Storage giant EMC will launch new hardware, featuring SCSI attached storage (SAS) drives for the first time today. The Clariion AX4 system will replace the AX150 and CX300 models, and will be available with either gigabit iSCSI or 4Gbit/s fibre channel (FC) connectivity.

EMC designed the AX4 specifically to extend key VMware Infrastructure capabilities. EMC's European commercial sales director Pete Yarwood said, " While VMware is important to most firms, small and medium sized businesses are the ones who would consolidate servers and their direct attached storage (DAS) at the same time, possibly more so than large enterprises who labs tested VMware a long time ago."

Yarwood pointed out that two to three years ago the average disk size was around 73GB and firms' data storage requirements were increasing at about 70 per cent per annum, "This the first time disk capacity increases have been bigger than firms' storage requirements," he added.

The launch comes on the back of EMC's $85m acquisition of document output management (DOM) vendor Document Sciences.

The AX4 will have a mix of SAS and serial ATA (SATA) disks, up to a maximum capacity of 60 terabytes. Prices start from £4,340 + VAT, with iSCSI connectivity and 3GB of SATA storage.