Dell EMC World: Software-Defined Storage for Data Center Modernization From Dell EMC With PowerEdge 14th Gen Servers

Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies, announced new and enhanced software-defined storage (SDS) products that help customers modernize their data centers to lower IT costs, get quicker returns on their investments, and deliver new digital capabilities.

PowerEdge 14th generation servers

The SDS portfolio will be further enhanced through support for PowerEdge 14th generation servers, providing increased levels of performance and scalability across a spectrum of applications and workloads.

Updates to ScaleIO, ECS and IsilonSD Edge, along with the introduction of project Nautilus and expansion of the Ready Node portfolio, allow customers to harness the power of the company as they move from traditional to modern data centers.

These software-defined storage capabilities provide a choice of deployment models – what business needs to be able to grow and change. SDS makes the enterprise infrastructure programmable and, therefore, more automated and easier to scale and manage than traditional infrastructure.

The firm offers a portfolio of SDS solutions to provide the best fit for organizations based on business requirements, future plans, skill levels and geo-location challenges.

Portfolio enhancements include:

• ScaleIO.Next – The enterprise-grade software-defined block storage solution, ScaleIO will introduce new .Next features and enhancements.

  • Improved efficiencies by delivering inline compression, enhanced snapshots capabilities, granular thin provisioning and seamless volume migration.

  • Greater performance and reduced latency using the PowerEdge 14th generation servers with NVMe flash drives.

  • Simplified management for VMware with support for VMware Virtual Volumes.

• ECS updates – Multiple announcements related to the company’s scale-out object storage platform, which is designed to provide cloud-scale, global data access to traditional and next-gen apps.

  • Next, features enhanced enterprise data protection and management capabilities, as well as analytics support. Additionally, ECS software is certified to run on PowerEdge 14th generation servers.

  • The ECS Dedicated Cloud Service, enables customers to use ECS through a hybrid cloud model. As a dedicated, single tenant offering hosted in Virtustream datacenters, the ECS Dedicated Cloud Service combines private cloud control with the hands-off operations and agility of the public cloud.

• Preview of project Nautilus: The company previews a new software-defined solution for storing and analyzing high volumes of streaming IoT data. Project Nautilus enables businesses to make real-time decisions based on streaming device data from across the globe. Designed to work with ECS or Isilon as its resilient storage tier, Project Nautilus brings real-time data processing capabilities to the firm’s unstructured storage platforms.

Ready Nodes portfolio enhancements:

• VMware vSAN Ready Nodes – Now validated for PowerEdge 14th generation servers, these vSAN building blocks are quick and easy to scale and are pre-configured with the required amount of CPU, memory, network, iI/O controllers and storage to help customers reduce deployment risks and lower costs of their vSAN environments.

• ScaleIO Ready Nodes – Combines the power of ScaleIO software with pre-configured PowerEdge servers to deliver performance, scale and flexibility. These easy-to-deploy building blocks will utilize the PowerEdge 14th generation servers, including NVMe Drives and NVDIMM options. Software feature updates include simplified management with auto-discovery, streamlined provisioning and storage node-only deployment mode.

• Dell EMC Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodes – Pre-configured PowerEdge servers provide the storage density and compute power to maximize the benefits of Storage Spaces Direct and the advanced feature sets in Windows Server 2016. Windows Server Software Defined (WSSD) solutions use Microsoft-validated designs and follow engineering best practices for seamless deployment and a steady-state operational experience. The company gets customers up and running without lengthy design and build time and offers a single point of contact for implementation and support services.

• IsilonSD Edge enhancements – IsilonSD Edge can now be deployed on a single PowerEdge 14th generation server, bringing increased efficiency and a lower-cost entry point for smaller remote offices. The updates to the IsilonSD Edge platform also include support for vSphere version 6.5, as well as deployment using virtual storage platforms like ScaleIO and VMware vSAN.

Jeff Boudreau, president, storage, Dell EMC, said: “While software-defined everything is a critical piece of IT transformation, the reality is that we’re still early with regard to the ability of enterprises to consume software-only offerings. Offering SDS offerings for on-premises and the cloud, in a variety of deployment models including ready nodes, allows us to meet customers where they are today and take them where they need to be as they transform their IT and their businesses.“

Availability:

• Next and ScaleIO.Next have planned global availability in the second half of 2017.

• ECS Dedicated Cloud Service and IsilonSD Edge have planned global available in the second quarter of 2017.

• ScaleIO Ready Nodes and VMware vSAN Ready Nodes are available globally today and have planned availability on PowerEdge 14th generation servers in mid-2017.

• Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodes have planned global availability in June 2017 and planned global availability on PowerEdge 14th generation servers in mid-2017.

Resources:
Blog: Dell EMC Advances Data Center Grade Software-Defined Storage with ScaleIO.Next
Blog: Files, Objects … and Streams?