Dell EMC unveils new additions to its all-flash portfolio

Dell EMC has announced multiple new additions and updates to its all-flash storage portfolio designed to support customers’ storage transformation initiatives.

New offerings include the new VMAX 250F all-flash storage, Data Domain protection storage systems with Cloud Tier software and updates to the Dell EMC Unity family of storage systems.

According to Dell EMC, businesses are putting unprecedented pressures on their midrange storage arrays, with ever-increasing sizes and numbers of files that need to be stored and accessed instantly. To get the most out of an array – in terms of value for money and capacity per drive – it’s important for organisations to demand high-capacity drives, data compression and tiering to the cloud. Smart businesses are choosing storage platforms that act as a hub, compressing data and directing it to the best storage target and meet their business objectives.

The new solutions include the new generation of Dell EMC Data Domain protection storage systems with Cloud Tier software is able to deliver industry-leading speed and scalability as well as enhanced protection for virtual environments.

The deployment of the new Data Domain Cloud Tier software within Data Domain, according to Dell EMC, increases the total volume of data that can be managed through a single appliance by 200 percent, with a maximum logical capacity of 150PB. Data Domain Cloud Tier establishes Data Domain as the only protection storage to natively tier de-duplicated data to public, private, or hybrid clouds for long-term retention, including Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage and Virtustream Storage Cloud.

The new Data Domain family features four new models: DD6300, DD6800, DD9300 and DD9800.

“Protecting the modern data centre is a critical pillar of any IT transformation strategy,” said Beth Phalen, SVP and GM, Data Protection Solutions, Dell EMC. “Business Agility requires customers to protect rapidly growing data sets and minimise downtime no matter what happens in their data centers. To meet these needs we are introducing four new Data Domain systems with integrated flash technology that deliver new levels of scale and performance, allow customers to instantly restore large application environments and further reduce the time it takes to protect large volumes of data. Our data protection everywhere strategy ensures data is protected – affordably and securely – no matter where it lives.”

Dell EMC has also broadened its portfolio of All-Flash storage with VMAX 250F.

VMAX 250F delivers inline compression and data reduction yielding 4x improvements in storage economics, scales up to 1PB and supports the industry’s latest 7.6TB and 15TB enterprise flash drives.

According to the company, it will be delivering improved storage economics across its entire VMAX All Flash array portfolio with its latest HYPERMAX operating system update, which now includes inline compression to increase storage efficiency. Dell EMC also introduced the new Dell EMC VPLEX for All-Flash platform, that is inclusive of the software and capacity licenses required to provide the continuous availability and non-disruptive data mobility of the latest VPLEX VS6 platform to the modern all-flash data centre.

“The VMAX platform is known for and relied upon for mission-critical applications by companies worldwide,” said Fidelma Russo, SVP and GM, Enterprise Storage and Software, Dell EMC. “Recognising that application requirements vary in scale from very large to mid-size, we designed the VMAX 250F to bring the VMAX brand and proven reliability to a broader set of customers. And, with the introduction of the updated Dell EMC HYPERMAX operating system, the entire VMAX All Flash family will enjoy the benefits of inline compression and non-disruptive migration.”

Lastly, Dell EMC introduced significant, free, non-disruptive, data-in-place software updates to the Unity family of storage systems that delivers 4x storage efficiencies within the same footprint via inline compression and other all-flash optimisations.

Expanding Unity’s capabilities for the modern data center, Dell EMC also introduced integrated file tiering to the public cloud (including Virtustream), along with intelligent and predictive analytics through the new CloudIQ cloud-based storage analytics platform.

Unity customers will gain inline compression capabilities with the latest version of UnityOE software, further enhancing data storage efficiency with features such as thin provisioning, snapshots and “file system shrink”. With the ability to compress block-based LUNs hosting in All-Flash pools, Unity’s new compression capabilities are designed to help customers save up to 70 percent in storage capacity costs.

Unity All-Flash now provides up to 384TB in a 2U rack through new support for 15.36TB 3D NAND (SAS Flash 4) flash drives, doubling Unity’s drive density. In addition, the Unity 600(F) doubles the number of drives supported, increasing total usable capacity up to 10PBs.

Extending the life of mixed SSDs, Dell EMC is also introducing intelligent wear leveling with Unity, allowing customers to mix different types of flash drives within an All-Flash pool.