The provider of storage and data security solutions, EMC has unveiled a new line of its flagship Symmetrix high-end storage products. The Hopkinton, Massachusetts based EMC has introduced Symmetrix V-Max product line, based on a new building-block-type design, Virtual Matrix Architecture.

EMC has claimed that the Symmetrix V-Max and V-Max SE storage products are capable of supporting small to larger scale data centers, from hundreds of thousands of virtual machines. These storage products can scale from a relatively small 2PB starter system, to support hundreds of petabytes, thousands of virtual servers, and millions of IOPS.

According to the marketing vice president of EMC, Barbara Robidoux, the new Symmetrix V-Max product is "the single biggest innovation for the storage industry in years". It is the first storage architecture that “combines the performance and efficiency of a scale-up architecture and the cost-effective flexibility of a scale-out architecture”.

Robidoux has said that the new Symmetrix V-Max product line has not been rolled out to replae the current DMX-4 (Direct Matrix Architecture) Symmetrix, rather it will co-exist with DMX-4. Robidoux has explained that the V-Max engine is basic building block of the Virtual Matrix Architecture. The V-Max engine includes all the necessary disk and I/O ports along with multiple quad-core Intel processors, up to 128GB of memory and EMC's Engenuity storage operating system.

According to Robidoux, "What is interesting is that the Virtual Matrix Architecture lets the arrays link together however you want them. It potentially gives storage managers the flexibility they need to make one single giant array, or two or three separate smaller beasts.”

According to EMC, the Symmetrix V-Max product line is designed specifically for the world of mass data centers and server virtualization, where there is too much storage workloads and server workloads, and where storage workloads must adapt to fast-changing cycles. It has also been developed for private cloud systems where scale and speed of storage is very important. Released on 14 April, the Symmetrix V-Max product line is immediately available.