EMC FAST

The solution CLARiiON FAST places data in a high-performance or economic storage system for compliance to the high levels of service of applications and for increase in efficiency of storage.

CLARiiON FAST provides permanent optimization of operation of applications due to elimination of compromises between the capacity and performance. Cost reduction at simultaneous increase in the service levels is result.

Functions

• The analysis managed by the user
• Intuitive management
• Transparent mobility
• Migration under control of the user
• Support of multilevel storage

Advantages

• Simplification of multilevel storage for cost reduction and increase in the service levels.
• Use of software which analyzes made and issues recommendations about their migration.
• Data movement and access to them without the need for changes for users and applications.
• Visibility of what data move where and in what time.
• Use of different disk technologies: flash disks, disks Fibre Channel and SATA.

Short description

Completely automated multilevel data storage (FAST) in EMC CLARiiON: performance improvement and efficiency. The FAST technology provides optimal performance at lower costs, dynamically moving "active" data on more productive disks, and "inactive" – on more economic disks. Now FAST performs multilevel data storage at the level of elements of logic devices, providing more detailed data movement within the logic device by automatic movement of fragments of data of 1 GB in size. The general cost reduction as customers receive higher is result performance, using the fastest disks, can also store more data on disks of bigger capacity. The FAST technology performs the automated analysis and data movement on a basis the politician that saves the administrator's time as the tasks which are carried out before selection of resources are undertaken by a storage system. Control of FAST technology is exercised by means of the new Unisphere interface therefore users can easily configure FAST and plan automatic data movement with any necessary frequency. Cache memory of FAST in the EMC CLARiiON systems: ultrahigh performance of applications. The cache memory of FAST is a function optimization of performance which increases performance of applications by value to 200%. Using a flash disks of a corporate class for expansion of the existing caching opportunities, the cache memory of FAST automatically smoothes unpredictable "peaks" in workloads of applications.

Key characteristics cache memory of FAST

• support up to 2 TB formatted capacities;
• support of read operations and record;
• simple setup and monitoring using Unisphere software;
• integration without work interruption.

Technology improvements of EMC CLARiiON CX4

Flash disks of a corporate class. The technology adapted by EMC a flash disks provides low delays and high capacity that eliminates the restrictions of performance inherent in traditional disk technology. EMC of the first began to use a flash disks in average storage systems class. According to our forecasts, within the next several years this technology will gain mass distribution and will lead to revolutionary changes in area of network systems of data storage. The flash disks is expanded by possibilities of multilevel data storage of the CLARiiON systems thanks to such advantages:

• performance improvement of input-output operations by 30 times in comparison with the disks FC with rotating speed 15,000 RPM;
• the approved providing response time less than 1 ms;
• 98 percent decrease in energy consumption on one input-output operation in comparison with the disks Fibre Channel with rotating speed 15,000 RPM;
• 58 percent weight reduction per terabyte in comparison with the normal disk Fibre Channel;
• reliability augmentation thanks to lack of mobile elements and reduction of recovery time of redundancy of the RAID.

UltraFlex technology. The architecture of CLARiiON CX4 supports UltraFlex technology – a combination of modular construction of connectivities and unique opportunities of software of operating environment of EMC FLARE®. This technology provides following features:

• support of two protocols, FC and iSCSI, as a basic configuration for all models;
• simple operational expansion by means of the modules of input-output supporting "hot" replacement;
• possibility of simple adding and (or) upgrade of modules of input-output for implementation of future technologies (for example, FCoE) in process of their availability.

Multi-core processors Intel Xeon, increase in amount of memory and 64-bit FLARE OS. In comparison with the previous generation CX4 series provides double performance improvement and increase in computing power by 2.5 times at the expense of the multi-core processors Intel® Xeon®. The architecture of CX4 also provides a possibility of doubling tanks (up to 960 disks), amount of memory and the number of logic devices in comparison with the previous generation of the CLARiiON systems. Besides, in the CLARiiON CX4 systems operating environment of FLARE was upgraded from 32-bit in 64-bit. Thanks to this improvement there is possible an increase in scalability and also the foundation for more advanced program functions, for example virtual selection of resources is laid.

The disks SATA II with low power consumption, adaptive cooling and function of deceleration of rotation of disks.

• The disks SATA II with low power consumption provide the highest density at the bottom price and consume 96% less energy per terabyte, than the disks Fibre Channel with rotating speed 15,000 RPM, and 32% less, than the traditional disks SATA with rotating speed 7,200 RPM.
• Function of deceleration of rotation of disks gives the chance to appoint politicians at the level of the RAID group for transfer of inactive disks to the "sleeping" mode. Target scopes of this function are backup on a disk, archiving and also environments of testing and development.