Fujitsu embiggens Eternus

In a revamp of its Eternus drive arrays, Fujitsu has come out with the second generation – the S2 versions – of its twin controller DX60, DX80, and DX90 entry-level drive arrays, as well as its DX400 mid-range array.

The DX60 and DX90 originated as Fujitsu Siemens Computer SX60 and SX80 arrays, which were rebranded and extended once Fujitsu DX90 was introduced in February 2010.

The main differences between the ETERNUS DX S1 and DX S2 generations are:

• Internal link to drives is 6Mbit/s SAS instead of the initial 3Mbit/s sec SAS
• The cache is 3x larger on DX400
• Support for FCoE and 10Gbit/s Ethernet has been added
• There is now upgradeability from the DX80/90 to the DX400, and, in the first quarter of 2012, to the DX8000
• Thin provisioning has been added
• Auto tiering will come in the fourth quarter.

The upgrade path means customers can start with as few as a dozen disks and, from 2012's first quarter, grow to 2,700. Both thin provisioning and auto-tiering should be a bonus for customers. There are no details yet about the size of the data blocks or chunks that will be moved between SSD and HDD tiers when the auto-tiering features delivered.

Fujitsu has a few SPC-1 benchmark results for the first generation DX (S1) products and says "New SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmarks show significant performance and throughput increases, varying from 15 per cent better to 140 per cent better."

We don't know the configurations of the tested S2 systems. There are no new Fujitsu results posted on the SPC-1 and SPC-2 results pages, which suggests that Fujitsu means its own testing has revealed the S2 systems' improvements over the S1 systems.

The S2 product builds, Fujitsu says, on existing strengths:

• Integrated encryption capability as standard
• Ecomode (MAID) functionality as standard
• Mix and match of different device types (SSD, SAS, SATA) within a chassis as standard
• Support for 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch disks
• The DataSafe data protection features like RAID, snapshots, and redundant componentry.

A canned quote from Kazuhiro Igarashi, the president of Fujitsu Ltd's Storage Systems Unit, said the "Eternus DX S2 disc storage systems provide a flexible solution for all usage scenarios in small, large, traditional and cloud-based environments and deliver the highest levels of data safety". ®