Dell Broadens Storage Portfolio

Dell, Inc. announced several new storage offerings designed to help businesses and organizations cost-effectively adapt and scale their datacenters to keep pace with ever-increasing IT demands.

Dell’s future-ready approach to IT solutions development continues to address both current and new methods for managing the massive growth of data with the announcement of a new entry-level array series, higher performing dense storage arrays, enhanced software capabilities and new SDS appliances.

“Dell continues to redefine the economics of enterprise storage, offering customers of all sizes world class storage solutions that remove complexity, lower cost and deliver impressive long-term value,” said Alan Atkinson, VP and GM, Dell storage. “The new Dell Storage SCv2000 Series brings the proven performance and protection of our Dell SC Series arrays to an entry-level offering with best-in-class value at a very disruptive price. Overall, our new solutions offer customers innovative technologies to efficiently improve and simplify storage management with both current and new IT approaches.“

New Dell SC Series Arrays Unveiled to Bring
High Performance and Protection to Entry-Level Storage

Dell Storage SCv2000

With the introduction of the Storage SCv2000 Series, the company offers customers entry-level storage arrays with the same common management and several of the core features as higher-end SC Series arrays. The SCv2000 Series offers the best performance and protection in its class (1) with integrated data protection to support specialized projects, database and test environments, or simple storage consolidation. Extending Dell Storage Center software to entry-level arrays allows customers to standardize on a common platform, helping them save time, management costs and operational overhead.

The customer-inspired SCv2000 Series exemplifies the Dell storage strategy to expand customer access to higher-end storage capabilities.

Starting at $14,000 per array, the series launches with three models supported
by three expansion options and offers customers:

• Performance at an affordable price – The arrays deliver best-in-class performance in a single, affordable 2U enclosure. (2) Options include data protection features, RAID tiering to optimize capacity, thin provisioning, flash support, data-migration services, and multi-protocol connectivity. Customers can help safeguard their data with granular data protection that allows up to 2,000 snapshots and 500 replications.
• Integrated data protection – The arrays offer integrated features such as Remote Instant Replay, Local Instant Replays and Replay Manager along with RAID tiering that optimizes SAN capacity. Integration with common application environments, such as Microsoft and VMware, help to simplify virtualized data centers, allowing local and remote data protection features to take consistent snapshots of VMs without sacrificing performance.
• Future flexibility with Storage Center – Customers can gain more value from existing investments with data migration to higher-tier Storage SC4000 and SC8000 Series arrays. The SCv2000 Series supports future growth as the arrays can be managed with the same, single user interface as other SC Series arrays. Customers can scale capacity when needed with the benefit of no capacity licensing and choose from a range of HDDs and SSDs, configured for a variety of applications.

New Storage PS Series Arrays for Large Data Repositories
Offers 3.5x Capacity and up to 7x Performance Improvements
The new Storage PS6610 Series enterprise arrays offer the ultimate in high-performance and high-capacity for Dell’s mid-market, iSCSI-based arrays. The new dual-controller arrays include substantial improvements times the capacity (3) and up to 7 times the performance4-compared to the previous generation EqualLogic PS6510 arrays to help customers store more data and access it more quickly.

The PS6610 Series arrays, offering hybrid flash and HDD drive configurations, support critical business applications and are for customers with large data repository requirements. They combine the power of 10GbE and dense storage, offering the ability to support half a petabyte of capacity in a 5U array. With improved density, memory and performance, the arrays require less space to support customers’ growing data requirements.

The new arrays support a range of customers, particularly those requiring high-performing, high-capacity and scalable storage to expand an existing EqualLogic/PS Series SAN, replace an existing storage infrastructure or deploy a new one. The PS6610 appeals to organizations seeking advanced storage features in a dense array that is easy to manage and is optimized for workload consolidation, such as ERP applications, email storage and SQL databases, and for archival storage to support large data repositories such as those required for medical records, financial data and video surveillance.

The arrays ship with EqualLogic PS Series Array Software 8.0, also announced, which provides new space-saving features, such as compression of snapshots and replicas. The software supports virtual environments with vSphere Virtual Volumes integration that allows arrays to be managed on a VM basis instead of per volume or LUN. Existing customers with a valid support contract can download the latest software at no additional cost.

Dell Expands Software-Defined Storage Portfolio
with New Microsoft Storage Spaces Solution
Dell also announced Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces, new, tested and validated solutions, designed to support Microsoft’s SDS capabilities on Dell’s enterprise server and DAS hardware. These solutions share the same level of validation rigor and complement the work Dell completed with Microsoft to deliver the Cloud Platform System. The new Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) solutions, available in five configurations, support customers seeking an SDS and virtualized storage approach to various workloads, including private cloud deployments, VDI, and SQL and Hyper-V environments.

Dell’s solution support includes performance and capacity sizing, end-to-end fulfillment, deployment and on-going system support. The new solution allows customers to start small and scale to more than one petabyte of raw storage as their business needs grow. Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces joins a broad portfolio of SDS solutions based on relationships between Dell and SDS vendors.

Availability:

• The Storage SCv2000 Series arrays are available.
• The Storage PS6610 Series arrays and EqualLogic PS Series Array Software 8.0 will be available in early Q3.
• Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces has planned global availability this June.

“The Storage SCv2000 array perfectly balances our performance and capacity requirements with our cost restraints to support our log data, and it’s also part of the broader Dell Storage SC Series portfolio with additional offerings to meet our other storage needs,” said Benjamin O’Connor, storage system engineer, TripAdvisor LLC. “Being able to leverage a single storage family and the same management interface across our entire storage environment is a huge benefit.“

“The Dell Storage PS6610 array is a work of art with a beautiful design,” said Alan Hunt, director of network operations, Dickinson Wright PLLC, a law firm with several U.S. offices. “The new capacity improvements mean a lot more data in less space, which is great for keeping pace with growing storage demands. The design makes it much easier to install and simplify ongoing maintenance by not having to deal with cable management issues.”

“The compression feature in EqualLogic PS Series Array Software 8 will have the biggest impact on our business,” said John Dembishack, senior systems engineer, Flagship Networks, Inc. “In our test environment, we saw an overall compression ratio of 41%, and as high as 50% on some individual volumes. This means huge savings on storage capacity and associated costs for our clients.”

(1) Based on February 2015 competitive review and Dell performance testing the SCv2000 FC array. Actual performance will vary on the workload and drive type.

(2) Based on February 2015 competitive review and Dell performance testing the SCv2000 FC array with 24 write intensive SSDs using IOmeter with 8KB random reads. Actual performance will vary on the workload and drive type.

(3) Based on internal Dell analysis of total capacity in March 2015 comparing PS6610 arrays to PS6510 arrays.