Advertisment

Green is indeed the color of the future

author-image
CIOL Bureau
New Update

After green chips, green server, now it is the chance of ‘green’ storage. EMC, a leading company on storage front, is increasingly talking about need for green storage.

Advertisment

The company has also been quite bullish otherwise, launching its latest hi-end storage arrays in India.

Bob Wambach, senior director, Symmetrix Product Marketing, EMC, spoke to Shashwat Chaturvedi on the latest launch and whether ‘green’ is a just a fad. Excerpts:

What is the latest on the EMC front?

Advertisment

We have unveiled the new Symmetrix DMX-4 series that is basically next generation of high-end storage array. We also have the entry-level Celerra NS20 for Indian companies. The great thing about Symmetrix DMX-4 comes is that it comes with an end-to-end 4 GBPS design, a new point-to-point Fiber Channel back-end and support for high capacity disk drives.

But with NS20 are you not moving into the NAS territory dominated by NetApp?

We are trying to change the paradigm of the market by offering innovative solutions to our customers. Take the case of Celerra NS20, it is a unified storage box supporting NAS, iSCSI and Fiber Channel SAN connectivity. NetApp has been successful in this area and we needed to offer everything competition does if not better.

Advertisment

What are the RSA security features that have been incorporated?

We have started using hi-end security enhancements from RSA technology from the Symmetrix DMX-3. We continue with that in DMX-4 as well. One of the most acclaimed security feature has been the two factor authentication built into the Symmetrix to authenticate users and a tamper proof auto lock. Another innovative security feature is what we call envision, it collects audit logs from the IT infrastructure of all companies, consolidates the logs, and secures them with regular security checks. We have also ensured certified data erasure, etc.

Advertisment
 

How important is security on the storage front?

Security is one of the biggest concern for any modern-day enterprise. While a lot has been done to protect systems from outside through the means of firewalls and anti-virus, the systems are still very vulnerable to internal attacks. That’s where security on storage side becomes important. According to me, the best place to protect data is on the drive itself. In that way, our strategy of acquiring of RSA has paid of, as we are able to incorporate path-breaking technology into our storage solutions.

Advertisment

How important is India in terms of product development?

India is very critical to us. Take the case of one of our most important tool used to convince customers, the EMC Calculator, the Indian center has played a very important role in its development. Also, some time back, we had acquired Valyd, it was a validation of India’s strength in terms of development.

For the past sometime you have been talking about ‘Green’ storage?

Over the last many years, companies have systematically gone in for server consolidation. With it, they have been able to cut costs, yet, nothing much has happened on the storage front. Today, storage is usually employed in an ad-hoc manner, thus leading to lot of inefficiencies. According to a survey, if storage is used properly, a company can cut down costs by as much as 70 per cent. This can be done by the use of arrays, as it reduces the cooling requirements there by saving power. Thin provisioning is in infancy, but I see a lot of hope for green storage. Green is indeed the color of the future.

tech-news