New EMC CLARiiON CX3 Fibre Channel iSCSI Systems Deliver 49 iSCSI Performance Advantage Over Standard Filers

Hopkinton, Mass. - October 23, 2006 -

EMC Corporation, the world leader in information management and storage, today continued to extend its mid-tier storage leadership with the introduction of new EMC® CLARiiON® CX3 UltraScale™ systems featuring combined Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity within the same array. The new systems provide customers with the flexibility to easily and cost-effectively consolidate information from and between disparate networks.

EMC today also introduced the Navisphere® Quality of Service Manager (NQM) for CLARiiON software, which enables customers to monitor and achieve varied application performance objectives based on service levels. In addition, other new enhancements, which are available to all CLARiiON customers, provide availability, replication, and scalability enhancements and significant improvements in ease of use. These include the new EMC Navisphere Task Bar, a free upgrade that provides a wizard-based management tool to reduce the number of steps associated with common management tasks by up to 70%.

The new EMC CLARiiON CX3-20 and CX3-40 FC/iSCSI systems are based on the EMC UltraScale architecture. EMC UltraScale is the storage industry's only available mid-tier platform with full end-to-end 4Gb/s (gigabit-per-second) Fibre Channel technology. In EMC iSCSI tests, the new dual-protocol CLARiiON CX3 systems can support a 49% greater Microsoft Exchange workload than standard filers at 50% capacity utilization.

David Donatelli, EMC Executive Vice President, Storage Product Operations, said, "Customers continue to demand systems that are easier to use, and EMC continues to meet those requirements with new software tools that further simplify management and non-disruptively move the data within an array. In addition to wanting easy-to-use technology, customers want to maximize their investment. Until now, customers who have wanted to mix and match iSCSI and Fibre Channel in the same array have had to make huge sacrifices in capacity utilization. The only way to overcome this inherent problem with filers was to buy more filers, creating a management nightmare. The beauty of EMC's UltraScale architecture is that customers can use all of the storage capacity they paid for without sacrificing performance."

EMC CLARiiON CX3 UltraScale FC/iSCSI systems – Tiered Storage Built on the Industry's #1 Midrange Storage Platform

The new Fibre Channel/iSCSI systems are ideally suited for customers who have already invested in Fibre Channel and are looking to consolidate IP-connected servers, or for those who want to consolidate data via iSCSI but also require the flexibility to deploy Fibre Channel to support applications that may have more demanding performance requirements.

The new CLARiiON CX3-20 and CX3-40 FC/iSCSIsystems can support high-performance as well as low-cost, high-capacity disk drives in the same system. They also support all CLARiiON array-based software functionality, including remote and local replication. The CLARiiON CX3-20 FC/iSCSI system can scale from 365 gigabytes to 59 terabytes and supports up to 128 high-availability hosts. The CLARiiON CX3-40 FC/iSCSI system can scale to up to 119 terabytes and supports up to 128 high-availability hosts.

Enhanced EMC CLARiiON Software and Features Drive Consolidation and Leveraging of Common Management and Functionality

The new software and functionality include:

With EMC Virtual LUN technology and EMC SAN Copy™ software, the CLARiiON system is the only mid-tier platform to deliver non-disruptive data movement – regardless of the protocol – both within and between tiers of storage. This EMC technology gives customers seamless ILM capabilities in a single array without affecting applications, and it simplifies the sharing, managing and protecting of more of an organization's information.

Andrew Waithaka, Network Systems Manager at St. Louis College of Pharmacy, a beta site for the EMC CLARiiON CX3-40 FC/iSCSI, said, "We are dedicated to providing our students and faculty with the highest levels of information access and convenience. The new CLARiiON CX3 has impressed us with its flexibility and ease of use. The true value of EMC CLARiiON is not only in the architecture, it's also in software like Navisphere Quality of Service Manager, which few other vendors offer, because it gives us the ability to allocate system resources on an application-by-application basis across our campus-wide storage network."

Brian Garrett, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group, said, "With this announcement, EMC has made significant strides in the areas of ease of use and flexibility. ESG Lab testing of the new Navisphere Task Bar has confirmed that EMC is making it easier than ever for customers to configure and manage their CLARiiON systems. The combination of iSCSI and Fibre Channel on a single CLARiiON CX3 system gives customers a great deal of flexibility to consolidate data from applications where it previously wasn't cost justified. Navisphere Quality of Service Manager extends the flexibility of the CLARiiON by letting customers dynamically allocate CLARiiON system resources to higher priority applications. This announcement highlights that EMC continues to offer innovative solutions in the midrange storage market."

Availability

The EMC CLARiiON UltraScale CX3-20 and CX3-40 FC/iSCSI systems are available immediately. Navisphere Quality of Service Manager and the additional CLARiiON enhancements will be available in December 2006.