storage SAN

There is an ongoing debate about the merits and future of both iSCSI and Fibre Channel. The growth is in iSCSI, but there is a massive installed base of FC. We believe in unifying your fabric on Ethernet and moving to 10Gbit iSCSI over time as the most cost-effective and least complicated method for storage.

But what to do now? Many organizations have both FC and iSCSI and aren’t ready to commit to one or to throw away their current investments. Most manufacturers force you to choose one or the other, and then live with that decision for years.

Today we’re announcing the new Dell/EMC CX4 series arrays which can alleviate the burden of this decision and remove the uncertainty of the future thanks to their innovative modular I/O technology. It’s called UltraFlex – stay tuned to blog as we will dive deeper into this in upcoming posts.

With UltraFlex, you get two benefits:

· First, since all of these arrays come standard with both 1Gbit iSCSI and 4Gbit FC connectivity, you can consolidate storage on iSCSI for your stranded servers that don’t required FC performance or merit FC connectivity expense with your existing FC servers and infrastructure.

· Second, you are protected in the future thanks to open slots where you can seamlessly add more ports. This can be current technologies or it can be future ones like 10Gbit iSCSI and 8Gbit FC.

With Dell/EMC CX4 you get a storage device that is flexible and future-ready - giving you the choice to adapt your storage to your changing needs without having to start over or commit today.

iSCSI and Fibre Channel UltraFlex I/O modules on CX4-120

Front view of the CX4-960 including, from top to bottom, 3U DAE (disk array enclosure), 4U SPE (Storage Processor Enclosure) and 2U SPS (Standby Power Supply)

On Thursday last week, I attended the Dell Storage Vision Day press event. It was held at Chelsea Football Club, which luckily didn't seem to deter anyone from coming! Journalists attended from across Europe, including the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

We also had a fantastic line-up from the spokesperson side - first up to present was Robin Kuepers, head of storage, EMEA, and James Quarles, Director of Enterprise Solutions. They gave an overview of the EMEA storage landscape including the latest trends, which was brought to life by two customer presenters: Zafar Chaudry of Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust and Marcel Dumont of Schoolbank.nl, the second largest social networking site in the Netherlands.

Zafar's presentation focused on how the Trust is using a Dell/EMC storage solution to support server virtualization from VMware. Marcel then discussed how he has implemented a Dell EqualLogic storage infrastructure to support exponential data growth associated with the social networking craze. Although Zafar and Marcel are using different storage technologies, one thing was clear; they both turned to Dell to tackle two of the hottest IT trends today - virtualization and social networking - and they have already experienced significant benefits ranging from cost savings to a reduction in management time related to storage-specific issues.

Next up was Tony Lock, an industry analyst from Freeform Dynamics. Tony discussed current issues in the storage market with some strong survey data, giving the journalists a lot to think about before the coffee break!

The second part of the day was led by Praveen Asthana, Global Director of Storage and Networking, and John Joseph, Vice President, Dell EqualLogic Solutions. Both Praveen and John flew over from the US to share with the journalists Dell's current and future plans in storage. They both discussed Dell's commitment to deliver on the promise to Simplify IT - from offering a broad range of products for different types and sizes of customers and also including designed-to-order services for customers that need solutions for their unique requirements. The video below captures pieces of Praveen's and John's presentations.

Last but not least, we got to take a tour of Chelsea Football Club at the end of the day – loved seeing the press room where the managers hold press conferences at the end of each game, as well as sitting in the manager’s chair right on the sideline!