Dell and EMC Broaden Partnership, Introduce Low-Cost SAN

   Dell and EMC announced an expansion of their successful 3-year partnership by introducing the Dell/EMC AX100 storage array. Aimed at workgroups and small organizations, the AX100 is a direct-attached storage system that's Storage Area Network (SAN)-ready. Dell will also offer special editions of LEGATO Software's NetWorker and RepliStor products to provide customers with backup, recovery, and data replication. "The new system introduced today and the inclusion of LEGATO Software as part of the successful EMC/Dell relationship will enable a wider range of customers to better manage and protect their information. Now, even the smallest of enterprises have a simple, affordable way to deploy the world's leading networked storage infrastructure with the features, functions, and reliability found in data centers," said EMC president and CEO Joe Tucci.
   The Dell/EMC AX100 is a 2U (3.5") rack-mountable system that supports as many as 12 Serial ATA (SATA) drives and provides from 480GB to 3TB of storage capacity. The system includes bundled management software for automated failover, snapshot capabilities, provisioning, Brocade Communications Systems' SilkWorm 8-port 3250 switch, Qlogic QLA200 host bus adapters (HBAs), and support for Linux, Windows, and Novell NetWare. The system, which Dell will manufacture, starts at $4999 for direct-attached (SAN-ready) configurations and $9999 for SAN configurations.
   Dell will also offer LEGATO NetWorker Dell Edition and LEGATO RepliStor Dell Edition. LEGATO NetWorker Dell Edition is data backup and data recovery software. LEGATO RepliStor Dell Edition is an asynchronous, real-time data replication solution for Microsoft Windows data in LAN and WAN environments. LEGATO NetWorker Dell Edition is available now; LEGATO RepliStor Dell Edition will be available this summer. Both products will include 3 years of free upgrades.