EMC Corporation today expanded the industry's most complete set of IP (Internet protocol) storage systems with the introduction of two new versions of its leading EMC Celerra platform. The mid-tier EMC® Celerra® NS350 and EMC Celerra NS704 integrated systems are the storage foundation of an IP-based information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy. They both offer more flexibility and manageability, and are more cost-effective than competing systems.

EMC is also announcing the industry's first management solution that brings automated root-cause and impact analysis to network attached storage (NAS). The new EMC Smarts® IP Availability Manager for NAS (see separate release) automatically discovers NAS system elements as IP devices, automates real-time root-cause analysis of critical IP network availability problems at all layers and calculates the impact of connectivity failures on related infrastructure elements.

Alex Munro, Director of IT at HireRight, Inc., said, "As one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., we are always looking for scalable, industry-leading technology solutions to help us stay ahead of our growth curve. By leveraging the redundancy and performance capabilities of the EMC Celerra IP storage solution, we will be able to continue to provide our clients with the high level of system availability and service they've come to expect from HireRight."

The Celerra NS350 system is a simple, affordable, easy-to-deploy solution for consolidating applications and servers into a single IP storage system. Capable of scaling to 10 terabytes of capacity, the integrated Celerra NS350 supports online upgrades from single to dual Data Mover configurations. Compared with the Network Appliance FAS270, the EMC Celerra NS350 offers comparable performance but at a 10% lower price. It offers both NAS and iSCSI connectivity, supports both Fibre Channel and ATA drives within a single system and offers upgrade paths to EMC Celerra systems with even greater performance and storage capacity.

The Celerra NS704 NAS system combines the robust performance and reliability of the Celerra NS704 gateway with the capacity, performance and availability of an EMC CLARiiON® CX700 storage array. This high-end, integrated NAS platform gives customers the ability to consolidate more servers and storage capacity while scaling performance higher and more cost effectively than comparable systems.

With up to 48 terabytes of usable capacity and both NAS and iSCSI connectivity, this solution offers the highest levels of flexibility for IP storage. The Celerra NS704 delivers an estimated 70,000 NFS operations per second, which is approximately 45% better performance than the Network Appliance FAS3050C and 28% better price/performance than the Network Appliance FAS980C.

Complete with EMC Celerra's full suite of software functionality, these systems offer superior ease of use via simple Web-based management, which reduces the complexity of configuration, administration and monitoring. In addition, EMC QuickStart Implementation Services ensure a quick and complete deployment of these robust capabilities.

Both new Celerra systems also support the feature-rich IP storage capabilities announced by EMC on January 26, 2006, including iSCSI replication and virtual provisioning, and customers can leverage EMC Rainfinity Global File Virtualization to migrate and manage files.

Arun Taneja, Founder, the Taneja Group, said, "As the number-one IP storage vendor in the market, EMC caters to many different needs. These integrated products should appeal to those who want the functionality that EMC brings, but want it in "no hassle" packaging."

David Donatelli, EMC Executive Vice President of Storage Platforms Operations, added, "Customers are facing tremendous growth in the number of servers in their environments and an explosion in associated storage capacity. The new EMC Celerra systems and recently announced advanced functionality will allow them to effectively manage their growth and contain costs, while helping them leverage their existing IP infrastructure."