EMC announces what it claims is the first open enterprise data service platform with VMAX3, a product family featuring embedded cloud access capabilities courtesy of new acquisition TwinStrata.

According to EMC the VMAX3 platform provides means to control where to best run specific workloads (either data centre or public cloud), allowing customers to manage their Storage-as-a-Service through predictable service levels at hyper cloud scale.

It is based on the Hypermax OS converged hypervisor/OS and Dynamic Virtual Matrix architecture, and comes in purpose-built scalable hybrid systems-- the 100K, 200K and 400K-- handling up to 384 processing cores.

EMC claims VMAX3 provides 3X faster performance and 50% lower costs over the previous VMAX generation.

Dell launches the Storage SC4020 array-- a first product in the SC4000 enterprise storage series acting as something of a a bridge between the company's EqualLogic and higher-end Compellent families.

Nicknamed the "Baby Compellent", the SC4020 is described as a scaled-down Compellent SC8000 storage array. It is a 2U, 24-drive storage area network (SAN) scaling up to 120 HDDs with over 400TB capacity and bandwidth reaching around 120000 IOPS, and features intelligent data placement capabilities.

Customers can also configure it as an all-flash or hybrid array, and Dell adds customers can use it as a replication partner for Compellent SC8000 arrays complete with a single centralised management interface.

Violin Memory adds enterprise data services software for the Concerto 7000 all flash array, including synchronous and asynchronous replication and stretch metro cluster capabilities.

Further additions include storage snapshots, thin provisioning, LUN and capacity expansion, advanced data protection and storage scaling.

Customers can also configure a number of critical software elements, including continuous data protection, WAN optimised replication and in-flight encryption, on a LUN-by-LUN basis for tailing to specific deployment and data centre requirements.

NetApp launches a pair of unified storage systems aiming at the high- and mid-tier markets-- the "extreme-performance" FAS8080 EX and the entry level FAS2500 storage array.

The FAS8080 EX beats the FAS6290 and FAS6250 as most high-end NetApp storage solution, with performance scaling up to 4 million IOPS with nearly 70PB of capacity and over 600 I/O connections.

Aimed at large enterprise customers including telcos, it is also available in an all-flash option with up to 4.6PB capacity or as a hybrid array with a 0.5PB flash cache.