Data Storage Stress? 3 Options for EMC Customers

Storage magazine says that enterprises surveyed will add 55 TB of storage in 2011. With a growing amount of data storage options and ever-increasing need for more capacity, choosing the correct EMC disk drives for your storage array can be more challenging than you think.
With solid-state, Fibre Channel and SATA options, which EMC drives are best for your performance needs?
EMC Fibre Channel Drives:
EMC Fibre channel drives are excellent data storage for higher performance environments, demanding applications, and I/O hungry applications. EMC Fibre Channel drives offer fast performance, block storage, and the reliability you need to get the job done.

• According to Storage magazine, Fibre Channel drives account for 54% of all installed disks, ahead of both SATA and SAS drives.
• 55% of enterprises surveyed use Fibre Channel disk drives for their highest tier data storage.

EMC offers a wide variety of Fibre Channel hard drives to fit every business solution. From EMC’s 73GB up to 600GB of storage, EMC drives are designed to meet varying speed and performance levels. With disk speed of up to 15,000 RPM, EMC Fibre Channel drives are capable of managing your high performance data demands.
EMC SATA Drives:
Different from EMC Fibre Channel drives, EMC Serial ATA (SATA) drives are better suited for second tier applications and data. SATA drives are excellent for tiered storage as they are larger and less expensive than Fibre Channel drives.

• SATA accounts for 11% of all installed disks, according to Storage magazine.
• 38% of companies surveyed in Storage magazine said they plan to add SATA drives to their storage environment this year.

Although EMC SATA drives tend to be slower, they can also be more energy-efficient that the fast-spinning EMC Fibre Channel Drives. EMC offers SATA drives that scale up to 2TB of storage capacity, providing a perfect balance of large-capacity storage and reliability.
EMC Solid-State Drives (SSD):
Solid-state drives are a relatively new hardware, first admitted to the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA) in 2009. The technology is impressive; SSDs promote the fastest performance available, low energy consumption, and no spinning parts. Although currently out of many enterprise budgets, SSD prices are expected to drop to a more competitive level.

• Currently, solid-state drives (SSDs) only make up 2% of all installed disks of Storage magazine survey respondents.

For the most high-performance environments, EMC has developed several EMC VNX arrays that will accommodate all EMC solid-state disk drives. The EMC VNX 5500 and VNX 7500 are both equipped with more solid-state drive options to increase performance by up to 50%.
Whether you are searching for larger capacity or improved performance, EMC disk drives and solid-state drives are available in a variety of options to meet the needs of every enterprise.