The CLARiiON family of disk arrays are EMCs mid-range storage solution.

Originally designed by the Data General corp, CLARiiON disk arrays were rapidly adoped in the midrange market segment. Partially due to their strategy of allowing third parties to rebadge the systems and sell them under their respective company names, and the fact that CLARiiONs employed numerous new features that have since seen industry-wide adoption.

Hot-swap functionality, dual controllers, hot rebuild and numerous mechanical features are among the innovations that were developed in the CLARiiON line. While hot-swap drives and enclosures have been available in the consumer segment for some time, the solutions were relatively expensive. Now with the introduction and standardization of SATA drives and controllers the availability of this functionality has shifted from the hardcore enthusiast willing to pay a premium for SCSI drives, controllers and backplanes to being within the reach of everyday user. 

Data General would take a risk by introducing their CLARiiON FC (Fibre Channel) line in 1997. While the standard was not yet set in stone, the performance increase provided by the Fibre interface was too great to overlook. The move offered almost two times the performance of existing SCSI based disk arrays.

In 1999 EMC purchased Data General outright for $1.1B (USD). Since EMCs acquisition of DG, the CLARiiON line rapidly expanded and currently has offerings from the SMB market to the upper mid-range segment. It is also worth noting that much of Dells enterprise storage is rebranded EMC equipment.

EMC CLARiiON homepage