Networked storage systems to be available for less than $10,000 EMC today announced enhancements to its entry-level Clariion CX200 line of networked storage systems, that will see entry-level pricing drop to the $10,000 range.When it was launched last November, the CX200 was available only in dual-controller configurations, and had a list price of roughly $30,000, said EMC Senior Director of Clariion Mike Wytenus. As of Monday, he said, single-controller CX200 systems also will be available. “That allows us to get much more aggressive from a pricing perspective,” he added.A $10,000 CX200 would contain about 100GB of storage, Wytenus said. The CX200’s total storage capacity will also get a boost because the systems will now support ATA (AT Attachment) drives, said Wytenus. Previously the CX200 could store a maximum of 4.4T bytes of data, using Fibre Channel drives. Because of the ATA support, however, the maximum capacity of the storage systems will now be 6T bytes, he said.The systems will be faster, capable of 40,000 I/Os per second, which is 60 percent faster than their predecessors, said Wytenus and they will also feature an upgrade to Clariion’s software, that will let customers do their own upgrades to the CX200’s operating system or applications without having to depend on an EMC-certified representative. “What we’re offering is the ability for customers to do it themselves,” said Wytenus.In other storage news on Monday, Veritas Software released an upgrade to its Bare Metal Restore automated recovery software. The new version 4.6 of Bare Metal Restore will include a feature called “dissimilar system restore” that will speed up the task of moving a computer’s system image and data to another machine.“What this feature does is it allows you to restore a server to a different type of hardware base in a Windows environment,” said Veritas Senior Director of Product Marketing Bob Maness.Dissimilar system restore could be used by an administrator who was, for example, running Windows on a Dell system and wanted to move the entire system over to a Gateway machine. Working with another Veritas product, Veritas NetBackup, Bare Metal Restore would then perform a “comprehensive configuration and discovery process,” to automatically get the system up and running on the new hardware, said Maness. Bare Metal Restore 4.6 will be available in mid-June, said Veritas, and will cost $900 per Windows client and $1,000 per Unix client. It will be available as a free upgrade to current 4.5 customers, Veritas said.