Dell PowerMax Storage System Powered by Dual Port Intel Optane SSDs and NVMe-oF

Dell Technologies, Inc. is announcing updates to PowerMax, incorporating next-gen technologies to ensure performance for critical applications.

Since launching in 2018, PowerMax has helped high-end storage customers across all industries, including top-tier banks, cloud service providers and healthcare companies, support their  demanding applications where low latency is key and the highest resiliency is paramount.

Dell EMC is the leader of the high-end storage market according to IDC with a 43.9% share; nearly triple that of the next highest competitor. ⁽ⁱ⁾

PowerMax introduces dual port SCM SSDs as persistent storage
PowerMax is with dual port Intel Corp.‘s Optane SSDs and the use of Storage Class Memory (SCM) as persistent storage. The dual port Optane SSDs are the result of co-development between Dell and Intel and mark the innovation stemming from a decades-long partnership.

The company is also announcing that NVMe-oF is available for all PowerMax arrays, enabling end-to-end NVMe to deliver the performance and lower latency required by modern enterprise.

End-to-end NVMe on PowerMax is made possible by PowerMax 32Gb FC I/O modules, 32Gb Connectrix switches, directors and 32Gb NVMe host adapters with Dell EMC PowerPath multipathing software. The PowerPath, known for its resiliency and migration capabilities, is the first enterprise SAN multipathing software with full support for NVMe-oF. ⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

The combination of PowerMax’s scale-out, end-to-end NVMe architecture and this industry-first use of SCM provides customers with a faster, more efficient storage system that delivers these performance improvements:

• Up to 15 million IO/s ⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾

• Up to 350GB/sec bandwidth ^(iv)

• Up to 50% better response times ^(v)

• Sub-100µs read response times ^(vi)

PowerMax’s built-in ML engine leverages predictive analytics and pattern recognition to automatically place data on the correct media type (SCM or flash) based on its IO profile. It analyzes and forecasts 40 million data sets in real-time, driving 6 billion decisions per day (vii), resulting in time savings and performance at minimum cost.

PowerMax 2000

Streamline operations and speed application development
PowerMax allows customers to automate infrastructure operations and DevOps workflows. They can serve PowerMax storage for configuration management and application deployment, including containerized workloads.

And it’s automated infrastructure provisioning and management tasks enable customers’ IT operations with:

• VMware vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) plug-in, available on the VMware Solutions Exchange, allows customers to develop end-to-end automation routines including provisioning, data protection and host operations. Customers can also offer these automated routines as self-service catalog items on the VMware vRealize Automation platform.

• Pre-built Ansible modules allow customers to create Playbooks for storage provisioning, snapshots and data management workflows for consistent and automated operations. These modules are available on GitHub.

• Container Storage Interface (CSI) plug-in for PowerMax provisions and manages storage for workloads running on Kubernetes. The CSI plug-in, available on GitHub, extends PowerMax’s performance and data services to a growing number of applications built on a micro-services-based architecture.

Powermax 8000

Cloud flexibility with PowerMax
Customers can incorporate PowerMax into their multi-cloud strategies in different ways, all of which provideavailability, flexibility, security and performance with the agility of hybrid cloud operations.

The just-released Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for PowerMax helps organizations build their own hybrid cloud infrastructure while offering deployment flexibility for workloads that have external storage-specific requirements, including independent capacity scaling and features such as integrated data protection.

The storage arrays PowerMax and Unity XT are validated with VMware Cloud Foundation through FC as primary storage, within workload domains, in addition to existing support through NFS protocol.

Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services delivers Dell EMC Storage as a public cloud service for DR across AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, plus many multi-cloud use cases including analytics and test/dev. Cloud Storage Services are designed to save time on system management, provides enterprise-grade data security, performance, capacity, replication, and availability in public clouds.

Availability:

• PowerMax with NVMe-oF, dual port Optane SSDs will be available on September 16.

• Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for PowerMax, Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services and the plug-ins mentioned above are available.

“Dell EMC PowerMax is the crown jewel of our storage environment and PowerMax NVMe over FC with 32 Gig is certainly very exciting,” said Steve Kouvo, technology architect, core technology services, Boston Scientific Corp. “We have a true partnership with Dell. Like Boston Scientific, Dell EMC is always innovating. They care about our business and want us to succeed.“

“Since PowerMax’s NVMe is done right, we have eliminated the storage bottleneck and applications can reach their fullest potential,” said Bryan Peroutka, technical solutions architect, World Wide Technology, Inc. “We value the innovation Dell EMC continues to bring to the industry.“

“As the value of data increases and mission-critical apps demand more power and lower latency, IT professionals are struggling to balance performance and security while also transforming their IT operations,” said Scott Sinclair, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “These new updates to Dell EMC PowerMax’s deliver breakthrough performance by matching an accelerated, next-level protocol with accelerated, next-level persistent media, allowing customers to continue IT infrastructure modernization without compromise.“

Resource:
PowerMax webcast

⁽ⁱ⁾ IDC WW Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, 2019Q2, September 5, 2019 – Vendor Revenue.
⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ Based on Dell EMC internal analysis of PowerPath NVMe-oF versus competitive mainstream arrays, September 2019.
⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ Based on Dell EMC internal analysis of Random Read Hits Max IO/s (within a single array on 2 floor tiles) for the PowerMax 8000, July 2019. Actual performance will vary.
^(iv) Based on Dell EMC internal analysis of published bandwidth of Random Read Hits (64,000 IO/s) MaxGB/s (within a single array) for the PowerMax 8000, July 2019. Actual performance will vary.
^(v) Based on Dell internal testing using the Random Read Miss (8,000 IO/s) benchmark test in July 2019, comparing the PowerMax 8000 SCM against the VMAX 950F with SAS flash drives. Actual response times will vary.
^(vi) Based on Dell EMC internal analysis of PowerMax 8000 Random Read Hits (8,000 IO/s), July 2019.
^(vii) Based on Dell EMC internal analysis of PowerMax 2000/8000 with 200TB of capacity, July 2019.