EMC Announces New Xtrem Family Of Flash Products

EMC Corporation has announced the EMC Xtrem Family of Flash-optimised server and storage products and introduced a new line of EMC XtremSF PCIe-based Flash cards that dramatically accelerate application performance.

XtremSF is server Flash hardware, available in a broad set of eMLC and SLC capacities. It can be deployed as either direct attached storage (DAS) that sits within the server to deliver high performance—or it can be deployed in combination with EMC XtremSW Cache (formerly EMC VFCache) server caching software to turbocharge network storage array performance while maintaining the level of protection required by mission-critical application environments. XtremSF joins EMC’s growing portfolio of extreme-performance Flash products, which include Flash optimised hybrid storage arrays – EMC Isilon, EMC VMAX and EMC VNX, as well as the EMC XtremIO (formerly Project X) all-Flash scale-out enterprise storage array.

EMC also announced the release of XtremIO to select customers. XtremIO is purpose built to leverage Flash and deliver new levels of real-world performance, administrative ease, and advanced data services. Its scale-out architecture delivers higher levels of “functional IOPS” to applications that require high levels of random I/O performance, such as OLTP databases, server virtualisation and VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). Functional IOPS are measured under the real-world operating conditions found in today’s demanding production environments with all data services enabled and operating while filled nearly to capacity.

In these real-world conditions, the XtremIO system exceeds 150K functional 4K mixed read/write IOPS, and 250K functional 4K read IOPS for each ‘X-Brick’ (the scale-out building blocks for the XtremIO array), and over 1.2 million functional 4K mixed read/write IOPS, and 2 million functional 4K read IOPS when scaled out to a cluster of eight X-Bricks. The XtremIO array delivers this level of performance with consistent sub-millisecond response times while running the industry’s richest set of integrated and Flash-optimised data services including Flash-specific data protection, thin provisioning, global inline data reduction, accelerated VMware provisioning through VAAI, and writeable snapshots.

Zahid Hussain, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EMC Flash Products Division said, “Flash technology is enabling new levels of application performance and is the single biggest consideration to how customers are architecting their datacentres today. Today, we are delivering a market-leading and comprehensive portfolio of Flash solutions across a variety of customer use cases and requirements. Going forward, we are dedicated to providing increased value through flash-optimised software and systems to break the barriers of today’s infrastructure silos.”