Dell EMC PowerStore - TFDx #PoweredUp
/I was recently lucky enough to be one of the delegates for the TechFieldDay exclusive with Dell EMC. During these sessions invitees heard from a variety of speakers from Dell EMC covering the Dell EMC Power Storage portfolio.
In this blog post I wanted to talk specifically about the PowerStore solutions. Speaking to us on the subject of PowerStore was Global Technology Evangilst - Jodey Hogeland and Chief Architect - Dan Cummins.
The PowerStore solution initially announced in May this year is Dell EMCs new mid market solution, placed as the successor to Unity and SC series in the long term, however all of these products are still available to purchase today.
The PowerStore arrays have been designed from the ground up for modern workloads, this isn’t just a rehash of previous Dell EMC technologies. It uses an end to end NVMe architecture and supports storage class memory and persistent memory using Intel Optane SSDs.
Alongside this there are always-on data reduction capabilities as well. Dell claimed this results in the array being seven times faster and three times more responsive than previous Dell EMC midrange arrays and they will guarantee a 4:1 data reduction capability with the ability for data reduction to be up to 20:1 depending on the data.
To further enhance the capability it features a best of both type of architecture meaning that it can scale up with the ability to add up to 3 additional shelves to the array and also scale out into a cluster with 3 further appliances. When scaled out into a cluster a machine learning engine is utilised to best place the data across the cluster.
The most stand out feature of this array for me other than the modern storage architecture is its ability to feature the cabability to run virtual machines within the array itself! There are two flavours of the solution available PowerStore T and PowerStore X. The PowerStore T solution is the storage only solution featuring all of the features mentioned above, powered by the new container based PowerStore OS. PowerStore X further features VMware vSphere within the array allowing you to run VMs directly on the array, Dell refer to this model as AppsON.
Let’s look a little bit closer into the PowerStore X storage architecture, within this array controllers resource is reserved for the use by ESXi, clearly these models need to be sized appropriately for your planned workloads.
Today the PowerStore X appliances support VMware ESXi 6.7 U2 and Dell will handle the future upgrades of ESXi in conjunction with the array firmware upgrades. This offers an advantage to the users that they have a single upgrade model, it may also be a disadvantage if your had a need to upgrade or run a different version of vSphere due to the workloads you are running.
Further to this vSphere Enterprise Plus has to be utilised today, you have the choice of buying this with the appliance or you can bring your own licences, in the future they are looking to see if alternative licensing options would be viable.
Inside each PowerStore appliance there are two ESXi hosts, featuring all the vSphere Enterprise Plus features you would expect, including HA, DRS, Distributed Virtual Switches etc. You can of course manage the ESXi hosts alongside any existing VMware vSphere environments utilising the tools that you have in place today. Currently the PowerStore X doesn’t feature the ability to be able to scale out to additional appliances in the same way the T model does. As such the PowerStore X is an ideal appliance for branch offices and edge use cases.
The PowerStore platform is further proactively monitored by Dell’s Cloud IQ platform that collects data from over 39,000 devices. It utilises machine learning to ensure you are informed of impending issues before they cause trouble and also allow you to plan ahead when it comes to capacity and performance needs.
The PowerStore OS features the ability to allow you to migrate data from Unity, SC Series, PS Series and VNX series ensuring you have an easy path for migration to the new platform.
I have been impressed by the new PowerStore solution, it is designed to modern standards allowing impressive performance and variety of deployment models to suit a wide range of mid market use cases. I certainly have worked with customers that will have the need for a small virtual infrastructure alongside a performant storage solution. However this won’t fit all mid market use cases and I would assume a lot of mid market customer will either purchase the T model and run the array alongside an existing virtual infrastructure or will opt for a more affordable solution such as the SC series or the ME due to the ability to run spinning disks in storage tiers alongside performant SSDs. This is just the beginning for the PowerStore arrays and I look forward to see how the features above are improved and enhanced overtime.
