Dell EMC quietly launched its new midrange storage device called PowerStore last week representing a culmination of its other midrange devices that, according to the tech giant, is seven times faster than previous Dell EMC midrange storage arrays.
As the exponential increase of data generation continues – likely compounded by the effects of COVID-19 and work from home measures – Dell EMC says PowerStore is meant to help set customers up for the future.
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“We’re introducing a new solution to an old problem,” Ben Jastrab, director of product marketing, Dell EMC Storage, told the publication after the launch. “Customers grapple with a lot of data, and a lot of it is no longer confined to the data centre.”
Under the hood, Dell EMC says PowerStore uses the 2U form factor with dual controllers and each array has 25 2.5” bays. It also features supporting drive capacities ranging from 375GB to 750GB in Optane SSDs and 1.92TB to 15.36TB NVMe SSDs. NVMe-oF support will come in a future release.
PowerStore uses a single architecture for block, file, and VMware Virtual Volumes (also known as vVols, an integration and management framework that virtualizes SAN/NAS arrays). This array accommodates application, multi-protocol network and multi-format storage. On the back-end, PowerStore offers several IO Module configurations, ranging from the quad-port 32Gb FC cars on the fibre side to the more traditional quad-port 10Gbase-T up to 25GbE SFP+ cards on the ethernet side.
When asked if PowerStore will lead to imminent end-of-life announcements for its other midrange products, the answer, according to Jastrab is no, but it’s safe to say that PowerStore is going to be the face of the midrange moving forward. In addition, he said there are no end of life dates announced for its other midrange options that include Unity, SC, PS Series, VNX and XtremIO. PowerStore is also supported by Dell Technologies On Demand, a set of consumption-based and as-a-service offerings for Dell’s various products and solutions.
Dell EMC 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 provides Data Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to VMware Cloud on AWS. Also, starting this summer, PowerStore will be able to be deployed as a storage option within Dell EMC PowerOne autonomous infrastructure, which accelerates an organization’s shift to cloud-like operations.
