NetApp rivals top-end EMC

Storage giant Network Appliance will today announce new high-end disk systems, designed to compete against the best offerings from EMC and Hitachi Data Systems.

The new FAS6000 series is aimed at firms wanting highly scalable systems, according to Paul Hargreaves, consulting systems engineer at NetApp. Rival products include EMC’s Symmetrix range of top-end disk arrays, including the DMX-3, which offers beyond 2,400 drives.

The new NetApp FAS6070 handles up to 1,008 drives, giving it a maximum capacity of 504TB using 500GB Sata disks or 290TB using forthcoming 288GB Fibre Channel drives. These figures put it far ahead of EMC’s DMX-3000 range, which scales up to 576 disks, and exceed the 480-drive capacity of the new Clarion CX3 series disk arrays launched by EMC this week.

The FAS6000 series is highly modular and could work out cheaper for minimum configurations. It can start with one shelf of fourteen 72GB Fibre Channel disks and can scale up to 500GB using Sata mechanisms. “Some of our frame-based competitors have a much larger minimum requirement,” commented Hargreaves.

Upgrading to the new kit should also be straightforward, according to Hargreaves. “Customers can upgrade an existing system by replacing the controller,” he said. “The upgrade does not involve changes to the data.” Hargreaves also argued that NetApp could be cheaper to use because all NetApp kit uses the same operating system and management tools.