NEC Strengthens Lineup of Energy Saving SAN Products

NEC Strengthens Lineup of Energy Saving SAN Products - Cloud support reinforced with accelerated processing and enhanced virtualization -


M300 Disk Array (2.5-inch drive model)

M300 Disk Array (2.5-inch drive model)

M300 Disk Array (3.5-inch drive model)

M300 Disk Array (3.5-inch drive model)

M500 Disk Array

M500 Disk Array

Tokyo, October 20, 2011 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) announced today the sales launch in Japan of the "M300 Disk Array" and the "M500 Disk Array," two new additions to the "NEC Storage M Series" of storage area network (SAN) products that save energy and support virtualization. NEC also aims to roll out these products in markets that include North America, South America, Asia and Europe.

These new products are based on NEC's "common platform" concept where components are shared with server products, including CPUs and power supplies, to enable horizontal use of technologies that were cultivated through server development, to save power and to improve performance.

Operability and reliability were also improved through the advancement of internal storage virtualization, making these products ideal for mission-critical enterprise system storage and private cloud computing storage.

Key features of the M300 Disk Array and M500 Disk Array are as follows:

1) As much as 50% more power savings and 4 times the processing performance of existing products

  • Both of these new products are positioned higher than the "M100 Disk Array," recipient of the Chairman's Award from the "Green IT AWARDS 2011" (*1) sponsored by the Green IT Promotion Council. Adoption of the 80 PLUS PLATINUM (M500, *2) and the 80 PLUS GOLD (M300) power units and power control technologies enable these new products to save as much as 50% (*3) more power than existing models.

  • Operations were realized in a 40°C environment and power consumption was significantly reduced thanks to optimized placement of internal components, enabled by original designs, and control over the number of times cooling fans rotate.

  • As much as 4 times (*3) the performance of existing models realized through the adoption of high-performance CPUs, the acceleration of internal buses, the adoption of high-speed-processing RAID accelerators with multiple input-output (I/O) processing and the multiplexing of internal storage processing.

2) Strengthened support for virtualization

VMware's "VMware vSphere(TM)" virtualization platform improves system performance by offloading to these new products some of the specific storage functions that formerly took place on the server, which enables support for the "VAAI" (*4) application programming interface (API) for disk arrays. This strengthens the ability to link to virtualization software in addition to improving the system performance and operability of virtualization environments.

3) Improved performance and reliability utilizing SSD

  • In order to handle such issues as performance degradation from hot-spots (*5) that arise from connecting to multiple virtual servers, solid-state-drives (SSD) (*6) can perform as a secondary cache instead of using costly cache memory. This is enabled by using "PerforCache" software (optional).

    These new products utilize the SSD to minimize the performance degradation that arises when a controller failure occurs and to ensure that data is not lost. This is accomplished with protective persistent write functions (*7) and newly installed functions that capitalize on SSD to improve the reliability and flexibility for customers' performance change requirements.

  • The new products utilize SSD to optimize management costs and to automatically transfer data to the most appropriate device according to data access frequency and data characteristics (optimal data deployment) by using "PerforOptimizer" software (optional).

NEC will exhibit these new products at the "C&C User Forum & iEXPO 2011" from 10 to 11 November at the Tokyo International Forum (Yurakucho).
URL: http://www.nec.co.jp/uf-iexpo/e/

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Notes
*1)

Prize awarded to a product that is recognized for its contribution to energy conservation and selected from all IT products shipped domestically in Japan in 2011.

*2)

The power supply unit of the M500 controller is 80 PLUS PLATINUM, the power supply unit of the disk enclosure is 80 PLUS GOLD.

*3)

NEC measurements when comparing the current "D4 Disk Array" to the new "M300 Disk Array" as well as the current "D8 Disk Array (1 node)" to the new "M500 Disk Array.

*4)

VAAI: vStorage API for Array Integration. A linking API that offloads specific storage functions to storage hardware.

*5)

A phenomenon that significantly worsens the performance of an entire system by concentrating multiple I/O into some spots of a storage system.

*6)

Solid State Drive: Drive equipment that utilizes flash memory as a storage medium.

*7)

A function where upper applications can continue to write operations by duplicating and continuously maintaining write data with SSD.



About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at  http://www.nec.com.

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