unified Storage with Deduplication, Virtual Provisioning, File Level Retention, Support for Flash Drives – 30X IOPS, LP SATA Drives 5.4K, 32% Energy Savings, 22% lower TCO, 960 drives, 960TB of RAW Storage.

Release date: 24th Feb 2009

Product availability: Feb 2009, the NS-8G and NS-960 might be available early March 2009.

Models: NS-120, NS-480, NS-960, NS-G8 (Gateway Version).

Introduction of LP Sata Drives: Low Power SATA Drives 5.4K RPMs.

Introduction of Flash Drives in Celerra: 30X IOPS, introduction of Tier 0.

Cost: Low CapEx, OpEx. Customer installation available with Low and Medium profile celerra’s. High End Celerra’s available to install through ASN Partners or by EMC.

Protocols Supported: NAS, MPFS, FC, iSCSI

Software: Deduplication (no cost), Virtual Provisioning (no cost), Startup Assistant (no cost), Celerra Manager (no cost), Volume Manager (no cost), Celerra Snapsure (no cost) —

Energy Efficiency: 32% less energy consumption

Lower TCO: 22%

Build on: Intel Xeon Chips

Choice of Delivery: File Based or Block Based, NAS to MPFS for throughput, iSCSI to FC for throughput

NS-120
Supports 120 Drives
Supports Flash Drives
1 or 2 Blades
64TB
120TB RAW

NS-480
Support 480 Drives
Support Flash Drives
2 or 4 Blades
192TB
480TB RAW

NS-960
Support 960 Drives
Support Flash Drives
2 to 8 Blades
760TB
960TB RAW

NS-G8
Supports 4 Arrays behind NS-G8
2 to 8 Blades
896TB RAW

Applications usable on Celerra: VMware, Oracle, MS Exchange, MS SQL Server, Windows, Linux File Server

Celerra Integration Available: With VMware, Oracle, MS Exchange, MS SQL

Classifications:
High End: NS-G8, NS-960
Mid-Tier: NS-40G, NS-480, NS-120
Low End: NX-4

Compliance: Meets file level compliance related to SEC Rule 17a-4(f). Also available for the Celerra is 3rd Party Compliance.

Celerra File Level Retention: Celerra is being pushed to allow Filesystem archiving. For Application and Filesystem archiving you will still need a Centera.

ROI Models: Better ROI on Celerra models than any comparative NetApp models.

Haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but hopefully soon and looking forward to it.

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About Devang Panchigar

With more than 7 Years of IT experience, Devang is currently the Director of Technology Solutions and IT Operations at Computer Data Source, Inc. Devang has held several positions in the past including Sr. Systems Engineer, Sr. Network Engineer, Technical Support Manager, Director of Storage Support & Operations. He has been responsible for creating and managing worldwide technical support teams, technology solutions team, operations management, service delivery, pre and post sales support, marketing and business planning. In his current role Devang oversees multiple aspects of the Technology Solutions Group that works with various Multinational and Fortune 500 companies providing them infrastructure services. Along with various industry certifications, Devang holds a Bachelor of Science from South Gujarat University, India and a Master of Science in Computer Science from North Carolina A&T State University.

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