EMC and Sun Microsystems Monday released updated and new systems designed for the growing content-addressable storage market.

EMC has updated its Centera CAS (content-addressed storage) system by tripling its capacity, added the capability to replicate to multiple restore sites, and increased storage options on the product. Sun has added a new product to its lineup, the StorEdge 5310 Compliance Archiving System, which can scale to 179TB.

The upgrade to Centera is designed to make the product even more flexible and useful to corporate users, said Sean Lanagan, director of product management and emerging products at EMC. "We've seen a great deal of interest in this product and this product space. These new features mean businesses can develop applications for specific departments that won't impact the rest of the users," he said.

For instance, IT managers can set up virtual storage pools allocated to either departments or applications in a business. These virtual pools can be searched using EMC's Centera Seek software, Lanagan said. An additional chargeback component means an IT department can pass along the storage costs to the departments using the system.

EMC also updated the Centera's CentraStar management software to offer virtual pooling of storage and also to allow for replication of its virtual pools of storage to multiple sites.

A 4.4TB version of the Centera starts at US$148,000.

Sun's new StorEdge 5310 CAS is based on a NAS appliance Sun acquired in its purchase of Procom Technology. The StorEdge 5310 can be configured using either Serial ATA disk drives or Fibre Channel drives and can scale to 179TB. The system is designed for server consolidation, archiving, and compliance applications, according to Sun officials. Pricing begins at US$73,995 for a 2TB Fibre Channel version and US$81,995 for a 6TB SATA configuration.