Dell Announces EqualLogic Blade Arrays

Dell today announced new storage arrays for blade servers, expanding its EqualLogic line to include Blade Arrays that fit inside a Dell PowerEdge blade chassis.  Dell will also offer a Dell Converged Blade Data Center solution that combines the new EqualLogic blade arrays with Dell PowerEdge  M420 blade servers and Dell Force10 MXL switches. Dell says the pre-tested and certified Dell Converged Blade Data Center solution will provide a dense, end-to-end, 10GbE data center within a single Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis. The announcements were made at the second annual U.S. Dell Storage Forum customer and partner event in Boston.

"Dell is redrawing the lines among servers, storage, networking and management to offer customers technology convergence that provides simplicity and improved performance while reducing the operational costs associated with running today’s data centers," said Brad Anderson, president of Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. "Our holistic approach helps customers cost-effectively manage the physical, virtual and cloud environments that deliver flexible IT services to support their business goals."

The EqualLogic blade array will be offered in four difference configurations, with the ability to store up to 14 terabytes of data per array, up to 28 terabytes per group inside a blade chassis, and up to 56 terabytes with two groups inside one blade chassis. The arrays can scale outside the server chassis to more than two petabytes of storage in a single group. Advanced data protection, such as snapshots, clones and replicas, and advanced integration with Microsoft, VMware and Linux platforms wrapped into every solution. The arrays will support multi-generational EqualLogic systems, allowing them to work with existing SAN arrays.

Dell is also releasing new EqualLogic software that tightly integrate SANs with hosts and applications. With an all-inclusive software licensing model, EqualLogic storage systems include all supporting software applications and tools without additional fees. New software releases include:

“Dell’s ability to seamlessly converge servers, storage and networking provides the substantial value of data center simplicity for IT organizations and their businesses,” said Laura DuBois, program vice president at IDC. “Dell’s growing end-to-end capabilities put the company in a compelling position to truly help customers reduce the complexity of IT and provide bottom line savings through reduction in space, power and operational management.”