Dell EMC: Supporting your Digital Transformation journey

Digital Transformation (DX) is high on most corporate agendas. And rightly so. To help businesses on their DX journey, Dell EMC introduced its PowerStore family of clustered storage systems in 2020.
PowerStore systems offer high-end performance, availability, scalability, and functionality, starting at mid-range price points and incorporating sought-after new technologies like native Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), scale-out architecture and software-defined infrastructure designs. PowerStore is a uniquely capable unified storage system that is scalable to over 4 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) and almost 11PB of storage capacity. It can be deployed in either a disaggregated or hypervisor mode. Leading industry experts have shortlisted PowerStore as one of the top solutions for enterprise organisations seeking the right storage infrastructure for their DX journey. At SCC, our Dell Technologies experts break down 8 ways that Dell Technologies and PowerStore can revolutionise performance, scalability, manageability, and agility and also IT infrastructure efficiencies.

1. Leading technology that’s affordable

The PowerStore 500 leverages Intel Scalable Xeon processors as well as QuickAssist technology to provide exceptional performance and data efficiency for a variety of applications. With a 4:1 data reduction ratio delivered by the Dell Technologies Future-Proof program you get affordable all-flash storage performance. Behind the cost-effective design of the PowerStore appliance is all the great technology that users have come to expect, including end-to-end NVMe with flash and Intel Optane SSDs, enterprise data protection capabilities and scale-out expandability for future application needs.

2. Software-defined architecture

The PowerStore 500 appliance is built on a container-based software architecture that provides unique capabilities for delivering and integrating advanced system capabilities. The modularity of containers enables feature portability, standardisation and rapid time-to-market for new capabilities and enables maximum deployment flexibility. In addition to new modules developed specifically for PowerStore, proven applications and features from Dell Technologies portfolio of cross-platform solutions, including AppSync, SRM and Data Protection Suite, can be integrated directly into the PowerStore operating environment.

3. Intelligent automation

PowerStore streamlines application development and automates storage workflows through integration with a broad ecosystem of leading DevOps and open management frameworks. It supports comprehensive integration with VMware management and its operational features including vSphere storage management and provisioning, VAAI, VASA and native vVols support. In the burgeoning areas on containerisation and DevOps, PowerStore users can take advantage of plug-ins including those for CSI, Kubernetes, Ansible and vRealize Operations.

4. Autonomous operation

PowerStore uses intelligent data placement to improve system utilisation and performance through the balanced provisioning of new appliance storage volumes, while the machine learning engine continuously monitors the cluster and recommends actions for re-balancing of cluster resources, identifying and automating the changes required to maintain optimal efficiency.

5. Powering the cloud

PowerStore customers can easily integrate their on-premises infrastructure into hybrid cloud solutions environments while maintaining operational consistency. For VMware customers, VMware Cloud on AWS delivers a seamless hybrid cloud by extending their on-premises vSphere environment to the AWS Cloud and delivering PowerStore block and file services for VCF deployments.

6. Scale up and out for flexible growth

The PowerStore 500T supports individual drive scaling up to 25 drives per appliance to address flexible capacity growth and resource balancing, while advanced clustering technology enables PowerStore 500T to scale system processing power up to a total of four PowerStore T appliances. With this balanced approach to storage scalability, the traditional strength of mid-range storage, delivering cost-effective scaleup capacity, is matched with the ability to scale performance. With intelligent resource balancing, PowerStore can automatically balance storage and workloads to maximise system utility.

7. Predictive analytics and proactive monitoring

CloudIQ is a native cloud-based storage analytics application that’s included at no cost with PowerStore appliances. It provides comprehensive monitoring of system health, performance, capacity, configurations, and on-array protection metrics. It combines these metrics with machine learning and predictive analytic measurements to improve capacity planning and fix problems before they disrupt business. CloudIQ creates a comprehensive and proactive health score per array to ensure that each PowerStore appliance provides the optimal foundation for running business data with the highest availability.

8. Future-proof with anytime upgrades

Dell stands behind every Dell EMC PowerStore system with the Future-Proof Program, including a 4:1 Data Reduction guarantee as well as Anytime Upgrade, the industry’s most flexible controller upgrade program. Anytime Upgrade provides data-in-place upgrades to the next-generation of appliances, the next generation plus a higher model, or a scale-out of existing environments with a second system equal to the first. PowerStore nodes can be replaced non-disruptively while preserving existing drives and expansion enclosures, without requiring new licensing or additional purchases. With PowerStore, infrastructure can be modernised without a forklift upgrade, without downtime, and without impacting applications. Please visit the Future-Proof Loyalty Program page for further details.

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