Dell Technologies has announced significant upgrades to its PowerMax storage arrays, aimed at delivering faster and more efficient input and output rates for mission-critical applications.
According to Josh Lee, chief technology officer at Dell platinum partner VirtuIT, these enhancements are vital for applications with the highest performance demands.
“Any efficiencies that lower the cost-per-terabyte and improve input/output costs are excellent news for customers,” he explained.
Key Features of the Upgrades
The latest PowerMax enhancements include three times faster connectivity via Ethernet, enabling backups of up to one petabyte of data daily.
Additionally, Dell has achieved an impressive 92 percent RAID efficiency, optimizing overall storage performance.
These upgrades are accessible on select models, including the high-end 8500, through a software update to PowerMax 10.2, which is backwards compatible.
This allows partners to provide enhanced storage and data throughput for their clients’ essential data and workloads.
AI Integration for Improved Functionality
Varun Chhabra, senior vice president of product marketing at Dell Technologies, emphasized the integration of AI into the PowerMax system, which simplifies alerting, learns customer workloads, and adjusts health checks and thresholds accordingly.
“No other vendor in the world has the comprehensive capabilities across storage, servers, networking, and data protection that Dell possesses,” Chhabra stated.
He believes the evolving deployment of AI will be a significant differentiator for customers.
Advancements in PowerScale Products
In addition to PowerMax upgrades, Dell also introduced enhancements to its PowerScale products, designed for storing unstructured data, which is increasingly utilized by AI models for various applications, including text, audio, and video inference.
The new arrays demonstrate 63 percent faster data movement, support high-speed 200 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and InfiniBand, and have doubled drive density, accommodating QLC drives of up to 61 terabytes.
Dell claims that these advancements can reduce data center storage footprints by half while improving unstructured data search capabilities across billions of files and exabytes of data.
The Importance of Speed and Networking
For industry experts like Lee, the emphasis is on speed. He noted, “We’re excited to see the density and high-speed networking available.
The more high-speed Ethernet options available, the more this will penetrate the medium business space, as Ethernet tends to be more affordable than InfiniBand.”
Both PowerScale and PowerMax products fall under Dell's Partner First For Storage initiative, highlighting the crucial role of partners in the ecosystem.
Chhabra stressed that Dell cannot operate in isolation, stating, “The role of partners in this space is absolutely critical.
We collaborate closely with our ecosystem, including channel and delivery partners, to deliver these capabilities.”
He highlighted the importance of system integrators in strategizing, implementing, and managing the deployment of these solutions throughout their lifecycle.
