Dell EMC CX4-960 SAN Storage

Dell Updated: 2008-09-10 RSS
Dell EMC CX4-960 SAN Storage

Impressive level of performance and flexibility For today and tomorrow

Massive performance and scalability in a mid-range array.

* Fibre Channel and iSCSI in one array
* 10Gbit iSCSI and 8Gbit Fibre Channel connections can be added later
* Reduce operational costs with virtual provisioning
* Solid state disk available for extreme performance needs (Anticipated availability in Fall 2008)
* Storage designed to help reduce your power and cooling costs

Maximum Scalability in Performance and Capacity
The CX4-960 offers massive scalability in capacity and performance for customers with large storage requirements. It is ideal for very heavy transaction processing including maximum speed large block data transfers, backup-to-disk, audio/video streaming, replication, data warehousing and highly compute-intensive applications, such as seismic data analysis, computational chemistry, genomic sequencing.

* Supports up to 960 Hard Drives
* Stores up to 951TB of data
* Customized connectivity with up to 512 hosts in a SAN and 12 I/O slots
* True end-to-end 4Gbit Fibre Channel and 1Gbit iSCSI connectivity in one array

Innovation
UltraFlex modular I/O technology enables you to easily add more ports to your array, either Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI, as your needs change. You can also add future network technologies, such as 10Gbit iSCSI and 8Gbit FC as they become available, giving you unprecedented flexibility and investment protection. The innovations built into the new Dell/EMC CX4 arrays extend beyond just flexible I/O to include virtual provisioning (anticipated availability in Fall 2008)2, support for solid state drives (SSD or flash), enhanced tiering options, features that enable greener storage by helping to reduce power consumption, and design improvements for performance and availability.

Virtual provisioning
Employ virtual provisioning to help reduce acquisition and operational costs while helping to improve capacity utilization. This can result in fewer drives and can help reduce hardware costs, management time, and power consumption. (Anticipated Availability in Fall 2008)2

Exceptional scalability
The CX4-960 array can scale from 5 to 960 drives, connect to as many as 512 highly available hosts in a SAN and store up to 951TB of data. The extensive support matrix makes it easy to add storage in heterogeneous environments. The CX4 eases growing pains allowing you to easily add more capacity as your storage needs change. UltraFlex technology enables you to increase the ports on your array through up to 12 hot-pluggable I/O modules. In addition, the new solid state drive (SSD or flash) option adds a new level of performance for critical applications where 1 flash drive can equal the performance of 30 Fibre Channel drives. With this increase in performance and number of drives, the CX4-960 now extends Dell’s SAN portfolio beyond mid-range enterprise arrays into the high-end.

Green storage
Innovations built into the new CX4 arrays help to reduce power consumption and cooling requirements.

* The new energy efficient 5,400 RPM SATA drives typically consume 32% less power3 than a standard 7,200 RPM SATA drive letting you select drives that use less power and help meet your access requirements. The addition of these and other drives creates new tiering options enabling you to use more efficient design in managing how and where your data is stored which offers the potential to reduce power and cooling needs.
* Virtual provisioning can help reduce the total number of drives needed, and thus help reduce the power and cooling required for the array.
* The array includes adaptive fan technology where fans spin only at the speed that is needed to keep it cool, potentially further reducing power requirements.

Systems and data management
The same applications that provide advanced data protection, data path management, optimization, replication and migration that are available on the current CX3 arrays are also supported on the CX4 arrays. These include SnapView, MirrorView, SAN Copy, Replication Manager, PowerPath, Navisphere®  Analyzer and Navisphere Quality of Service Manager. The array is managed using the powerful and intuitive management interface, Navisphere Manager, which has formed the core of CX array management since its inception.
Seamless integration

With Dell/EMC storage arrays, you can more easily deploy, expand, and re-deploy storage. Migrate data seamlessly between different classes of drives and RAID types to help deliver the optimal combination of performance and availability. And with Virtual LUN technology, data migration takes place dynamically and effortlessly, helping avoid disruption. Dell/EMC storage arrays support the EMC data replication and migration applications, Mirrorview and SAN Copy. These optional tools let you remotely mirror data from one array to another to help meet disaster recovery goals or to simply move data across arrays.

iSCSI Support
iSCSI uses traditional IP connections to connect the Dell/EMC CX4 storage array to server hosts. iSCSI is an ideal choice for a remote server environment or limited budgets. Plus, with the CX4 array, you have the flexibility to choose either iSCSI of Fibre channel connections and how many iSCSI and FC ports you may want now or later.

Solutions
Dell/EMC storage arrays are integrated into Dell’s Exchange Microsoft®  Exchange® , Microsoft SQL Server® , and Oracle®  solutions, which offer tested and validated reference architectures to help solve your messaging and database challenges.