Dell broadens storage portfolio

Dell has introduced several storage offerings designed to help businesses and organisations cost-effectively adapt and scale their data centres 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, vice president and general manager, 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
With the introduction of the Dell Storage SCv2000 Series, Dell offers customers entry-level storage arrays with the same common management and several of the core features as higher-end Dell SC Series arrays. The new SCv2000 Series offers the best performance and protection in its class1 with integrated data protection to support specialised projects, database and test environments, or simple storage consolidation. Extending Dell Storage Centre software to entry-level arrays allows customers to standardise on a common platform, helping them save time, management costs and operational overhead.

The customer-inspired Dell Storage SCv2000 Series exemplifies the Dell Storage strategy to expand customer access to higher-end storage capabilities. Starting at approximately $14,000 (US) per array, the new series launches with three models supported by three expansion options and offers customers:

· High performance at an affordable price - The arrays deliver best-in-class performance in a single, affordable 2U enclosure.2 Feature-rich options include proven data protection features, RAID tiering to optimise 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 optimises SAN capacity. Tight integration with common application environments, such as Microsoft and VMware, help to simplify virtualized data centres, allowing local and remote data protection features to take consistent snapshots of virtual machines without sacrificing performance.

· Future flexibility with Storage Centre – Customers can gain more value from existing investments with data migration to higher-tier Dell Storage SC4000 and SC8000 Series arrays. The SCv2000 Series supports today’s needs and 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 broad range of hard drives and SSDs, configured for a variety of applications.

New Dell Storage PS Series Arrays for Large Data Repositories Offers 3.5x Capacity and up to 7x Performance Improvements
The new Dell 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—3.5 times the capacity3 and up to 7 times the performance4—compared to the previous generation Dell EqualLogic PS6510 arrays to help customers store more data and access it more quickly.

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

The new arrays support a wide 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 organisations seeking advanced storage features in a dense array that is easy to manage and is optimised 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 Dell EqualLogic PS Series Array Software 8.0, also announced today, which provides new space-saving features, such as compression of snapshots and replicas. The new software further supports virtual environments with advanced VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes integration that allows arrays to be managed on a virtual machine (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 today announced Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces, new, tested and validated solutions, designed to support Microsoft’s SDS capabilities on Dell’s enterprise-class server and direct attached storage hardware. These solutions share the same high level of validation rigour 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, virtual desktop infrastructure (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 the industry’s broadest portfolio of SDS solutions based on key relationships between Dell and leading industry SDS vendors.