Today, as part of their “MegaLaunch”, EMC announced upgrades to the XtremIO all-Flash array. The upgrades include increases in capacity, number of active controllers, and performance.

Capacity

An XtremIO cluster is made up of building blocks called X-Bricks. In the older XtremIO, each X-Brick could have 10 to 20TB of capacity.

With the upgrade, XtremIO offers the option of a smaller starter X-Brick configured with only 5TB capacity. Additionally, the new XtremIO X-Bricks can be configured with up to 20TB each.

Configurations

The old XtremIO could be configured in clusters of 1, 2, or 4 X-Bricks.  The new XtremIO offeres more flexibility, offering clusters of 1, 2, 4, or 6 X-Bricks. The 6 X-Brick cluster has a total of 12 active controllers and can have up to 120TB of Flash capacity.

Data at Rest Encryption

The XtremIO upgrades add Data at Rest Encryption (D@RE). This feature will be available on the new X-Bricks, and on the older ones (with a software upgrade).

Inline Data Compression

XtremIO has always had inline data deduplication (based on 4K fixed blocks). The upgrade adds always-on inline compression. This further increases the effective capacity of an XtremIO cluster.

Writeable Snapshots

The XtremIO upgrade adds writeable snapshots. These snaps always reside in memory, allowing for nigh-instant creation (and deletion) of snapshots with no noticeable effect on performance.

Due to residing in memory, these writeable snapshots will have the same performance as standard XtremIO volumes.

Integration

The new XtremIO is fully-supported with EMC PowerPath, VPLEX, RecoverPoint, and ViPR SRM. XtremIO support for EMC ViPR is coming soon.

Availability

The new X-Bricks are due to start shipping in September.