Dell Grows Storage Portfolio with SMB, Enterprise Server Arrays

Dell is rolling out several new storage offerings to help both small and midsized businesses and large enterprises scale their data centers to meet increasing IT demands. The host of new solutions is being skewed toward companies looking to increase their use of software-defined storage on a budget as well as those who want to continue to evolve their existing IT data storage infrastructures.

“We really believe that traditional architectures are going to continue to coexist with all of the newer paradigms from a storage perspective,” said Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager of Dell Storage, in an interview with The VAR Guy. “That means that storage arrays are going to continue to play right alongside some of the software-defined or … concentric models.”

For SMB customers, Dell unveiled the SCv2000 Series, which provides customers with entry-level storage arrays coupled with several of the core features included in some of the company’s higher-end arrays, such as RAID tiering and integrated data protection. Dell said it hopes that by extending its Storage Center software to entry-level arrays it can help customers to standardize their software on a common platform to save time and eliminate overhead costs. The solutions will be priced starting at $14,000 per array, with three models supported by three expansion options available.

“We think small enterprises really need a product like this,” said Atkinson. “I don’t know of any other products at this price point that offers the functionality, support, multi-protocol abilities and same family values as the much higher priced arrays.”

For midmarket customers, Dell said its PS6610 Series arrays will provide enterprise users with up to 3.5 times the capacity and 7 times the performance on their hardware, compared to the previous generation of Dell EqualLogic arrays. The new PS6610 Series arrays are available in both hybrid flash and hard disk drive flavors and also feature increased density, memory and performance in a smaller physical footprint, according to the announcement. Dell said it will ship each array with Dell EqualLogic PS Series Array Software 8.0, which includes additional support for virtual environments and advanced VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes integration.

Additionally, Dell also announced Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces, designed to support Microsoft’s software-defined storage capabilities on Dell’s server and direct attached storage hardware. The new solution is available in five configurations and is designed to support customers who want to utilize an SDS and virtualized storage approach to their workloads. Dell plans to offer support for performance and capacity sizing, end-to-end fulfillment, deployment and ongoing system support once the configurations are available globally in June.

The SCv2000 Series arrays are available now, with Dell planning to launch the PS6610 Series with EqualLogic PS Series Array Software 8.0 in Q3 of this year.

Earlier this month, Dell announced the launch of its SonicWall TZ Series next-generation firewalls, designed to help small businesses and multisite organizations protect their assets from encrypted SSL attacks.