Posted on behalf of Brian Whitaker, Senior Marketing Manager for Compellent
In the storage industry we are always looking towards the next major launch, the next latest and greatest, to ease our storage woes. However, between each major product launch there are many minor updates, enhancements, and tweaks that add value to the user experience but fly under the radar. These tweaks often don’t matter to current users or potential customers until something goes wrong. However, Dell Compellent’s Storage Center 6.0 software release is NOT one of those. It will be on everyone’s heads-up-display. If you currently use Compellent storage or are considering Compellent as your platform of choice, you cannot let this release fly below the radar. Storage Center 6.0 lays a foundation for the future of storage.
Let’s face it, a virtualized world driven by exponential gains in server performance places huge demands on backend disk. But disk throughput gains haven’t kept pace with server performance gains. How is Compellent coping with that? It is expanding on places for data to live beyond spinning disk.
Storage Center 6.0 delivers 64-bit memory addressing to Compellent, so that immediately and over time, more and more, high performance data can be detached from spinning disk. This statement is true in two ways. First, Storage Center 6.0 is a free update to Series 40 controllers that allows immediate gains in useable cache and gives administrators the option to add additional cache memory. In addition, future controllers will enable ever greater increases in useable cache. Look to expect 6x gains or more! Second, 6.0 allows Compellent to optimally tier larger amounts of data to ensure frequently accessed data always lives on the fastest available storage. It lets you put MORE data in the right place, at the right time, for the right cost.
Beyond that obvious enhancement, Storage Center 6.0 also helps minimize the complexities of your virtualized datacenter. It delivers VMware vSphere™ Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), including full copy offload and hardware-assisted locking features that complement Compellent’s existing VAAI integration capabilities. These features reduce memory usage, CPU processing and bandwidth requirements across the datacenter by enabling the Compellent Storage Center SAN to perform tasks that in the past were handled by the server.
These new capabilities are another example of how Dell and VMware’s joint engineering efforts deliver value to customers. This update delivers the goods without disruption, without downtime, without risk.
You can see why this update is picked up by storage administrators’ radar. It takes Compellent to the next level. It is the next generation architecture with built-in investment protection. If you’re an existing Compellent customer, this update should be a simple choice. If you’re considering Compellent, this release gives you more reasons to see the value of Compellent. As you accelerate your move to dynamic data centers and cloud computing environments, we’re right there with you every step of the day.
To learn more, you can reach out to your salesperson or channel partner. There’s also a short video and press release that elaborates on why these enhancements matter.