Dell Updates Storage and Systems for the Enterprise

At the Dell Enterprise Forum EMEA 2014 last week in Frankfurt, Dell introduced new storage and systems management solutions designed to speed application response times, strengthen the ties among data center technologies and simplify IT operations.

“IT leaders are facing the challenge of balancing costs with the need to provide bleeding-edge IT services to ensure businesses do not risk losing customers, revenue or productivity. The fact of the matter is handling an increased traffic of any kind puts strain on a data center – and many solutions currently in the market only address parts of the problem,” said Marius Haas, chief commercial officer and president, Enterprise Solutions, Dell. “By leveraging organic and inorganic intellectual property, Dell is accelerating the delivery of its enterprise vision and providing businesses with a unique workload acceleration solution that helps increase agility and be more responsive to their customers.”

Storage and Fluid Cache for SAN

Dell Fluid Cache for SAN helps organizations speed up access to data by pooling and utilizing Dell PCI Express Flash drives for low-latency data caching inside traditional servers. The solution has achieved 5 million random read input/output per second (IOPS), and Dell lab tests also revealed improved database average response times capable of 99 percent while allowing a more than six-fold increase in the number of concurrent users.

Moving the frequently accessed data closer to compute resources enables numerous advantages. It can deliver results faster, boost transactional performance and reduce response times. It can enhance flexibility by expanding database and virtualization performance scalability on demand with a SAN-based solution that allows for the addition of drives and nodes to be added to an active cache pool as needed.

"Dell Fluid Cache for SAN is an ideal solution for customers that have high IOPS and high performance needs,” said Peter Lonis, solution consultant, LeaseWeb. “The time needed for tasks like running database queries and deploying virtual machines is dramatically lower in this environment, which would allow our customers to work faster and grow their infrastructures more quickly.”

New Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.5 array software extends the performance and tiering advancements of previous Storage Center release s while offering new enterprise features for customers. Storage Center 6.5 supports the ability to achieve, in one SAN, both impressive flash performance and super dense, low cost capacity storage that is enhanced with new block level compression. New enhanced security features self-encrypting drives (SEDs), which offer a highly secure solution for organizations pursuing data privacy or maintaining regulatory compliance requirements, such as those in finance, legal and healthcare industries. New new synchronous Live Volume capability lets customers restore data non-disruptively, keeping applications running during unplanned outages without the need to remap server configurations.

Systems Management

Dell has enhanced its systems management portfolio with new features that automate IT operations and improve efficiency, availability and reliability. Included in the portfolio are OpenManage Essentials and mobile, and iDRAC with Lifecycle controller. Essentials 1.3 is built for monitoring enterprise-class hardware, and now features data center protection through integration with Dell AppAssure for scheduled system backups of server data, operating systems, applications, files and databases, as well as discovery and monitoring of Dell SonicWALL security appliances.

Dell also has enhanced its full suite of Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools software that enables efficient data protection and simplifies management of Dell EqualLogic storage arrays through tight integration with VMware, Microsoft and Linux server virtualization platforms and applications. The new generation of EqualLogic software, available for the new EqualLogic PS6210 Series and other PS Series arrays, offers improved and simplified SAN performance, streamlined management, and improved administrator efficiency to provide customers with a storage environment finely tuned for virtual computing environments.