Dell EMC PowerStore for Storage Infrastructure Performance and Flexibility

Dell Technologies, Inc. announces PowerStore, an infrastructure platform built with superior technology and expertise to address the challenges of the data era.

“Customers tell us a main obstacle keeping them from achieving their digital transformation initiatives is the constant tug-of-war between supporting the ever-increasing number of workloads – from traditional IT applications to data analytics  – and the reality of cost constraints, limitations and complexity of their existing IT infrastructure.” said Dan Inbar, president and GM, storage. “Dell EMC PowerStore blends automation, next generation technology, and a novel software architecture to deliver infrastructure that helps organizations address these needs.”

Infrastructure for data era
Organizations can accelerate decision making, data access and application performance with PowerStore, which is designed for 99.9999% availability ^[2]:

• Any workload: It simplifies IT infrastructure by supporting a range of traditional and workloads with its scale-up, scale-out architecture for block, file and VMware vVols.
• Performance optimized: it is 7x faster ^[3] and 3x more responsive than previous the company’s mid-range storage arrays ^[4], because of its end-to-end NVMe design and support for Storage Class Memory as persistent storage powered by dual port Optane SSDs.
• Efficiency: Customers can save on IT budget and capacity with always-on deduplication, compression and a guaranteed 4:1 data reduction ^[5].

ML and intelligent automation allows for faster delivery of applications and services with up to 99% less staff time to balance volumes ^[6]

• Programmable infrastructure: Streamlines application development and reduces deployment timeframes from days to seconds ^[7], with VMware, Inc.’s integration and support formanagement and orchestration frameworks including Kubernetes, Ansible and VMware vRealize Orchestrator.
• Autonomous infrastructure: Built-in machine learning automates labor-intensive processes like initial volume placement, migrations, load balancing and issue resolution.
• Infrastructure Insights: The firm’s CloudIQ storage monitoring and analytics software combines ML and human intelligence for real-time performance and capacity analysis and historical tracking for a single view of the company’s infrastructure. The firm will integrate CloudIQ across the Dell Technologies infrastructure portfolio for greater insights.

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PowerStore transforms data center operations and allows organizations
to evolve infrastructure in lockstep with everchanging business needs:

• Container-based architecture: PowerStoreOS, the system’s container-based software architecture, enables feature portability, standardization and rapid time-to-market for new capabilities.
• Introducing AppsON:  The purpose-built storage array that includes a built-in VMware ESXi Hypervisor ^[8],  administrators can deploy apps directly on the array for flexibility. It is for data-intensive workloads in core or edge locations and infrastructure applications.
• Ease of migration: Native tools within the PowerStore Manager wizard allow customers to automate entire migrations in fewer than 10 clicks ^[9]. Customers can take advantage of a number of non-disruptive options to migrate from existing storage like Unity, SC, PS Series, VNX and XtremIO.
• Dell Technologies On Demand (DTOD): With DTOD, PowerStore customers can respond to workload spikes and new service requests with elastic capacity and cloud economics. Organizations can choose between 2 flexible pay-per-use consumption models with short-and-long term commitment options, including a new 1-year term for flexible consumption. Global support, deployment and managed services can be included to help simplify IT infrastructure management.

Future-proof program adds anytime upgrades
PowerStore is covered by the the company’s Future-Proof Program, which provides choice, predictability and investment protection through new Anytime Upgrades, a flexible controller upgrade program ^[10].

Unlike other controller upgrade programs, customers can expand or enhance their PowerStore performance and capacity after 180 days ^[11]. The combination of Anytime Upgrades and PowerStore’s adaptable architecture effectively ends disruptive platform migrations.

Cloud flexibility with PowerStore
Customers can deploy PowerStore in the way that best meets their cloud strategy and business needs:

• The Cloud Validated Designs for PowerStore for deployment flexibility of demanding workloads in hybrid cloud environments.
• The Cloud Storage Services can directly connect PowerStore to all major public clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure and Google Cloud as a managed service. Cloud Storage Services provide DRaaS to VMware Cloud on AWS.
• PowerStore can be deployed as a storage option within PowerOne autonomous infrastructure, which accelerates an organization’s shift to cloud-like operations.

Availability:

• PowerStore is available.
• PowerStore will be available as an option for PowerOne autonomous infrastructure this summer.

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Steven Kuovo, technology architect, core technology service group, Boston Scientific Corp., said: “Dell EMC PowerStore’s unique architecture and intelligent automation helps us ensure our resources are being used as efficiently as possible while also making sure we’re prepared to scale compute and storage as we need it. We’re excited at the potential that Dell EMC PowerStore has to transform our IT infrastructure.”

Heather Hitchcock, chief commercialization officer, Medical Informatics Corp. (MIC), said: “At Medical Informatics Corp. (MIC), scale and flexibility are critical to the success of our clinical surveillance and analytics solutions. Dell EMC PowerStore’s innovative AppsON capability gives us compute and enterprise-class storage in one system, simplifying our infrastructure while reducing our overall storage footprint. It’s a critical feature as we’re helping hospitals rapidly expand bed capacity and creating flexible, scalable remote monitoring of data across connected devices. Now our healthcare providers have the data they need to intervene faster and provide quality care from any location.”

Eric Burgener, research VP, infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group, IDC, said: “As organizations modernize their IT infrastructure, they must embrace technology that streamlines operations, eliminates complexity and can scale in the face of exponential data growth. By developing Dell EMC PowerStore through an infrastructure-centric lens, the company has created a platform that can tackle today’s IT challenges while being flexible and scalable enough to meet future IT needs.”

DeMond Sullivan, CTO, Cumberland Group, said: “Dell EMC PowerStore’s unprecedented design, automation and flexibility are game changers for external and midrange storage architectures.This new platform represents a massive opportunity for us in a key segment of storage and we look forward to our customers seeing it firsthand.”

Resources:
PowerStore technical documents and videos
Blog: Inside Dell EMC PowerStore: AppsON Delivers Groundbreaking Application Flexibility and Mobility
Blog: The Business Value of Dell Technologies On Demand for Storage
Blog: Dell EMC CloudIQ: Enabling Faster Time to Insight
Blog: Future Proof Your Dell EMC PowerStore Investment with Anytime Upgrades

⁽¹⁾ IDC WW Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, 2019Q4, March 12, 2020 – Vendor Revenue.
⁽²⁾ Based on the Dell Technologies specification for Dell EMC PowerStore, April 2020. Actual system availability may vary.
⁽³⁾ Based on Dell analysis comparing PowerStore 9000 4x cluster to Unity XT 880 running 70/30 random read/write mix, 8K block size with compression and deduplication active, March 2020. Actual performance will vary based on configurations and usage and manufacturing variability.
⁽⁴⁾ Based on Dell analysis comparing latency with PowerStore 9000 vs. Unity XT 880 at 300K IOPS, 8K random, 70/30 read/write mix, compression and deduplication active, March 2020. Actual results will vary.
⁽⁵⁾ 4:1 average rate guaranteed across customer applications. Rates for individual applications may vary. See Future-Proof program terms and conditions for details. ⁽⁶⁾ Based on Dell analysis of staff time required to maintain balanced PowerStore cluster vs. traditional multi-array deployment, March 2020. Factors in effort required to monitor, plan, define and execute volume migrations. Actual results will vary.
⁽⁷⁾ Based on Dell analysis of effort required to deploy workloads with and without Ansible and vRO orchestration integrations, March 2020. Factors in effort required to monitor, plan, define and execute volume migrations. Actual results will vary.
⁽⁸⁾ Based on Dell analysis of publicly available information on current solutions from mainstream storage vendors, April 2020. ESXi Hypervisor is available with PowerStore X models.
⁽⁹⁾ Based on Dell internal analysis of minimum effort required to execute non-disruptive migration of volume group using PowerStore’s built-in migration tools for Unity, SC Series, PS Series and VNX arrays, March 2020. Actual results will vary. XtremIO support for built-in migration tools has planned availability later this year.
⁽¹⁰⁾ Based on Dell analysis, April 2020, using publicly available data to compare the highest available program/subscription offers for controller upgrades. Requires purchase of minimum 3-year ProSupport Plus with Anytime Upgrade Select or Standard add-on option at point of sale to qualify.
⁽¹¹⁾  Upgrade available after 180 days. Requires purchase of minimum 3-year ProSupport Plus with Anytime Upgrade Select or Standard add-on option at point of sale to qualify.