When is a midrange storage array not a midrange storage array? When it can break down the traditional definitions of storage arrays. Given the state of modern IT, it is time to do away with labels such as entry-level or midrange for storage technology. That is an antiquated way of classifying technologies. And the Dell Technologies PowerStore is an excellent case in point. At first glance, someone might think of the PowerStore as just another midrange array, but that would be a huge mistake.
The PowerStore architecture is far more powerful, scalable, and flexible than the term “midrange” would imply. With its new announcement this week, Dell Technologies is improving PowerStore even further in both capability and flexibility.
A couple notable pieces in the announcement include:
- The addition of support for NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe) technology.
- The introduction of the PowerStore 500.
FC-NVMe technology support is a huge addition and something every IT organization leveraging FC should be planning for and adopting. The NVMe protocol is designed to maximize the low-latency performance of flash storage, and FC-NVMe provides those performance benefits over the fabric all the way to the application. Much of the interconnect technology, the HBAs, and the switches out there already support FC-NVMe, so chances are your environment already has support. Multiple flavors of Linux, including Red Hat and VMware, support FC-NVMe connectivity. So, you might be able to take advantage of the performance benefits immediately with your existing infrastructure. That is a huge win.
And on a side note, I have heard some in the tech media question whether organizations need high-performance, low-latency data access in smaller storage environments. And I want to address this quickly. The benefits of low-latency, high-performance data access range from incredibly valuable to absolutely critical for every application environment regardless of the storage capacity requirement. No knowledge worker or consumer of IT services ever said, “Man, I sure wish this application ran slower.” Faster access to data accelerates business operations. And Dell PowerStore is making NVMe performance even more cost effective with the introduction of the PowerStore 500.
Even in this “smaller” form factor, the PowerStore 500 is incredibly scalable both in capacity and performance. The PowerStore 500 supports NVMe/SCM storage and FC-NVMe performance and can scale to an effective capacity (with 4:1 data reduction) of 1.2Pb per 2U array and 4.8PB per cluster. If you want to scale even higher, PowerStore 500 can mix and match with the “higher-end” PowerStore models for a larger PowerStore environment. So with PowerStore, having multiple models available, such as the 500, the 1000, the 3000, etc., provides deployment flexibility without creating storage silos.
In modern IT environments, data is everywhere. It is created everywhere (the edge, the core data center, and the cloud), it is leveraged everywhere, and it needs low-latency speeds everywhere. Small and slow does not cut it anymore in a world where every business is a digital business. Businesses need high performance data access everywhere, they need flexibility in how they deploy it, and flexibility in how it scales once deployed. PowerStore delivers that performance and that flexibility.
Whether your organization’s storage requirements are small or large, check out what Dell Technologies is doing with PowerStore. It’s impressive stuff.
