News

posted on 14 March 2008 09:15

EMC has doubled the number of objects a Centera 500GB or 750GB disk can store to 25 million. It has also improved Centera management flexibilty and its self-healing capabilities.

These improvements are linked to the latest version of the EMC-sponsored IDC Digital Universe report.

Centera is a CAS (content-addressable store) system in which files are stored as hashed objects and accessed through proprietary APIs. It is the leading product in the CAS market with over 4,500 customers and more than 230 petabytes of capacity shipped since its introduction in 2002.

EMC has upgraded the Centera operating software, CentraStar, to version 4.0 and it is available as a free upgrade. With this release the self-management and healing capabilities of Centera systems are up to 25 percent faster than previous versions.

This version includes a new capability that enables administrators to segregate, configure and separately manage application, management and replication traffic for a better mix of performance and protection. Administrators also have additional system logging and auditing capabilities; including the ability to custom-configure password complexity rules for enhanced security.

The object count increase per disk is not related directly to disk capacity. EMC says it will help Centera to better store the billions of e-mails large enterprises are now accumulating.  

John Worrall, VP and GM for RSA's Information and Event Management Group, offered this thought: "This doubling of object count is very helpful to our enVision application users because while each security-related log record they archive is only 500 bytes on average, the sheer quantity of log records that customers collect is in the millions and even billions per day. While archival of this data is essential to security compliance needs, the growth rate in archived data is much faster than customers expected."

Arun Taneja, the founder and consulting analyst at the Taneja Group, added a commentary on this: "The biggest source of problems comes not from storing and managing large objects but rather from a large number of the tiniest objects you find in today's environment. Examples abound: instant messages; RFID codes; text messages; small audio and video files; etc. EMC continues to evolve the capabilities of Centera to help keep up with this type of information growth and continues to build in automated capabilities that that help customers manage more archived information without adding additional resources. I am aware of one situation where multiple petabytes are being managed by one administrator."

[Phil Robson, news editor.]