Storage | News

EMC Releases XtremIO Flash Array with 250 TB Cluster Capacity

• By Leila Meyer
• 11/19/13

EMC has released its EMC XtremIO all-flash array, which is designed to provide reliable performance for applications such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), virtual servers, massively consolidated databases and development and test environments.

According to the company, the EMC XtremIO provides "consistent and predictable extreme performance to any application workload over any period of time, regardless of whether the array is idle or busy, empty or full." The arrays deliver up to 1 million fully random IOPS (input/output operations per second) with more than 250 TB of effective capacity in each cluster with inline data deduplication. Each cluster can scale from two to eight controllers and up to 128 cores.

Key features of the EMC XtremIO all-flash array include:

• Scale-out multi-controller architecture with linear scalability;
• Always on, always inline data deduplication; and
• Data protection that the company claims is 6X more efficient and 4X faster than traditional RAID.

The company outlined four key architectural differences between the XtremIO and other all-flash arrays, including content-based data placement, a dual-stage metadata engine, XtremIO data protection (XDP), and shared in-memory metadata. According to the company, content-based data placement keeps the array balanced and optimized "to within a fraction of a percent" across all disks and array controller, while also removing duplicate data inline. The dual-stage metadata engine lets the array place data anywhere in the array without the need for garbage collection, and consequently improving IOPS performance, reducing latency, and reducing flash endurance. XtremIO data protection (XDP) is an algorithm that guards against disk failures while increasing capacity. Shared in-memory metadata helps the array deliver a wide range of performance and rapidly clone information already in the array to help speed up common tasks.

Further information about the EMC XtremIO all-flash array can be found at emc.com.