Three Ways SCOS 7 Breaks Ground for Enterprise Storage

I couldn’t be more pleased and excited to announce the release of SCOS 7, the next-generation operating system for SC Series arrays. It’s been almost four years since we laid the foundation with SCOS 6.0, and our subsequent journey has produced some extremely significant “dot releases” — including the world’s first multi-tier flash arrays, the highest-density storage enclosure, and the unmatched integration of new technology such as TLC drives.  We’ve established ourselves as a preeminent force in flash, and have secured a momentum spot on the Gartner Leaders quadrant for general purpose arrays, surpassing NetApp and IBM. Not surprisingly, SC Series sales have outpaced the market over the same time period.

But today, as we arrive at SCOS 7, it’s appropriate that we announce this major news independently of any hardware release. Because it’s bigger than a single product — and frankly, it’s bigger than the entire SC Series portfolio.

Flash forward your IT

SCOS 7 is quite simply Dell’s most forward-looking array software yet. With smart features designed to make data centers incredibly flexible and cost-efficient, plus a broadened management platform that controls heterogeneous product lines, this release helps new and existing customers prepare their environments to adapt and thrive in even the most unforeseen future. More than just a point-in-time solution; SC Series has become a powerful IT strategy that provides low TCO and high ROI year after year.

How have we accomplished this?   I’ll summarize in three main categories.

1. SCOS 7 drives flash much deeper into the enterprise

 Thanks to our innovative platform efficiency, SC Series already boasted the lowest all-flash array prices in the industry. With SCOS 7, we’re doubling down by adding the most comprehensive data reduction*. Intelligent Deduplication lowers costs for SSD and HDD tiers in ways competitors can’t match — in fact, SC Series is the only tiered architecture combining dedupe and compression on HDDs and SSDs.

The result: AFAs now under $0.45/GB with optional HDD tiers under $0.10/GB. Storage economies this extreme don’t just save a few dollars — they change the very business meaning of flash.  Because there’s nothing more fundamental to customer success than the ability to deploy winning IT solutions in more locations, for more workloads, and at a greater scale than previously.  Dell Storage is proud to be one of the leading drivers of the SSD revolution, and we don’t plan to stop until we’ve transformed every industry.

 

2. SCOS 7 elevates management control to the data center level

Remember when you had to provision and manage arrays as independent silos? Those days of waste and inflexibility are gone, thanks to SCOS 7. With our new Live Migrate feature, multi-array federation is a standard capability of SC arrays.  Storage admins, guided by intelligent, proactive wizards, can  now move volumes effortlessly around the data center without interrupting workloads, balancing their environment for optimal performance and resource utilization  — with no need to purchase a separate virtualization appliance or software.

For cloud and multi-tenancy applications, new policy-based Quality of Service (QoS) controls let you map resources to match business priorities. Plus, VVol virtualization support allows server-side administrators to easily target SC services on a per-VM basis, benefiting fully from Dell’s growing relationship and integration with VMware.

 

3. SCOS 7 unifies the Dell Storage ecosystem

 Perhaps best of all, at least for our large PS Series/EqualLogic install base, we are fulfilling our promise to converge the SC and PS Series platforms.  Our new Dell Storage Manager interface controls both PS and SC arrays, with full replication in either direction. This is not just a simple upgrade migration feature — you can actually use both platforms simultaneously in the same solution, with automated data flow between the arrays. Existing PS customers gain the freedom and confidence to either continue to purchase PS arrays, or add SC at any time, knowing the full value of every PS investment will be protected and enhanced.

This “safe passage” approach is unique in the industry, as we are the only vendor to offer native cross-platform replication across product lines. What’s more, as a premier end-to-end solution provider, the integration is a testament to our ability to orchestrate and unify diverse technologies — capabilities which bode well for a future where portfolio breadth and diversification will become increasingly prevalent.

In short, SCOS 7 is a Very Big Deal, and in anticipation of Dell’s expanding storage focus, I expect this milestone release will be the access point by which more and more businesses will soon benefit from the flexible, virtualized SC architecture.

If you’ve been waiting to deploy a modern enterprise storage solution yourself, I’d like to suggest now is the ideal time to begin your own journey with an eminently future-ready platform. SC Series offers a clear competitive advantage today – and just as importantly, the opportunity to position your business for even greater success tomorrow, powering workloads and applications you may not yet have imagined.

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For technical details on the ground-breaking SCOS 7 release, including links to demo videos and solution briefs, visit Dell Tech Center, or contact a Dell Expert.

 

 

 

*Source: Dell internal analysis, May 2016, compared to top 5 other vendors in the mid-range enterprise market.  Data reduction results may vary depending on application and configuration.  SC Series can provide 10:1 capacity savings in VMware environments – but even assuming just 4:1 reduction, SC arrays offer the lowest effective flash capacity pricing vs. major competitors, net of data reduction.  Street price analysis includes 5 years of support, and is based on a variety of sources, including analyst data, price sheets when available and public information as of May 2016.

About the Author: Alan Atkinson