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EMC offers upgrades to automated tiering, Clariion and Celerra arrays

EMC has unveiled upgrades to its midrange Clariion storage array and Celerra network-attached storage (NAS) gateway as well as new block-level data compression technology in its Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) software.

FAST software allows data volumes to be dynamically moved between tiers of storage on EMC's storage arrays, depending on business performance needs. Combined with solid-state drives (SSDs), it creates a multi-tiered architecture within a storage array, placing the most I/O intensive data on flash storage with less frequently accessed data on SAS or SATA drives.

EMC said it has increased the granularity with which its FAST software can move data among the tiers. Previously, data had to be moved in 1TB increments. Now it can be migrated in 1GB units, which will help use costly, high-end SSDs more efficiently, according to Jon Siegal, an EMC director of product marketing.

EMC also introduced FAST Cache, which utilizes a portion of the SSD capacity in a tiered array as a type of non-volatile cache to increase performance for the most I/O intensive applications. Administrators can choose how much SSD capacity to allocate to the cache.

The FAST suite now also offers block-level compression. Previously, the software allowed only file-level compression. Siegal said users should be able to reduce storage capacity requirements by as much as 50% with the compression feature.

On the data management front, EMC is now also shipping its Unisphere management software, which allows its Clariion and Celerra NAS gateway to be managed through a single user interface. EMC originally unveiled the Unisphere software at its user conference in May.

Unlike earlier management software ofered by EMC -- Navisphere and Celerra Manager -- Unisphere works with both SAN and NAS technology. Clariion and Celerra storage units had been managed with Navisphere software previously.