EMC claims to halve storage needs

EMC has unveiled a new module for its Celerra NAS system which it claims can cut storage needs in half and double the speed of cloning data.

Celerra Plug-Ins for VMware Environments is aimed at mid-range systems, and integrates with the vCenter console.

EMC said that the system can cut storage capacity needs by up to 50 percent using a variety of techniques.

It will also speed up the cloning of virtual machine data by a factor of two, according to EMC, and includes an automated failback system for vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

"These new capabilities from EMC greatly increase the ease-of-use and resource optimisation for mutual customers, integrating with VMware vSphere through common deployment interfaces," said Hatem Naguib, vice president of alliances at VMware.

"VMware administrators now have enhanced control to reduce storage consumption, maintain service levels for performance-sensitive applications, and simplify storage management and data recovery tasks."

One of the key technologies used to cut storage needs is data deduplication, and EMC has a significant advantage in this field after its purchase of Data Domain last year.

"EMC continues to invest and develop advanced features and functionality to simplify the management of physical and virtual infrastructures," said Mark Sorenson, senior vice president of EMC's unified storage division.

"As virtual environments, and the inherent management complexities for managing these environments, grow, EMC continues to bring to market storage solutions and features such as compressing and cloning virtual machines, and automating failback/failover to solve our customers' challenges."