Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY DEPLOYS EMC AUTOMATED NS

Taking full advantage of EMC's recently announced next-generation EMC CLARiiON storage systems, Case Western Reserve University is implementing an automated networked storage solution that will reduce the personnel requirements for managing its storage infrastructure from 20 to three and increase its overall storage utilization from roughly 20 to 80 percent. The integrated solution, consisting of a CLARiiON CX600 storage area network (SAN) and an EMC Celerra / CLARiiON CX600 network attached storage (NAS) solution, is managed from one central console using the EMC ControlCenter family of open management software.

Lev Gonick, Case Western Reserve University's Chief Information Officer, said, "Our networked storage solution from EMC dramatically lowers storage administration costs and provides significantly more reliable information access for Case Western's 16,000 university users, including students, researchers, professors, and administrative staff. Unifying our SAN and NAS infrastructures under EMC will provide better storage performance, efficiency and reliability than if we managed these environments separately. From a single computer screen, EMC's storage management software allows us to view and manage our entire information infrastructure, which integrates Case Western Reserve University's eight Schools."

The EMC infrastructure will provide centralized storage to Sun Solaris, Dell Windows NT and Linux servers running Case Western's core applications, such as email, calendars, course management, and research databases for genomics, bio-informatics, digital art repositories, advanced visualization, human resources, student information systems, and finance.

Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Case Western Reserve is working with EMC Global Services to design and implement its new SAN and NAS environment as well as create an infrastructure for offering storage-based managed services to other institutions. The university is utilizing the EMC ControlCenter family of open software products, including SAN Manager and StorageScope -- to automate various labor-intensive storage management tasks, such as storage allocation, provisioning and storage reporting.

"Our long-term goal is to offer managed storage services to the dozens of research, medical and cultural institutions that are affiliated with Case Western Reserve," said Gonick. "EMC Global Services' expertise in SAN, NAS and managed services is proving to be enormously valuable in this process."

The EMC Celerra File Server delivers unprecedented levels of availability, scalability, and performance to network file storage. As more companies utilize NAS for core business functions, Celerra's integration with CLARiiON combines the enterprise features that made Celerra the world's top enterprise NAS solution with the CLARiiON family's mid-tier price-point. According to Gartner Dataquest, EMC became the world's #1 supplier of NAS in 2001.

Gonick adds, "Prior to standardizing on the integrated EMC Celerra / CLARiiON CX600 networked storage platform, our information was distributed among numerous under-utilized, disconnected UNIX and Windows servers. Today, Case Western Reserve University has a centralized NAS solution designed to handle the diverse file sharing requirements of eight different Schools, ranging from genomic research collaboration to web-page design."

David Donatelli, EMC's executive vice president of Storage Platforms Operations, said, "Further blending key functionality and management between our mid-range and enterprise offerings, EMC is the only storage vendor today offering a truly unified family of automated networked storage products and software. Celerra's integration with CLARiiON affords more customers the ability to realize the benefits of enteprise-level NAS features."

Celerra integration with CLARiiON builds on EMC's growing portfolio of common functionality now available for both CLARiiON and Symmetrix systems. The extensive list of common software for both systems includes: PowerPath, Database Tuner, StorageScope, SAN Manager, and EMC Data Manager, and forthcoming support for Automated Resource Manager and EMC Replication Manager. As a result, the CLARiiON family of mid-tier storage systems now features the richest set of software functionality and highest level of NAS features of any mid-tier storage system.

EMC Corporation is a world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing the information infrastructure for a connected world. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

Contact: A.J. Ragosta, EMC, 508-293-6884, ragosta--aj@emc.com.