Dell has announced new enterprise technology to help customers architect new data centres and modernise campus networks, while meeting increasing IT performance and network access demands.

The new solutions include the highest-performing Dell EqualLogic storage solutions to date and higher-speed wireless and simplified campus networking switches. The new products announced today help customers architect and build future-ready data centres which address customer expectations for instant access to information no matter if they are in the office or working remotely.

New Dell EqualLogic releases include the PS6210 storage arrays, which extend Dell’s ability to deliver flash at the price of disk solutions for customers seeking both faster performance and higher cost efficiency for their data-intensive virtual environments.

The new suite of Dell Networking campus solutions enables customers to rapidly deploy and scale campus networks and maximise efficiency with visibility into the network environment from a single console. The networking solutions also secure the devices and information at the network edge, leverage existing investments, and can reduce capital expenses by more than 50%.

Dell also unveiled new systems management capabilities for Dell OpenManage, including intelligent auto-configuration of servers, which are infrastructure-aware, to further simplify IT management tasks, deliver optimal workload and server performance, and to provide additional time and cost-savings to customers.

“Dell continues to be an increasingly important partner for enterprises of all sizes as we deliver innovative products to help customers solve problems in new ways,” says Bradley Pulford, enterprise solutions group director at Dell.

“Today’s announcements further redefine data centre economics with technology that provides unsurpassed product functionality and lower total cost of ownership to power modern workloads through storage and networking innovation. Dell’s approach offers intelligent solutions that prepare customers with a future-ready data centre built on a scalable architecture to support their data centre growth.”

The new generation of industry-leading Dell EqualLogic storage technologies allows customers to scale from small environments to large data centres while addressing their needs for enterprise-class storage that is easy to manage and optimised for highly-virtualised environments.

The simplicity and virtualisation support designed into EqualLogic has helped the company remain the overall market leader of iSCSI-based storage for more than the past five years, according to IDC. Dell storage customers can benefit from offerings announced today that seamlessly integrate into existing environments without requiring downtime or a storage overhaul:

* Dell EqualLogic PS6210 Series arrays – with six models, including all-flash, hybrid and all-HDD options, the new arrays offer increased throughput, up to three times higher performance and four times the memory of prior generations with a faster, more powerful storage controller. New flash-enabled arrays can support 2,4 times the virtual desktops and double the OLTP database workload performance with half the latency of prior-generation arrays.
The scale-out architecture enables organisations to minimise I/O bottlenecks and address growing workloads with flash-enabled SANs that can achieve more than 1.2 million IOPS with less than two millisecond latency.

* Dell EqualLogic Array Software 7.0 – Dell continues to simplify storage management, accelerating customers’ virtualisation efforts by streamlining ongoing administration with new policy-based access controls and an improved user interface, available, like all EqualLogic software, at no additional charge for customers with active support contracts. Dell makes major technology transitions easy to adopt, by offering, for example, a new 64-bit software version for new arrays that works seamlessly with a 32-bit version for older arrays.

* Dell EqualLogic SAN Headquarters 3.0 – Dell’s SAN monitoring software provides in-depth reporting and analysis and robust performance and event monitoring across multiple EqualLogic groups. The new release includes Array Software 7.0 features support and Dell SupportAssist enhancements that improve Dell’s customer support with expanded automated support case creation and new case tracking.

* Dell Fluid File System (FluidFS) v3 on EqualLogic FS7610/7600 – Dell’s latest file system software decreases the capacity needed to store common enterprise file data by up to 48% by deduplicating and compressing redundant data when no longer needed.
FluidFS v3 offers expanded protocol support and more third-party certifications, growing the ecosystem of industry-specific supported solutions, including leading healthcare picture archiving and communications system (PACS) vendors.

The new generation of EqualLogic storage extends Dell’s cost competitive all-flash offerings on the heels of Dell being recognised as the overall preferred vendor for flash-based enterprise solutions among IT leaders globally, according to independent research from ITIC and Storage Strategies NOW.

The new arrays unlock the power of flash, allowing customers to achieve up to three times the IOPS performance compared to the previous generation of flash-enabled arrays. One EqualLogic PS6210 all-flash array can provide higher performance and capacity compared with four all-15K disk arrays while delivering 64% lower latency, 75% less rack space and 11% lower total cost.