EqualLogic iSCSI SAN With 10GbE

Dell introduced new infrastructure management, storage and networking solutions and services designed to help customers simplify, standardize and automate their datacenters.

Dell is delivering on its vision for the datacenter, which allows customers to create a flexible infrastructure that can be dynamically orchestrated. With 10GbE as the underlying fabric, along with integrated and heterogeneous infrastructure management tools, customers can change the economics of their datacenter by increasing performance while decreasing costs.

Customers who adopt an end-to-end 10GbE architecture can decrease networking acquisition costs by approximately 50 percent and cut up to 76 percent of their network costs. Businesses now can realize the benefits of an efficient unified fabric at lower technology acquisition prices and experience decreased overall management costs, making this technology more accessible than ever before.

In response to customer demands, Dell is bringing together an end-to-end solution of state-of-the-art servers, storage, networking, software and management tools to work together as one dynamically configurable entity that is open and pragmatic. The result is a fast-to-deploy and responsive infrastructure that helps businesses respond to customers’ and employees’ changing needs. Dell’s solution is a distinct alternative to the closed nature of competitors’ proprietary and vertically integrated stack.

“Our competitors are trying to take short cuts by providing proprietary stacks that create lock in and really only benefit the vendor,” said Praveen Asthana, vice president, Dell Enterprise Storage and Networking. “Dell has a completely different vision: we provide a dynamically configurable offering that is really easy to set up or use because it comes pre-assembled or ready for assembly based on proven reference architectures; yet it remains fully open and works with a customer’s existing infrastructure. This way we maintain customer choice and remain pragmatic.”

“Dell is taking a practical approach to developing its IT and data center solutions for large organizations,” said Matt Eastwood, Group Vice President of IDC’s Enterprise Platform Group. “Today’s new compute fabrics must be flexible – with modular components that are easily managed and that can adjust and change with the demands of the environment. Dell’s heritage and legacy of focusing on standards-based technologies is well-suited for these environments and can drive real returns for customers.”

New infrastructure management solutions include:

Advanced Infrastructure Manager
The Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager enables customers to dynamically allocate workloads in minutes by altering server, networking and storage devices without the need to re-cable, reconfigure or reload software. The new solution integrates seamlessly within existing, heterogeneous environments and supports both physical and virtual workloads. This allows IT administrators to deploy physical server images as quickly as they deploy virtual servers, to reduce the number of failover servers, and to respond to application demands by shifting work to new systems as needed.

Dell Business Ready Configurations
Dell Business Ready Configurations are solutions that bring together the latest server, storage and networking technologies in an easy-to-understand, easy-to-integrate and easy-to-buy manner. Each configuration comes with performance characterization, best practice and networking guides.

Dell unveiled its first Business Ready Configuration designed to radically shorten customers’ infrastructure deployment time. This BRC is powered by two PowerEdge M610 blade servers running the Infrastructure Manager, an EqualLogic PS6000 iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solution, two PowerConnect 6220M blade switches and a 24-port Brocade Foundry 424 or Dell PowerConnect 6224 networking switch. The Business Ready Configurations come in both a standard edition and a redundant edition.

Dell Lifecycle Controller version 1.3
Dell Lifecycle Controller is an embedded management solution available on 11th generation PowerEdge servers and is designed to facilitate deployment and maintenance. With the new version 1.3, server administrators can remotely discover servers on the network, update necessary drivers and deploy operating systems virtually anytime, anywhere. Replaced hardware peripherals, like network interface cards, are updated to the replaced part’s firmware automatically from the Lifecycle Controller. Integration with BMC BladeLogic Operations Manager or Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager means that administrators can take advantage of the full functionality of the Lifecycle Controller without having to leave their console of choice.

New 10GbE Efficient Unified Fabric solutions include:

Dell EqualLogic Arrays with 10GbE,
Dell EqualLogic PS6500X and Storage Consulting Services
Dell, a leader in iSCSI storage, estimates it has added more than 12,000 new EqualLogic customers since completing the acquisition in 2008. Dell is introducing 10GbE controllers to its EqualLogic PS6000 series storage arrays. The new EqualLogic PS6010 and PS6510 deliver up to ten times more bandwidth per port and up to two-and-a-half times more bandwidth per array than previous versions. The latest 10GbE EqualLogic arrays can provide a high level of performance for business applications such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL database applications, streaming video and bandwidth-intensive workloads.

EqualLogic PS6010/PS6510 series

Dell is also announcing the EqualLogic PS6500X and version 4.3 of the EqualLogic firmware that together significantly increase the capacity of the EqualLogic PS series of products. With this introduction, groups containing the EqualLogic PS6500X with 10K SAS drives can now scale to more than 460TB of capacity per group, up from 115.2TB per group previously. These enhancements also allow customers to now scale an EqualLogic architecture to 768TB per group with the EqualLogic PS6500E. When combined with the latest 10GbE controllers, the EqualLogic family of products delivers enterprise-class performance and scalability in a cost-effective manner.

Additionally, Dell has enhanced its existing Dell ProConsult Storage Consolidation services to offer customers a practical and results-oriented approach to help solve difficult storage challenges. This service helps customers understand the potential of consolidation, select and design the right technology components, integrate technologies and achieve the appropriate level of performance and data protection.

Dell PowerConnect 8024F Networking Switches
The new Dell PowerConnect 8024F is Dell’s first 1U 10 GbE switch. It features 24 ports with SFP+ and four combo 10GBase-T ports with full wire speed 10Gb capabilities across all ports. Designed for data center aggregation and network consolidation, the switches are ready for converged Ethernet environments and support dense virtualization deployments, iSCSI storage, such as the Dell EqualLogic family of products, and 10Gb traffic aggregation. The PowerConnect 8024F top-of-rack switch delivers enterprise-class reliability, energy efficiency, high availability and performance at a fraction of the cost of competing offerings.

QLogic Converged Network Adaptor (CNA)
and Mezzanine Card
for Dell PowerEdge Servers and Blade Servers
Dell is introducing the first Converged Network Adapter for Dell PowerEdge servers based on technology from QLogic. The dual port CNA allows users to connect their servers to Fibre Channel SANs through a 10Gb Enhanced Ethernet fabric because of the FCoE functionality. The QLogic CNA helps customers to dramatically consolidate server cabling and adapters, and allows the same physical infrastructure to be used for different types of network traffic while retaining connectivity with their existing storage infrastructures.

Dell PowerConnect-B Series Switches
Through its recently expanded relationship with Brocade, Dell will be delivering leadership and support for next-generation data center networking solutions include including Dell’s first FCoE switch, security, iSCSI and Converged Enhanced DCB Ethernet. The new offerings include networking products which will help provide customers with robust core switching capabilities and a comprehensive, end-to-end product portfolio to help them consolidate data center networking infrastructure while meeting the increasing performance demands of virtualized environments.

Availability:

• Advanced Infrastructure Manager is available immediately in the United States and Canada and is expected to be available to other countries in 2010.
• Dell Business Ready Configurations are expected to be available in the United States and Canada within a quarter of this release and are expected to be available in other countries in 2010.
• Dell Lifecycle Controller firmware version 1.3 is available immediately for download on www.dell.com
• Dell EqualLogic PS6500X is available immediately. The PS6010/PS6510 10GbE offerings are expected to be available globally on December 15, 2009 and January 15, 2010 respectively.
• Dell ProConsult Storage Consolidation services are available immediately.
• Dell PowerConnect 8024F is available immediately.
• QLogic 10GbE CNA and CNA mezzanine card for Dell PowerEdge Blades are expected to be available globally on December 29, 2009.
• Dell PowerConnect-B-RX, B-DCX and B-8000 series of networking products are expected to be available globally on February 15, 2010.