EMC introduced a new variant of CLARiion yesterday. EMC calls the new system the AX4, and Dell brands it as AX4-5.
The variant, AX4 can scale from 3 terabytes of capacity to 60 terabytes. It supports SATA and SAS mix and match up to the count of 60 drives in total. This new array is targeted for SMB and available in entry and advanced configurations. iSCSI and FC interfaces are supported for both the entry and advanced configurations. The Entry level configuration can scale up to 10 hosts while the Advanced Configuration can be scaled up to 64 hosts.
AX4 is designed to integrate with VMware and features high availability and reliability. It features a mirrored cache design, built-in standby power supply, continuous disk consistency checking and hot-swappable components to help ensure availability and reliability of the data.
It also includes Virtual LUN technology which can be used in conjunction with VMWare’s Storage VMotion to enable non distruptive storage migration. In addition, the CLARiiON AX4 supports EMC’s leading replication software, including EMC MirrorView, EMC SAN Copy, EMC RepliStor and EMC Replication Manager to provide the highest levels of uptime in VMware environments. The CLARiiON AX4 has been certified by VMware and will be included in the VMware Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide.
AX4 may be integrated with XenSource virtualization and Microsoft’s HyperV in near future.
