The DMX at heart is a high performance high availability storage controller, allowing users to consolidate storage under a single set of advanced storage administrative functions that have been continually enriched over the years. A wide range of disk drive density options allows a good set of choices between cost and performance. For customer with established processes and procedures for running large, complex, tier-one applications, the DMX platform continues to offer solid performance and functionality.
Recently EMC has been pushing the concept of “tiered storage within a box” on the DMX. The DMX has the ability to have a very large number of drives (2,400) under a single controller, a good set of software to dynamically move storage, and EMC has pushed the environmental savings of consolidating other tiers on the DMX.
There are two key questions to ask in considering this:
- “Is it cost effective to dedicate a DMX for tier two or tier three applications?”
- The answer is that for most tier three applications and many tier two applications there are alternative solutions from EMC and others at lower hardware and environmental costs; although the storage management functionality is lower on these alternatives, it is adequate.
- ”Is it cost effective to use marginal costing to fill up a DMX with tier two or three storage?”
- The answer is that a good case can be made for some tier two storage, but alternative storage solutions will make more sense for tier three.
Action Item: The DMX is an outstanding platform for tier one and some tier two applications, and users expect to pay higher prices for higher controller performance and functionality. However, users will usually achieve lower storage and environmental costs for separate tier two and tier three storage pools. EMC is well positioned to provide such solutions from its broad range of storage offerings and unless users have sound business reasons to tier within the DMX they should consider alernative platforms both within and outside of EMC's line.
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