Hybrid Storage

Data is driving digital transformation, and organizations are taking advantage of data analytics to significantly improve business operations, enhance customer experiences, gain competitive advantage and enable faster and better decision-making. Storage media is critical to this effort in several ways. To harness the power of data, organizations need solutions like flash storage that can enable ultrafast data access to support real-time analytics. But as data volumes continue to double every year, storing everything on flash storage is prohibitively expensive and unnecessary, since a great deal of an organization’s data would be perfectly fine residing on more affordable but less responsive archive media.

Hybrid storage solutions provide a compromise where critical data can be stored on high-performance flash media while other data resides on less expensive tiered storage. Hybrid storage enables organizations to manage data in a unified storage system while still balancing performance and cost.

Unity XT Hybrid Unified Storage combines flash power, greater efficiency and absolute simplicity in a small footprint. Designed and optimized for virtual workloads, this hybrid storage solution is engineered from the ground up to meet market demands for performance, efficiency and lifecycle simplicity.

Unity XT Hybrid Flash Arrays are NVMe-ready and use a dual active architecture with dual socket Intel processors that feature up to 16 cores and more system memory to deliver greater performance and less latency than previous generations. System overhead is reduced to provide 85% platform efficiency, and in-line data reduction features provide up to 31% more effective capacity than other midrange systems.

Dell hybrid storage can be deployed as physical storage, software defined storage or converged infrastructure, all sharing one operating system. And easy-to-use, web-based management features enable administrators to install Dell hybrid storage solutions in 15 minutes and configure them in 10 minutes.

Unity hybrid storage offers a host of features and benefits for the midrange storage market. Top advantages include:

• Greater performance and optimal efficiency. Dell’s hybrid storage platform has the power to run applications, process in-line data reduction and deliver unified data services simultaneously. And with 85% system efficiency, Dell’s solutions leave more room for effective usable capacity.
• Cost efficiency. Dell hybrid storage delivers the performance of flash with the cost-effectiveness of disk, using automated policy-based tiering and SSD caching software to intelligently leverage how flash is implemented, increasing overall performance while lowering operational costs.
• Simplified management. Hybrid storage from Dell is simple to set up in just a few minutes. An intuitive interface and multiple VMware and Microsoft integrations make it simple to use. A built-in self-service portal makes it easy for users to resolve issues quickly without requiring expert IT assistance. And built-in capabilities for data migration make it easy to migrate file and block data without disruption.
• Scalable file system. Unity XT Hybrid supports enterprise and transactional network attached storage use cases with a 256TBu file system.
• Near-real-time storage analytics. Dell hybrid storage includes CloudIQ, a no-cost, cloud-based, near-real-time storage analytics application that provides comprehensive monitoring of system health, performance, configuration, capacity and on-array protection metrics.
  

What is hybrid storage?
Hybrid storage is a solution for storing digital data that combines flash storage, which provides optimal performance and delivers the fastest speeds, with other types of media that provide greater cost efficiency. Hybrid storage enable organizations to store data on a single platform while balancing performance and economics.

What is flash storage?
Flash storage is a media for storing data electronically. Rather than storing data on spinning discs as traditional hard drives do, flash media uses a charge in a capacitor to represent a binary digit. Flash media provides faster response times while requiring less power and less cooling.

What are the benefits of hybrid storage?
Hybrid storage is ideal for businesses that have both “hot” data that is considered critical and must be frequently accessed and “cold” data that is less important and is needed less often. By combining storage media and offer a range of performance levels, organizations can choose the ratio of performance and capacity that best suits their needs to achieve optimal value.