EMC Debuts Greenplum Unified Analytics Appliance for Big Data

Pedro Hernandez

Updated · Jan 31, 2013

EMC is throwing down the analytics gauntlet and claiming a Big Data first in the process.

The data storage giant unveiled its new Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (DCA) Unified Analytics Platform Edition, a Big Data analytics solution that brings Greenplum’s massively parallel processing (MMP) database technology and its Hadoop distribution into a single appliance. Not only is Greenplum DCA the first of its kind, according to EMC, it’s a high performance, cost-savings combination aimed squarely at the company’s rivals in the Big Data market.

“This greatly expands the analytics capabilities and solution flexibility for enterprises at a fraction of the total cost of ownership of competitive products from Oracle, IBM, HP or Teradata,” said EMC in a statement.

The platform is 70 percent faster at data loading and scanning than the previous generation, claims EMC. Concurrent query workloads are twice as fast.

EMC acquired Greenplum during the summer of 2010 to stake a claim in the burgeoning field of Big Data-driven business intelligence. Greenplum distinguished itself at the time with “shared-nothing” massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture that employed a virtualized x86 infrastructure to power its analytical engine.

Today, the technology underpins a flexible and scalable analytics platform that can plow through Big Data workloads, according to Josh Klahr, EMC Greenplum’s vice president of products.

“Enterprises looking to make strategic investments in a Big Data platform need to consider the breadth of capabilities required of a complete solution—high speed data ingestion, support for structured and unstructured data, interfaces for data scientists as well as business intelligence users, and the ability to scale horizontally as data volumes grow,” said Klahr in a company statement. “Customers can take advantage of the new DCA to increase the performance of Greenplum Database for best-in-class SQL processing and data loading, and also leverage the innovative capabilities of Greenplum’s Hadoop distribution (GPHD).”

As a data storage company, EMC also worked to include data protection and high-availability features.

Integrated DCA with the company’s Data Domain deduplication storage systems enables backup and recovery of Greenplum Database modules at transfer rates of up to 13 terabytes per hour. Additionally, it supports wide-area replication services for disaster recovery.

DCA protects Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) data with support for triple-redundant storage on direct-attached devices. EMC Isilon support enables HDFS backups, snapshots, mirroring, recovery and replication capabilities.

EMC Greenplum DCA is available now.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Pedro Hernandez
Pedro Hernandez

Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.

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