Going into the season of staycations and the dreaded garage and spare room clean-outs, people are in the process of decluttering and making their spaces more efficient. The same process could be applied to reviewing drive performance and capacity options for the servers in your data center. Many companies purchase new drives every year and there are some things to stop and consider to help ensure your long-term ROI.
Sometimes bigger is better
Dell just introduced 3.5” 14TB HDDs for select PowerEdge servers that can offer up to a 40 percent increase in capacity compared to 3.5” 10TB HDDs. If you are storing data-heavy workloads such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), SQL, medical records and scientific data, these may be the ideal drives for your data center. In fact, if you are using the PowerEdge T640, you can now store 252TB for data-intensive workloads. And while you are cleaning out old boxes of high school memorabilia or old CDs, keep in mind that 1 terabyte storage can contain the equivalent of 1428 CD-ROMs or 17,000 hours of compressed audio.[1] So the T640 can hold the equivalent of nearly 360,000 CD-ROMs or over 4 million hours of compressed audio![2] If you upgrade your capacity, you can increase your system’s lifespan. Just like adding a bedroom or two may help you stay longer in your current home.
Check out the whopping 252TB of storage you can pack into the #PowerEdge T640 with these 14TB drives from @ToshibaStorage! #DellTechWorld pic.twitter.com/O68eg67Zst
— Dell Servers (@DellServers) May 2, 2018
Performance is key
A huge bureau with drawers that don’t open is fairly useless if you can’t get to your items quickly. Don’t forget to look at your preferred capacity to see what the potential performance impact may be. It may be worth upgrading to a new size or type of drive to optimize performance. Part of our process for qualifying drives includes performance benchmark testing. So with our PowerEdge HDD specifications, you can easily see that the 2.4TB 2.5” HDD offers better performance for sequential read workloads than the 1.8TB 2.5” HDD, for example.
Secure use and reuse
We all want to make sure our items are stored safely, whether it’s Granny’s silver candlesticks or critical customer data. PowerEdge next-generation servers offer a cyber-resilient architecture to protect your data throughout your server lifecycle. All firmware for critical components (NICs, HBAs, RAID, CPLD, storage drives, PSUs, etc.) is validated using cryptographic signatures to ensure that authentic firmware is running in the server.
In addition, Dell is focused on ensuring that security and quality control processes are in place to help prevent counterfeit components and malware from infiltrating our supply chain. These controls span our end-to-end product lifecycle including design, supplier selection, production, delivery, services and support.
Just as you would run through an old wallet or pocketbook to remove personal items before donating it to a secondhand shop, you would want to remove data before reusing, disposing or donating hardware. When retiring or repurposing a system or array the next-generation PowerEdge servers can help you to permanently and quickly erase content from HDDs or SSDs. Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) offer locking protection that binds the storage drive to the server and RAID card used. Even if the drive ends up in unauthorized hands, it cannot be accessed without supplying the required locking passphrase.
Keep it simple
It is easy to choose Dell Enterprise drives when you purchase new PowerEdge servers or when adding a new drive to an existing system. Minimize worry with a hardware warranty for Dell Enterprise drives and an option to choose the ProSupport extended warranty offering. Plus, Dell provides an online firmware update capability for drives that reduces downtime due to firmware maintenance.
Wishing you a wonderful, clutter-free summer! Please follow us @DellServers and LinkedIn to let us know how you balance performance and capacity in your data center. Contact your Dell representative to discuss the best PowerEdge drive options to optimize your workloads.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte
[2] Capacity may vary due to size and type of file and/or operating environment.
