The storage maker has announced updates to its Clariion line of hardware

EMC on Monday announced updated storage hardware with greater capacity and data access speed along with better connections to networked systems.

As expected, the company on Monday updated its Clariion CX and Symmetrix DMX storage systems and launched a gateway that will allow companies to connect different kinds of storage networks. Like other storage systems, EMC's pool data across large arrays of hard disk drives.

Much of EMC's emphasis of late has been on software, which the company bolstered through a series of acquisitions. The new hardware, however, makes good on a promise the company made earlier this year to add new products in order to boost its revenue growth in 2004.

EMC added the Symmetrix DMX-2, which offers more performance thanks to faster processors and larger caches. The system can also now be ordered with 73GB, 15,000 revolution per minute Fibre Channel interface hard drives, which promise higher performance for more demanding jobs. Together, the improvements offer up to a two-fold increase in performance over EMC's Symmetrix DMX, the company said.

EMC also updated the Clariion CX line with new models that replace each of its three existing systems and offer performance increases of between 25 percent and 100 percent and capacities of between 13.4 terabytes and 58.4 terabytes.

The Clariion CX300, which replaces the CX200, can handle up to 60 drives and offers 25 percent greater performance, EMC said in a statement.

The company also added a new Clariion CX500, which can house up to 120 drives and replaces its Clariion CX400 system, and the 240-drive-capable CX700, which replaces its CX600. The Clariion CX line can also now be ordered with the 73GB, 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel interface hard drives, EMC said.

EMC also released a network-attached storage (NAS) gateway, the Celerra NS700G NAS Gateway, which can link NAS systems with storage-area networks (SANs). While NAS systems allow for easy file sharing, SANs tend to offer greater data storage capacity. The gateways allow companies to combine the systems for best performance.

EMC also announced several software updates, as software becomes more important as companies look to get more out of their storage systems.

The company said that its EMC Symmetrix, Symmetrix DMX, Clariion and Clariion CX systems can be used with a wider range of software applications. The systems can be managed with software applications that adhere to Storage Networking Industry Association's Storage Management Initiative Specification. The measure applies to Symmetrix systems manufactured since 1997 and Clariion systems produced since 2000. The systems are in the final stages of validation testing, EMC said in a statement.

Finally, EMC also updated its Centera content addressed storage systems.

PC hardware maker Dell on Monday said it would update its Clariion hardware to reflect the changes. The PC maker sells the Clariion line under the Dell/EMC brand under a special agreement with EMC.

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