EMC extends Flash leadership - announces new Xtrem family of Flash products

By Phumeza Tontsi for EMC Southern Africa
Johannesburg, 08 Mar 2013

Riaan de Leeuw, Mid-Tier Business Manager, EMC Southern Africa.

News Summary:
* EMC announces new Xtrem family of Flash products, extending its server Flash leadership.
* New EMC XtremSF Flash cards dramatically accelerates application performance, achieving a record 1.13 million IOPS and delivering two times higher throughput.
* New XtremSF delivers new levels of efficiency, reducing CPU utilisation by up to 50%, and providing 58% better total cost of ownership (TCO) than other offerings.
* EMC ships the EMC XtremIO all-Flash storage array to select customers.
* EMC unveils new software Flash strategy and upcoming EMC XtremSW Suite to manage Flash across the data centre.

Interact with EMC Online:
* Online: Learn more about the EMC Flash portfolio.
* Twitter: Follow @EMCFlash for EMC Flash news, events, and content. Join the conversation and share thoughts on EMC Flash by using #XtremSF, #XtremSWCache and #XtremIO.

Full story:
EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) has announced the EMC Xtrem family of Flash-optimised server and storage products and introduced a new line of EMC XtremSF PCIe-based Flash cards that dramatically accelerate application performance. With the addition of XtremSF, EMC continues delivering the industry's only best-of-breed portfolio of Flash products.

XtremSF is server Flash hardware, available in a broad set of eMLC and SLC capacities. It can be deployed as either direct attached storage (DAS) that sits within the server to deliver high performance - or it can be deployed in combination with EMC XtremSW Cache (formerly EMC VFCache) server caching software to turbocharge network storage array performance, while maintaining the level of protection required by mission-critical application environments. XtremSF joins EMC's growing portfolio of extreme-performance Flash products, which include Flash optimised hybrid storage arrays - EMC Isilon, EMC VMAX and EMC VNX, as well as the EMC XtremIO (formerly Project X) all-Flash scale-out enterprise storage array.

Today, EMC also announced the release of XtremIO to select customers. XtremIO is purpose built to leverage Flash and deliver new levels of real-world performance, administrative ease, and advanced data services. Its scale-out architecture delivers higher levels of "functional IOPS" to applications that require high levels of random I/O performance, such as OLTP databases, server virtualisation and VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). Functional IOPS are measured under the real-world operating conditions found in today's demanding production environments, with all data services enabled and operating while filled nearly to capacity.

In these real-world conditions, the XtremIO system exceeds 150K functional 4K mixed read/write IOPS, and 250K functional 4K read IOPS for each 'X-Brick' (the scale-out building blocks for the XtremIO array), and over 1.2 million functional 4K mixed read/write IOPS, and 2 million functional 4K read IOPS when scaled out to a cluster of eight X-Bricks. The XtremIO array delivers this level of performance with consistent sub-millisecond response times while running the industry's richest set of integrated and Flash-optimised data services, including Flash-specific data protection, thin provisioning, global inline data reduction, accelerated VMware provisioning through VAAI, and writeable snapshots.

XtremSF Technology Highlights:

The XtremSF Family of server-based PCIe Flash cards deliver customers with:

* Leading performance: The XtremSF Flash devices are proven to deliver a record 1.13 million IOPS in a standard form factor - an achievement unmatched in the industry. The XtremSF device's next generation design delivers two times higher throughput than other offerings in the market to enhance real-world workloads in Web scale and other applications.

* Unmatched flexibility: The XtremSF Flash device is available in a broad range of eMLC (550GB and 2.2TB) and SLC (350GB and 700GB) capacities. In addition, when deployed with XtremSW Cache intelligent server Flash caching software, XtremSF devices can be leveraged as a caching device for accelerated performance with array protection for applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL and Microsoft Exchange.

* New levels of efficiency: The XtremSF Flash devices deliver customers the industry's lowest TCO - up to 58% better TCO than other offerings. All XtremSF products, including the 2.2TB offering, are standard half-height, half-length 25w PCIe cards - providing the highest storage capacity in the smallest footprint for maximum performance, best density, and lowest power consumption - reducing CPU utilisation by up to 50%.

EMC Flash software strategy

In 2012, EMC delivered XtremSW Cache (formerly VFCache). This was the first step in EMC's long-term server Flash strategy, delivering a server-side storage product featuring a combination of software running on SLC-based PCIe Flash devices. This software turned the server Flash DAS into a cache, enhancing the performance of a wide variety of mission-critical transactional and decision support applications. With this announcement, XtremSW Cache can now run with a wide variety of eMLC and SLC XtremSF Flash cards.

In the future, EMC will deliver a broad, device-independent Flash software suite - the EMC XtremSW Suite. This new software suite will deliver more caching capabilities, in addition to offering advanced data services to Flash as memory and Flash as DAS. The XtremSW Suite will provide customers with capabilities such as pooling, cache coherency, deeper EMC storage array integration and specific enhancements for VMware environments in the future.

Availability and services:

XtremSF 550GB and 2.2TB eMLC capacities are currently available globally. EMC expects to make 700GB and 1.4TB capacities available on EMC price lists in the second quarter of 2013. EMC will extend the XtremSF family with even higher capacity offerings in the future.

EMC Global Services enables customers to accelerate their XtremSF and XtremSW Cache infrastructure deployments. Leveraging EMC's assessment and implementation, customers can identify the server-centric applications and workloads that will most benefit from EMC Flash, and create XtremSF and XtremSW Cache deployment strategies that deliver the greatest performance benefit and return for their environment.

Customer quotes:
Jake Bogie, Vice-President IT, SureSource
"SureSource operates independent online stores for some of the world's most recognised brands - including Hershey's, Budweiser, and Coca Cola. Performance is an absolute requirement for us. Today, we use XtremSW Cache with XtremSF SLC cards with our VNX unified storage to accelerate our mission-critical Microsoft SQL Server application. The performance is astonishing, enabling us to deliver premier customer service. We've seen average overall performance increases of 385% in our annual physical inventory process, 420% in our month-end accounting closure process, and 225% in daily processes. We also recently began testing the new XtremSF MLC cards in our mySQL environment. The read and write IOPS and latencies are incredible under such an intensive workload. The outstanding performance metrics we have achieved from EMC's server Flash technologies reinforces our decision to build out an all-EMC IT infrastructure in the coming years."

Brian Dougherty, Chief Data Warehouse Architect, CMA
"At CMA, our mainline businesses are highly dependent on exemplary performance and reliability from our Oracle data warehouse environments. Using XtremIO we are able to engineer our Oracle RAC systems to be faster, more scalable, and handle more concurrent users, while at the same time requiring only 20% of the previous footprint in our data centre. We've identified immediate storage cost savings of nearly $500K by leveraging XtremIO and will achieve similar savings by reducing our Oracle CPU core licence requirements since XtremIO nearly eliminates I/O wait time. But perhaps the best part is the simplicity of the XtremIO system. It was installed and running in a couple of hours and is very easy to configure and manage."

Industry analyst quote:
Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
"Single point Flash solutions are an archaic approach to thinking about deploying Flash. In order to drive real benefit across virtualised infrastructure where workloads are dynamic, users need to consider Flash that is just as dynamic. That means no point-only solutions. Instead, users need to think about a portfolio-approach to Flash - in the server, in the array, or as an all-Flash array - using intelligent software to leverage those assets. EMC has had this philosophy since it first entered the Flash game, and hasn't wavered."

EMC executive quote:
Riaan de Leeuw, Mid-Tier Business Manager, EMC Southern Africa
"Flash technology is enabling new levels of application performance and is the single biggest consideration to how customers are architecting their data centres today. Today, we are delivering a market-leading and comprehensive portfolio of Flash solutions across a variety of customer use cases and requirements. Going forward, we are dedicated to providing increased value through flash-optimised software and systems to break the barriers of today's infrastructure silos."

Additional resources:

* Watch Dan Cobb, Flash Business Unit CTO Discuss the new EMC Xtrem Family
* Visit the "There's Flash For That" Online Portal
* Read the XtremSF Data Sheet
* Read the XtremSW Cache Data Sheet
* More Information on XtremSF and XtremSW Cache
* Watch the "Flash In a Flash" Video
* Read the post on EMC Pulse Blog: Flashback. Flash Now. Flash Next...Meet the New EMC Xtrem Flash Family
* Enterprise Strategy Group Paper on EMC's Flash Software Strategy
* Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn

EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyse their most valuable asset - information - in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC, Xtrem, XtremSF, XtremSW, XtremIO, EMC VFCache, Isilon, VMAX and VNX are either registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (v) component and product quality and availability; (vi) fluctuations in VMware's operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vii) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (viii) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (ix) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xii) threats and other disruptions to our secure data centres or networks; (xiii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xiv) war or acts of terrorism; and (xv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

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EMC extends Flash leadership - announces new Xtrem family of Flash products

New XtremSF Flash cards deliver record 1.13 million IOPS, two times faster throughput, and 58% better TCO than other offerings; XtremIO All-Flash Array shipping to select customers.