The last year proved that businesses need agility to thrive and survive. The $12.17B software-defined infrastructure segment continues to grow rapidly as customers turn to options that provide non-disruptive operations to adjust as needs change while servicing mission critical workloads. Some of the outcomes Dell PowerFlex helped create included adapting to new container workloads, higher performing analytics, database optimizations, and it even played a part in helping to create one of the COVID-19 vaccines. In the video below, you can see the PowerFlex software-defined platform enabling a plethora of mission critical applications that run our own business.
The latest version of PowerFlex is designed to further expand use cases for PowerFlex and supercharge your mission-critical deployments. The release is designed to help you execute flawlessly with extensive automation capabilities and superior execution of resource-intensive workloads. It also enables you to comply effortlessly with regulatory, compliance and corporate requirements while enabling you to operate your large-scale infrastructure confidently and predictably.
Execute Flawlessly
PowerFlex 3.6 enables you to execute key workloads flawlessly with superior workload execution and enhanced automation capabilities.
Robust outcomes for AI//ML Analytics and Graphics Intensive VDI: To better support more GPU intensive use cases, this release adds support for a broad array of GPUs that include NVIDIA T4, RTX 6000, RTX 8000 as well as A40 & A100. Leveraging the existing high performance, low latency scalability of PowerFlex goes extremely well for powering mathematically complex AI/ML and analytics workloads for use cases like speech (natural language processing), image recognition, video analytics and decision-support applications.
The past year highlighted the importance of supporting remote workers serviced by virtual desktops (VDI). High-end designers collaborating on projects requires robust GPU support. For these use cases, the extended GPU support enables sophisticated Citrix and VMware virtualized desktop implementations.
Extended Container and Automation Capabilities: PowerFlex now support the CSI drivers 1.5 to better support a broad range of Kubernetes distributions and workloads. This PowerFlex release also adds support for OpenShift v4.6 with CoreOS that adds to the extensive compatibility list of supported platforms that includes virtualized or bare metal implementations. You can explore a vast array of container platform white papers for PowerFlex on the Dell Technologies website. Additionally, the following Dell Container Storage Modules (CSM) complementing the PowerFlex CSI are available for tech preview:
- Observability CSM: Providing exportable telemetry metrics for I/O performance & storage pool consumption.
- Authorization CSM: Providing multi-tenancy RBAC management controls (e.g., tenant segmentation, setting quota limits, isolation, auditing).
- Resiliency CSM: Stateful application fault protection & detection providing resiliency for node failure and network disruptions.
To further enable infrastructure automation and simplify DevOps workflows, this release adds PowerFlex Ansible modules for customers looking to unify administration and resource provisioning using an open standards framework.
Additional Operating Platforms: PowerFlex 3.6 broadens hypervisor support with the introduction of Oracle Enterprise Linux KVM that complements extensively deployed Oracle databases on PowerFlex for improved support and greater cost-effectiveness. For customers looking for VMware software-defined networking, this update provides VMware NSX-T Ready support for PowerFlex appliances.
Comply effortlessly
The release also enables simpler security, compliance, protection, and business continuity for your key workloads that are at the heart of your enterprise.
Strengthened Security & Resilience: PowerFlex already delivers a best-in-class high availability and durability. This release improves the configurable replication RPO (recovery point objectives) time to as low as 15 seconds, while extending the replication to Hyperconverged (HCI) nodes and configurations. For customers extensively utilizing VMware environments, PowerFlex now offers the Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM). PowerFlex 3.6 also adds FIPS 140-2 support for those security sensitive use cases and industries. Further the with VMware NSX-T Ready for appliance, PowerFlex appliance users can take benefit of inherent security capabilities of the NSX-T solution.
Application consistent data protection and integrated Copy Data Management: For customers commonly using a wide range of databases, PowerFlex adds support for Dell AppSync, delivering reliable outstanding data protection and integrated copy data management that automatically discovers nodes to simplify configuration. AppSync integrates tightly with host environments and applications including, but not limited to Oracle, SAP HANA, MS SQL as well as many file systems including VMware datastores. Customer can try AppSync free for 90-days.
Be Confident
The PowerFlex platform is commonly deployed at large scale – many times there are hundreds or thousands of nodes in a deployment. For these deployments, PowerFlex 3.6 enables you to operate your infrastructure confidently by enhancing manageability, operational simplicity and predictability at scale. For customers utilizing the flexibility of PowerFlex 2-layer capabilities which enables independent scaling of compute and storage nodes, this release now supports 2048 clients (compute nodes).
Enhanced Manageability at Scale: PowerFlex now includes CloudIQ support for visibility and insights to simplify deployments by combining monitoring, machine learning and predictive analytics so you can take quick action and simplify operations.
Improved predictability and resiliency: Building on the principles of delivering a software-defined engineered system solution, this release simplifies the customer upgrade process via PowerFlex Manager improvements with a guided user experience that simplifies the lifecycle management process. The release also further improves resiliency at large scale with sophisticated features like proactive network error detection and network path correction.
In Summary
If you’d like an even deeper dive into what makes PowerFlex a great platform for your mission-critical applications, please take a look at our PowerFlex 3.5 Technical Blog.
