Specifications

ES/OL
Evaluator Series On-Line™
Storage Systems
Product Analysis
May, 2011
Page 29 of 30
Analysis of Fujitsu ETERNUS DX400 S2
Models DX410 and DX440
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EVALUATOR GROUP COMMENTS
The ETERNUS DX400 S2 product line is a solid offering by Fujitsu in the highly competitive midrange
storage market. The DX400 S2 series brings many features of the higher end ETERNUS DX8000 down
to the midrange, and also shares a common set of management, data protection and replication
software with the larger system. The ETERNUS SF Storage Cruiser provides a fully functional
management application for the midrange system, which is largely on par with its competitors.
Fujitsu has continued to enhance its platform and server based software features and interoperability.
The ETERNUS DX400 S2 is a good choice for enterprises deploying storage for several applications, or
workgroup storage consolidation system that provides a wide variety of data protection options and an
excellent warranty.
While the Fujitsu ETERNUS line is not known for being first to market with new features, they have
built their reputation offing well refined products that are both reliable and offer excellent price
performance value. The ETERNUS DX400 S2 continues this tradition, delivering one of the best
products in its class with the least amount of recognition. It easily competes with midrange systems
from EMC, Hitachi, IBM and NetApp, providing advantages over many of them in several cases.
Strengths:
The ETERNUS DX400 S2 products are well architected storage systems. The features offered are on
par with that of most major competitors, and add several industry leading features. The recent
addition of thin provisioning complement existing features such multiple RAID levels, including RAID6,
along with dynamic RAID migration. These features coupled with excellent performance, expandability
and a wide range of data protection options coupled with the industries best in class warranty provide
a compelling package.
The ECO Mode feature leverages the idea of spinning down inactive disks, an innovation known as
MAID, pioneered by Copan Systems. Fujitsu is one of the first vendors to embrace this idea and
incorporate it into their mainstream storage array products. Although the settings are cursory and
operate at the RAID group, the capability to selectively spin down drives is an advantage for many
deployment scenarios where near-line access capabilities are required, and power and cooling costs
are a concern.
The ETERNUS DX400 S2 line offers a wide variety of RAID configuration choices, including RAID6
which is often the best option for large capacity drives. Choice in configuration allows administrators
the ability to optimally match RAID configurations to their business use.
Data protection is a critical aspect of storage for large and small deployments. The wide variety of
controller based data protection options allow administrators and users to configure the system to
provide data protection that best matches their business needs.
The performance of the ETERNUS DX400 S2 is also excellent. The SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmark
results of previous generation systems placed it ahead of many of its competitor’s price –