As an IT leader, you’re driving breakthrough innovations for your company, and you understand how important it is to be agile. Powering new and exciting use cases around AI and analytics, for example, promises to transform nearly every industry. However, we realize innovation can be hard – managing data across environments and clouds creates a lot of complexity. Throw into the mix the sheer volume of data growth, and there continues to be an urgent need to gain visibility over all your data to make sense of it. But the good news is, you’re not alone. According to Forrester Research, data management across multiple clouds is the leading obstacle of innovation.1 Creating the perfect multicloud mix, choosing a solution that is powerful and flexible and streamlining data management will help accelerate your workload innovations now and in the future.
Dell understands data is the new gold standard for businesses. And with that in mind, we set out to develop the Dell APEX portfolio, which takes a “multicloud by design” approach, helping you capitalize on the best of on-premises, edge and cloud. At Dell Technologies World last month, we announced a new lineup of Dell APEX Storage for Public Cloud offers that give you the flexibility to choose which data and workloads you want to run in the cloud. And we’re excited to keep the momentum going by talking more about one solution in particular: Dell APEX File Storage for AWS, a software-defined cloud platform that brings our OneFS software to the public cloud as a customer-managed offer. You can now leverage the same data services and performance trusted in on-premises PowerScale to AWS.
Let’s dive deeper into the value of Dell APEX File Storage for AWS and the three ways it accelerates your journey to multicloud bliss by simplifying your cloud journey, helping you achieve extreme flexibility and powering your “cloud bursty” workloads.
1. Simplify Your Cloud Journey
With Dell APEX File Storage for AWS, we’re introducing a powerful way to consume cloud storage. Now you can easily move data from on-premises to the cloud without having to refactor your storage architecture using advanced native replication. And once in the cloud, you can use all the familiar OneFS enterprise-grade features you know so well. One of our beta customers, a leading global streaming service, summarized the offer’s ease of use.
“With APEX File Storage for AWS, we can leverage the benefits of PowerScale OneFS on-premises systems in the public cloud without the complexities of managing hardware infrastructure.”
What’s more, enjoy a consistent user experience for the offer, meaning the OneFS software looks and feels the same in the cloud as it does on-premises, including the user interface, command-line interface (CLI) and APIs. This is great for driving operational efficiencies, as there is no need to retrain your IT teams because everything is familiar and predictable.
Additional data management features include:
-
- Multi-protocol access (NFS, SMB, S3)
- CloudPools for data tiering
- Data reduction for increased storage efficiency
- Snapshots that help safeguard your data via recovery backup files
- Identity management with built-in security
The result? Make storage management and data mobility easy and risk-free with a consistent user experience on-premises to the public cloud.
2. Achieve Extreme Flexibility
According to a 2023 IDC CIO quick poll, six in every 10 organizations surveyed admitted to spending more on the cloud than initially budgeted.² With Dell APEX File Storage for AWS, we put the power of controlling cloud costs in your hands. Leverage your existing AWS credits toward storage infrastructure costs so you have greater control over your cloud budget. That way you stay within your thresholds all while having the flexibility to scale up or down based on performance needs.
Speaking of performance, Dell APEX File Storage for AWS gives you granular control over your performance levels, allowing you to allocate resources exactly when you need them. You can also combine the offer with AWS EC2 instances and other AWS cloud services to build a complete IT solution. Flexibility, delivered.
The result? Move faster toward innovation with better cloud cost predictability and granular performance controls.
3. Power Your “Cloud Bursty” Workloads
Imagine a world where cloud burst scenarios are seamlessly managed with unmatched efficiency. Whether it’s the demanding needs of media and entertainment, where video rendering requires immense capacity, or industries facing seasonal peaks in demand, our solution empowers organizations to adapt quickly. Additionally, we go beyond traditional workload support – our solution embraces the future by enhancing performance for workloads such as AI/ML and analytics. And Dell APEX File Storage for AWS delivers up to 4.3x higher performance than NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP.3
Additionally, you don’t have to worry about fluctuations in data growth. Dell APEX File Storage for AWS leverages OneFS scale-out architecture to provide performance and scale. You’ll be able to grow your operations on-demand, from 24TB up to 1PB of tier one data, and even more if you want to tier with CloudPools. Scale-out also means you’ll be able to boost the performance of your storage to meet your cloud bursty, demanding workloads.
The result? Boost your performance and scale effortlessly – no matter which industry you are in or use case you are powering.
Choose the Provider You Know and Trust
Dell is here to partner with you on your multicloud journey. With market-validated technology and over 16,000 installations spanning the globe, you can rest easy knowing you’re choosing a provider some of the largest companies in the world trust. And it doesn’t stop there – PowerScale OneFS was named the world’s most flexible4 and secure scale-out NAS solution5 on the market and has been a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for seven consecutive years.6 Harness a future where data is your most valuable asset, protected by the partner you know and trust. We’re excited to join you on your cloud journey using Dell APEX File Storage for AWS. Contact us so we can talk more about accelerating your journey to the cloud today.
1 Forrester: Multicloud Answers the Enterprise Call for Scalable, Secure Infrastructure, January 2022
2 IDC: The Era of FinOps: Focus is Shifting from Cloud Features to Cloud Value, 2023
3 Based on a Prowess research paper commissioned by Dell, “Going Cloud-Native: Tips for Choosing the Right Cloud-Based Storage Solution for Your Business” in May 2023, comparing published maximum sequential-write performance for Dell APEX File Storage for AWS vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP HA configuration. Actual results may vary. See full report.
4 Based on Dell analysis of publicly available information sources measured across seven attributes, August 2021
5 Based on Dell analysis comparing cyber-security software capabilities offered for Dell PowerScale vs. competitive products, September 2022
6 Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage” by Julia Palmer, Jerry Rozeman, Chandra Mukhyala, Jeff Vogel, October 19, 2022.
