Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

The much-anticipated EMC Symmetrix refresh could be announced on April 14 with the expected DMX-5 product code-named Tigon.

The DMX-4 is the current Symmetrix and it was introduced in the third quarter of 2007. EMC has scheduled a web cast event for April 14, and is inviting people to register for it and find out how they can migrate to the virtual data centre of the future under an Overtake The Future rubric.

"On April 14th, join EMC as we explore the evolution of the virtual data center, detail storage requirements for the next decade, and reveal new EMC capabilities that enable you to bridge the divide between physical and virtual environments. Talk one-on-one about the breakthroughs with the technologists who developed these new capabilities. Hear what the analysts are saying and get their perspective on requirements for storage and the data center of the next decade. Only one virtual event takes you there. 04.14.09. 10:00 Eastern Standard Time."

Additionally EMC says: "This virtual event will feature in-depth presentations by senior EMC executives and live interactions with EMC experts, customers, and industry analysts. Active participants will have the opportunity to win free registration passes and hotel accommodations to EMC World, May 18-21, 2009. The virtual event will be presented in English. On-demand access to this content will be available throughout April 14th and 15th."

Interested people can register for the event at this URL.

Stifel Nicolaus financial analyst Aaron Rakers has issued a note suggesting that this event is the DMX-5 launch and that the codename for the DMX-5 product is Tigon. EMC's Overtake The Future website URL is "http://www.emc.com/tigon-homepage-4-2.xml."

Clicking on this URL gets you this sparse text: "Overtake the Future The virtual data center of the future. Only one approach can take you there. See how. 04.14.09 Register for the virtual event now /overtakethefuture."

A tigon is an offspring of a male tiger and lioness, a hybrid. Apparently a number are being bred in China.

Drawing lines between these dots gets you to a DMX-5, a hybrid between physical and virtual storage, that has been designed to help users provide virtualised data centres featuring VMware data centre and server virtualisation software, Cisco UCS blade servers and switches, and Symmetrix DMX-5 arrays. No doubt other servers and switches/directors will be catered for as well.

It has been speculated that primary storage deduplication, derived from that used on the latest Celerra, may be a feature of the DMX-5.

EMC was not able to immediately respond to an inquiry about these matters. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth