EMC launches world's first integrated ATA networked storage solution.

EMC Corporation has introduced CLARiiON with ATA--the world's only storage system with integrated ATA and Fibre Channel disk drives. Through the integration of low-cost ATA drives into an existing storage architecture, the EMC CLARiiON networked storage systems enable customers to bring more of their offline, tape-based data online to extend its useful life. CLARiiON with ATA delivers an unmatched storage solution for disk-based backup and restore as well as for a wide range of primary data currently kept on tape across applications such as oil & gas research, telecommunications billing records, government intelligence data and life sciences research.

Offline data, residing primarily on tape media, continues to represent more than 10 times the amount of online information. Until now, the economics of disk storage forced customers to store a majority of data offline--resulting in substantially lower service levels for most of their information assets. With this announcement, EMC has incorporated ATA technology into the CLARiiON architecture to bring more information into online SAN and NAS environments, thus dramatically increasing service levels through improved availability and functionality.

EMC also announced recently that it has integrated CLARiiON with ATA with its own backup and restore application, EMC Data Manager (EDM), and fully tested and support leading backup vendor applications (see separate releases) to offer a high-performance, disk-based alternative to tape backup and restore processes.

Peter Gerr, Research Analyst, Enterprise Storage Group, said, "EMC's stamp of approval means that ATA is now ready for prime time. Now, customers can affordably bring infrequently accessed data online and manage it under the same storage system with the same software infrastructure as their performance-critical OLTP applications. This announcement brings important new choices to the storage market and breathes new life into more of a customer's information assets."

While OLTP and other performance-intensive applications will continue to use higher-performing Fibre Channel drives, CLARiiON with ATA blends the economic advantages of ATA disk drives with CLARiiON's unique availability and functionality, while also inheriting all the functionality of EMC's automated storage software. While list prices for CLARiiON with ATA are higher than those for tape, ATA-based CLARiiON systems offer significantly higher performance and reliability. For example, CLARiiON with ATA can accomplish backups in a third less time and restore in 80% less time than tape in typical environments. In addition, CLARiiON with ATA offers significantly lower performance than CLARiiON with Fibre Channel drives at approximately 50% of the list price in large systems configurations.

Through this integrated approach to online and extended online storage, customers can simply mix any combination of Fibre Channel and ATA device enclosures offering a single solution to store production data and bring offline data online. Uniquely, these systems can be managed and protected through a unified storage management suite--eliminating complexity imposed by other offerings.

David Donatelli, EMC Executive Vice President of Storage Platforms Operations, said, "All information wants to live online. Through the combination of ATA economics and integration into the high-availability CLARiiON architecture, EMC now makes it possible for customers to bring more information online. Once online, information then can deliver far greater value back to the business through higher service levels. And, through integration into the existing CLARiiON architecture, time to customer value is zero, because there's nothing new for customers to learn."

As a result of this new drive technology, disk-based backup and recovery is now affordable for most organizations. Also, CLARiiON with ATA disk-based backup and restore offers greater levels of reliability over offline media through CLARiiON's highly available architecture and unique data integrity and disk scrubbing technologies.

Leveraging the reliability and performance of CLARiiON with ATA, major backup partners have integrated CLARiiON with ATA backup-to-disk functionality within their applications (see separate releases). EMC CLARiiON with ATA partners and solutions include CommVault Galaxy, Computer Associates (CA) BrightStor ARCserve Backup & BrightStor Enterprise Backup, KVS Enterprise Vault, LEGATO NetWorker, EmailXtender as well as VERITAS NetBackup & VERITAS Backup Exec. These solutions have been tested and are fully supported and available today.

EMC also announced that its Data Manager (EDM) now supports backup-to-disk functionality providing a new level of backup and recovery performance for the industry's most robust centralized backup solution.

CLARiiON with ATA also enables customers to implement advanced storage software functionality such as local and remote replication at lower price points. For example, customers can take a fully independent copy of a Fibre Channel disk-based volume, or SnapView Business Continuance Volume (BCV), and store it on ATA disk technology to run application testing, data warehouse refreshes and backups.

While ATA lowers the cost of physical replications, higher-level management applications like EMC Replication Manager drive down the cost and complexity of managing replication procedures. Through Replication Manager, customers can automate virtually every procedure related to data replication, including the deployment and management of multiple disk replicas.

CLARiiON with ATA systems are available immediately. CLARiiON CX600 and CX400 systems immediately support 250GB 5,400 RPM ATA drives. List pricing for a 10- terabyte CLARiiON with ATA configuration starts at $170,000.