EMC Extends High End Storage Lead with New Symmetrix DMX 2

Hopkinton, - February 09, 2004 -

EMC Corporation today extended its lead in enabling customers to keep pace with increasingly complex and demanding high-end workloads with the addition of new Symmetrix DMX-2 models to the award-winning Symmetrix DMX™ product line, STORAGE magazine's "Product of the Year" for disk and disk subsystems.

These new models incorporate 1Ghz PowerPC channel and disk directors to raise the top-end systems performance of the Symmetrix DMX series by up to 30&#37. In addition to the new DMX-2 models, this technology also is available as a data-in-place upgrade to existing Symmetrix DMX systems.

EMC also announced a range of hardware and software offerings for the expanded Symmetrix DMX series. Combined, these technologies take high-end storage performance to a new level by helping customers consolidate, centrally manage and better protect ever-larger amounts of information. They include:

• New 32GB global memory directors—doubling the maximum Symmetrix DMX cache configurations to 256GB, twice as much as the nearest competitor.
• Support for the latest high-performance 73GB, 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel disk drives.
• New AutoSwap™ software that enables customers to redirect mainframe storage workloads without disrupting application processing.
• The option of mirroring, parity RAID or a new RAID 5 implementation, offering customers additional choice for cost-effective, high-performance data protection.
• Multi-array support for SRDF/A - EMC's popular long-distance replication software.

The power of the Direct Matrix Architecture™ has enabled EMC to deliver significant enhancements to the Symmetrix DMX series over the last 12 months. Taken in total, the cumulative enhancements deliver up to twice the performance of the initial Symmetrix DMX series introduced just 12 months ago.

AdvancePCS is the largest U.S. provider of health improvement services and one of America's 100 fastest-growing public companies, according to FORTUNE Magazine. Richard Gounaris, AdvancePCS's Vice President of Technology Infrastructure Services, said, "EMC continues to impress and meet our high-end storage expectations in every way. Symmetrix DMX-2 is no exception and gives us both the performance we need for our most demanding applications and EMC's brand-name investment protection that comes with making sure everything works together, old and new."

Randy Kerns, Senior Partner at The Evaluator Group, said, "In the 12 months since EMC launched its Symmetrix DMX high-end storage array, it has continued to execute on its strategy of leveraging the scalability of the DMX architecture to roll out additional performance and configuration options - as evidenced by these latest announcements. Customers value predictability from a vendor, and EMC has continued to execute on its plan, fulfilling the promises with the DMX line."

Continuing on its commitment to offer innovation for customers' mainframe environments, EMC also announced new EMC AutoSwap software. AutoSwap enables customers to redirect storage workloads without disrupting application processing. In conjunction with EMC SRDF, AutoSwap can be used to migrate storage workloads non-disruptively across arrays for temporary or permanent load balancing or to switch workloads automatically to a remote disaster recovery site in the event of a failure at the primary site.

David Donatelli, EMC Executive Vice President of Storage Platforms Operations, said, "EMC is at the center of helping customers build many of the world's most mission-critical and most highly consolidated computing environments. We continue to do more than anyone in high-end storage to help customers do more for their business. Today's Symmetrix DMX announcements represent EMC's continuing commitment to deliver a unique class of storage to handle massive workloads and deliver absolute information protection and availability.

All products announced today are available immediately. AutoSwap list pricing is $200,000 for a typical configuration.

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.