Boost Performance and Capacity of SC Storage with Free OS Upgrade
Every IT customer wants maximum value from their storage infrastructure at the lowest cost at the time of purchase and over the full lifespan of the product. And why not? They should! But the reality is that not all vendors can deliver on this commitment. Most storage products become slower and overburdened over time, use obsolete technology, and require a short-term replacement. What if a vendor provided no-cost upgrades to their customers, adding substantial new features and functionality with each release, dramatic performance gains, and tools to reduce the management overhead? Now, that would be game-changing.
At Dell, we’re taking a different approach than most vendors. We recognize the investment customers have made in the SC Series platform, and we’re taking bold steps to ensure the platform provides compelling value time and time again, at the lowest cost and complexity. I’ve yet to meet a customer that doesn’t need more performance from their storage system. We’ve optimized the internal code top to bottom, extracting every ounce of performance wherever we could, and the results are truly amazing.
Affordable Flash Arrays, Now 2X Faster
Dell today announced the new SC Operating System 7.3, a free upgrade for customers with an active ProSupport agreement that offers major performance gains, plus a variety of new management capabilities. With this release, the SC Series offers an astounding 2X increase in maximum IOPS for every current array – from our largest to our smallest models.1
Three SC platforms now exceed 1 million max IOPS – and SC9000 tops 2.2 million.1 Dell tests show real-world applications such as VDI and SQL OLTP perform 33%2 to 54%3 faster on SCOS 7.3 – all for no cost, and virtually no effort.
But it’s not only performance. SCOS 7.3 also makes SC easier to manage with the new “Unisphere for SC” HTML 5 web interface (same look and feel across SC Series and Dell Unity platforms), introduces data-in-place upgrades for the popular SC4020 array, enhances our Live Volume feature for reduced latency and network traffic in high availability environments, increases maximum array capacity up to 2x4, and adds support for 100Gb and 25Gb iSCSI networking.
Best of all, current customers of either our SC All-Flash or SC Hybrid arrays can easily upgrade their firmware to experience an overnight performance boost, while continuing to benefit from the leading economics of our sophisticated tiered storage architecture and intelligent data placement.
All in a Day’s Work
This release highlights a guiding philosophy of the Dell Midrange storage team. With programs such as the Future-Proof Loyalty Program, which gives customers and partners guaranteed satisfaction and investment protection for their future technology changes, we’re working to ensure customer satisfaction over the long haul. The new SC Series continues our tradition of adding great value through new features with no hidden costs to the end user.
- Compression and deduplication – No-charge data reduction on both SSDs and HDDs gives customers more usable capacity (for example, up to 50% savings in VDI environments)
- Increased performance – No-charge upgrades (such as this release) accelerate workloads and delay future hardware expense
- Enhanced management – No-charge for tools and 3rd-party integration/interop to ensure SC stays in sync with diverse application and ecosystem needs.
- Multi-array federation – No charge for increased system scale, flexibility and availability, now supported by the entire family of SC products
Customer Reaction
It’s not surprising customers and partners alike are responding favorably to the way SCOS 7.3 allows them to move ahead quickly with new solution strategies. Here’s what some of them had to say:
“The 7.3 release will free up additional time for IT departments,” said Donald Weaver, President of Weaver Technologies. “Instead of having to replace [hardware] with new gear, now we can use existing gear and attain more IOPs and more capabilities, without having to do a physical upgrade. This will essentially be like getting a [new] array for free.”
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“The SC Series is a staple in our Dell storage portfolio and has been for a number of years,” said Scott Winslow, President, Winslow Technology Group, LLC. “It’s a time-tested platform, and our customers have benefited from the way Dell provides significant new features over time. Dell has shown a steady, regular cadence for innovation that allows current and new customers to get more out of their existing system.
“We’re really excited about this release, as test results show a 2X increase in maximum IOPS across every current platform in the SC Series. The very idea that a free software download can give this level of improvement is a rarity in the IT industry. We’re big fans of the SC Series, and with performance gains like these, it really helps us. More importantly, it really helps our customers.”
There’s simply a lot to love about this release. I encourage you to contact your Dell representative or authorized partner to learn more. To our existing customers, thank you for the opportunity to ensure we meet and exceed, your expectations. We know you’ll be delighted with SCOS 7.3. For those customers running VDI, SQL, or any other databases, we’re confident you’ll see the difference in performance. And if you’re not a customer yet, we welcome you to join our SC Series customer family.
1 – Based on internal tests performed in February, 2018 on SC9000, SC7020, SC5020 and SCv3020 arrays running 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware on 100% sequential reads with 4K sector transfer size. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.
2 – Based on internal tests performed by Dell on an SC9000 with 7.3 vs. 7.2 firmware. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.
3 – Based on internal tests performed by Dell in February 2018 running TPC-E like workloads (95% reads, 8K sector transfer size) on an SC9000 with 7.3 vs 7.2 firmware. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.
4 – SCOS 7.3 increases the maximum raw capacity for SC9000, SC7020 and SC5020 arrays. SC9000 increases from 3PB max to 6PB max, assuming 2MB page sizes.
