Today is an exciting day for Dell and our customers and partners. At events around the world, we’re unveiling a series of new innovative products and services squarely addressing our customer’s needs; breakthrough technology designed to help maximize their most valuable resources: people, time and money. We talk a lot about simplifying IT at Dell and today we’re giving our customers two new storage options that take performance and management to new levels, the Dell EqualLogic PS6000 and Dell NX4.
The EqualLogic PS6000 series is the latest release from our industry-leading iSCSI-based product line. The PS6000 hardware and software, which are a part of Dell’s broad storage portfolio that includes the PowerVault and Dell|EMC product lines, help enterprises easily enhance existing installations or get started with SAN implementation. The PS6000 is available in five models, including the PS6000S, which features EqualLogic’s first solid-state disk (SSD) array. This release also includes support for RAID 6, and a redesigned controller including a fourth GbEport per controller. But we didn’t stop there.
An important but often times overlooked aspect of the EqualLogic arrays is the fact that they are a hardware and software solution – and the software is one of the primary reasons why the product has been so favorably received by customers and partners.
With respect to improvements to the software layer of the PS6000, we are adding Microsoft Hyper-V Smart Copy snapshot support in the EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition. This gives customers the ability to recover Hyper-V virtual machines in as little as seconds, saving them time and man-hours previously required to restore virtual machines. This is in addition to the support for VMware and Citrix environments that we currently have.
We’ve also made significant software enhancements that all PS Series customers can download and use as part of Dell’s all-inclusive software suite. SAN Headquarters, an intuitive management interface, gives customers the ability to manage up to 10 petabytes of storage from a single console. Think of it as a flight instrument panel that allows System Admins to oversee their entire EqualLogic deployment, monitor for hot spots, and optimize their deployment. One of the areas that I’m particularly proud of is the fact that the EqualLogic series continues its philosophy of offering all software upgrades and enhancements free of charge to customer’s current on support.
In addition to all the product advancements, we’re also offering new Dell ProConsult and Dell ProSupport services to customers to help them plan, deploy and support their EqualLogic storage environments.
As if an entirely new series of EqualLogic products wasn’t enough, today Dell is making the Dell NX4 available to customers around the globe. As we announced last December, the Dell NX4 is a network-attached storage (NAS) product that supports Windows, Linux and Unix file data and helps consolidate disparate storage systems by offering connectivity to NAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel solutions. This product release demonstrates the two companies continued commitment to their long-standing partnership.
It’s a good day for Dell storage.