Storage

Earlier this week, Dell held launch events to unveil the company's Efficient Enterprise Computing Portfolio and there has been widespread coverage of the news here, here and here.

In addition to the conversation I had earlier this week with Don Mann, Dell's VP and General Manager of the Global Services business, one of my colleagues took some time with Dell's Paul Kaeley, the global practice leader for storage, to talk more specifically about the new services offerings launched for EqualLogic storage.

And if you happened to miss the live webcast, we've archived it for you here.

Today is an exciting day for Dell and our customers and partners. At events around the world, we’re unveiling a series of new innovative products and services squarely addressing our customer’s needs; breakthrough technology designed to help maximize their most valuable resources: people, time and money. We talk a lot about simplifying IT at Dell and today we’re giving our customers two new storage options that take performance and management to new levels, the Dell EqualLogic PS6000 and Dell NX4.

The EqualLogic PS6000 series is the latest release from our industry-leading iSCSI-based product line. The PS6000 hardware and software, which are a part of Dell’s broad storage portfolio that includes the PowerVault and Dell|EMC product lines, help enterprises easily enhance existing installations or get started with SAN implementation. The PS6000 is available in five models, including the PS6000S, which features EqualLogic’s first solid-state disk (SSD) array. This release also includes support for RAID 6, and a redesigned controller including a fourth GbEport per controller. But we didn’t stop there.

An important but often times overlooked aspect of the EqualLogic arrays is the fact that they are a hardware and software solution – and the software is one of the primary reasons why the product has been so favorably received by customers and partners.

With respect to improvements to the software layer of the PS6000, we are adding Microsoft Hyper-V Smart Copy snapshot support in the EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition. This gives customers the ability to recover Hyper-V virtual machines in as little as seconds, saving them time and man-hours previously required to restore virtual machines. This is in addition to the support for VMware and Citrix environments that we currently have.

We’ve also made significant software enhancements that all PS Series customers can download and use as part of Dell’s all-inclusive software suite. SAN Headquarters, an intuitive management interface, gives customers the ability to manage up to 10 petabytes of storage from a single console. Think of it as a flight instrument panel that allows System Admins to oversee their entire EqualLogic deployment, monitor for hot spots, and optimize their deployment. One of the areas that I’m particularly proud of is the fact that the EqualLogic series continues its philosophy of offering all software upgrades and enhancements free of charge to customer’s current on support.

In addition to all the product advancements, we’re also offering new Dell ProConsult and Dell ProSupport services to customers to help them plan, deploy and support their EqualLogic storage environments.

As if an entirely new series of EqualLogic products wasn’t enough, today Dell is making the Dell NX4 available to customers around the globe. As we announced last December, the Dell NX4 is a network-attached storage (NAS) product that supports Windows, Linux and Unix file data and helps consolidate disparate storage systems by offering connectivity to NAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel solutions. This product release demonstrates the two companies continued commitment to their long-standing partnership.

It’s a good day for Dell storage.

Dell continues to listen to you, our customers, and work to address your needs. On the storage front, we heard your desire for a flexible and powerful file storage solution. As we discussed in December, Dell was expanding its Dell|EMC portfolio with the introduction of the Dell NX4.

Well, we did it -- the Dell NX4 can meets your needs for a multi-protocol, feature-rich NAS solution offering storage benefits for both central and remote office implementations. Customers that want high performance NFS capability or consolidated protocols including iSCSI, NAS, and FC will benefit from the NX4 which builds upon Dell’s already strong storage portfolio that offers solutions from SMB to enterprise.

The Dell NX4 is optimized for file sharing in NFS and Windows environments, delivering great performance and availability, as well as many advanced features. This is key for organizations with mixed Windows, Linux and Unix file environments looking for higher availability and functionality than what can be accomplished with traditional file servers. Additionally, the Dell NX4 offers a number of advanced capabilities including:

-- Snapshot comes standard with the NX4 allowing for not only consistent backups but also providing a method for end users to restore their own deleted files, saving IT administrators time and money

-- Celerra Replicator is an option for NX4 users to replicate to a local or remote system providing additional data protection capabilities and enabling multi-site data protection, decision support and content distribution

-- NDMP backup capability comes standard with the NX4 and offers the flexibility to fit easily into your existing back-up environment.

-- File level data deduplication and compression also comes standard with the Dell NX4 and has shown to save up to 40 percent of your storage space.

-- Virtual provisioning helps enables seamless storage expansion and comes standard on the Dell NX4

-- Optional file level retention (WORM) capabilities help ensure data preservation and integrity where compliance is a chief concern.

I've covered each of these at a very high level but if you're highly-technical, click here for a whitepaper on the Advanced File Sharing and Management capabilities discussed above.

Because providing continuous access to data is one of the primary needs of any enterprise level storage device, the Dell NX4 is designed to deliver up to five nine availability. With hot-pluggable components and high-availability with transparent fail-over the NX4 brings no-compromise availability for your data.

Additionally, the Dell NX4 supports both file and application data via iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity, making this an ideal remote office solution for a Dell/EMC central office deployment. With a single, unified storage solution, you can optimize the administrative costs at the remote location, and because it’s Dell/EMC, the NX4 can communicate seamlessly with other Dell/EMC storage devices in the central office. This capability improves efficiency for backup and archiving and offers disaster recovery for your remote office environment.

Finally, the Dell NX4 provides a cost-effective solution during a time of economic challenges for many IT budgets by providing a compelling price/performance story when you are looking to get the most out of every IT dollar. So if you are looking for a cost effective, robust, multiprotocol file solution or a remote office option to complement your Dell/EMC central office architecture, consider the Dell NX4, and please keep telling us what we can do to help you meet your storage challenges.

If you're more of a visual learner, my colleague Scott Sinclair outlines much of this in the video below.

Have you seen the latest?  Storage Magazine ranked Dell the #1 midrange array provider in service and reliability.  With our acquisition of EqualLogic, we turned last-year’s 9^th place ranking into a #1 ranking in product reliability and initial product quality.  Hopefully, you didn’t miss Dell’s other recent achievement where Gartner recognized Dell as a leader in Midrange Disk Arrays for their Magic Quadrant 2008.

Dell has made a tradition out of listening to you, our customers.  In turn, you’ve rewarded us with your support.  We’re excited to be plugged in, so we can keep building storage solutions you want.

Thanks for all of your feedback.

Yesterday, HP announced a refresh to their EVA storage line, which sounds new to those who haven’t been following the evolution of storage solutions over the last few years. For those in the business, it is seen for what it is: an attempt to catch up to what Dell and others have been doing for some time now. It is an attempt because, while the “new” EVA arrays have added some additional features – some that Dell has had for almost three years – they are still noticeably missing many that customers are looking for to help solve their storage problems and simplify their IT.

Catch up:

• 4Gbit back-end – Dell/EMC has 2 generations and almost 3 years of experience with end-to-end FC4 support;
• Support for flash drives – Dell/EMC arrays have supported for more than 6 months;
• Support for RAID 6 – Dell/EMC added RAID 6 support on CX3 arrays – the previous generation.

Still not there:

• Increased capacity, ports and cache that doesn’t approach the levels available on Dell/EMC arrays: 960 drives, 32 ports, 32GB cache;
• No ability to add additional ports or new network technologies like FC8 and 10Gbit iSCSI to an existing array;
• No native support for iSCSI – only through an expensive FC-to-iSCSI bridge;
• No data-in-place upgrades from previous generations of arrays;
• No native thin-provisioning ability like what is available on Dell/EMC and Dell EqualLogic arrays;
• No support for low-power SATA;
• No announced support for drive spin down. 

In today’s environment, features that save money or extend a product’s useful life are essential. Dell includes them because we listen to customers who tell us how they need to extend the life of their storage, consolidate it on intelligent SAN platforms and manage it more easily as their businesses grow and evolve. This is revolutionary and dynamic. We have been consistent in our approach since the beginning that we will continue to drive customer-centric innovation and make storage simple, capable and affordable. In the dynamic data center, Dell’s storage products will continue to help our customers grow.

We’ll also look forward to giving HP more targets to shoot for as they plan out their next generation of storage products a few years from now.