Dell’s software upgrades to boost security and capacity
Dell Technologies says it has made more than 500 software advancements across Dell PowerStore, PowerMax and PowerFlex to deliver faster data insights, better multi-cloud data control and increased cyber resiliency at no cost to existing customers.
The company says these upgrades are the latest examples of its storage software innovation following the introduction of Project Alpine, which will bring the enterprise capacity, performance and protection of Dell storage software to public clouds.
Dell Technologies vice chairman and co-chief operating officer Jeff Clarke says organisations worldwide look to Dell to help them move faster while turning their data into a competitive advantage.
"We're delivering major software innovation across our portfolio to help customers make the most of their data and resources," he says.
Dell PowerStore improvements
Dell PowerStore will deliver up to 50% better application performance, 66% more capacity, enterprise file enhancements and new VMware integrations.
Dell Technologies says customers can better plan business continuity strategies with software-only high availability metro replication configured in as few as five clicks.
It says additional software advancements make it possible for organisations to better support and secure file workloads with file-level retention, native file replication and support for third-party file monitoring and ransomware protection.
Organisations will also be able to take advantage of deeper VMware integrations, including improved vVols latency and performance plus simplified disaster recovery with VMware vSphere, Virtual Volumes (vVols) replication, VM-level snapshots and fast clones.
They'll also be able to maximise the performance of new hardware with end-to-end NVMe support and increased networking speeds.
Dell PowerMax improvements
Dell PowerMax will introduce cyber resiliency advancements, including cyber vaults for traditional and mainframe deployments. Dell says CloudIQ ransomware capabilities help detect cyberattacks early to minimise exposure and speed recovery.
PowerMax now offers up to 65 million secure snapshots to improve cyber recovery and increases efficiency with new 4:1 data reduction guarantee. Dell says additional software-driven updates help organisations increase productivity with automated storage operations such as multi-array smart provisioning, workload optimisation, and health monitoring and remediation.
Organisations will also be able to quickly move data to public clouds with faster cloud snapshot shipping and recovery, easy restore of cloud-based object storage data, and built-in high availability to minimise downtime.
Dell says users will experience double the performance with up to 50% better response times in demanding application and mainframe environments on two new NVMe-based PowerMax models.
Dell PowerFlex improvements
Dell PowerFlex introduces file services to simplify workload consolidation and adds file support for all major container orchestration platforms.
Dell says the upgrades simplify multi-cloud and DevOps with the broadest file and block8 support for all major Kubernetes and container orchestration platforms from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE and VMware.
Additional updates allow customers to realise greater TCO savings by consolidating traditional and containerised workloads using unified block and file storage services across bare metal and virtualised deployments.
Users will also be able to simplify PowerFlex deployment through NVMe-over-TCP connectivity with consistent standards-based storage networking.
Dell says organisations can streamline operations with new unified compute, storage and system lifecycle management capabilities within PowerFlex Manager software.
Eric Burgener is IDC's infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group research vice president. He says organisations are increasingly seeking IT infrastructure that delivers a cloud-like experience wherever their data lives.
"Dell has designed these sweeping software and hardware enhancements across its comprehensive, multi-cloud infrastructure portfolio to deliver that experience with greater automation, security and control," he says.
