Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN Storage Pricing Performance Virtualisation VMware

The next generation of EqualLogic firmware - V5.0 - was announced this week. Version five is part of EqualLogics commitment to ongoing development and enhancement of the platform and will be available to new and existing users as a free download within the next few days.

Key enhancements in this release include:

Administrative Roles - Multiple administrative roles have been added to the management GUI. Designated roles are currently: Group Admin, Read Only, Pool Admin and Volume Admin. Many features, including the association of Quota's with roles allow granular control to be applied to each account.

Thin Clones - Historically a cloned volume was allocated the same space as the source volume on the array. V5.0 sees the introduction of thin clones which utlise a mixture of snapshot and clone behaviour to achieve a 'thin provisioned' clone.

Enhanced File System Integration - More intelligent interaction between the storage and operating system - VMware/Windows/Linux - allowing many storage-intensive tasks to be passed to the SAN, thus reducing performance overheads associated with server based data operations.

Enhanced GUI - The EqualLogic GUI has been given a more familiar 'look and feel' with the introduction of tabbed views and a stacked administrative taskbar.

Support for Hybrid Arrays - With the imminent release of the new PS6000XVS and PS6010XVS hybrid SAS/SSD arrays V5.0 adds support for this model and automated tiering within that single appliance.

Firmware upgrade is an online operation so you don't necessarily need to interrupt production workloads to apply the new firmware.

We expect to see many new features as development continues. Watch this space.

The PS6000XVS / PS6010XVS hybrid SSD / SAS Storage appliance will be available in August. List pricing starts at £34,100 for the PS6000XVS, increasing to £37,400 for the 10GBe PS6010XVS.

Designed to offer tiered storage in a single appliance the PS6000XVS and it's 10GBe counterpart the PS6010XVS will contain eight 100GB SSD drives, and eight 450GB 15K SAS drives giving a total of 4.4TB RAW capacity. Provisionally Dell's specification sheet only identifies 'Accelerated RAID 6' as a formatting option so formatted capacity will be confirmed at a later date. Other disk sizes may also become available.

The PS6000 Series XVS appliances are aimed squarely at workloads requiring tiered storage such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) implementations where multiple users share the same 'base', (boot OS source or core) image. That image can be placed on the low-latency, high-performance SSD tier to ensure maximum throughput, whilst users unique data can be placed on lower cost, capacity optimised SAS. Intelligent data placement and ongoing management - a standard feature across the PS Series - is an automated process to ensure that performance is optimised, delivering the best possible end-user experience.

If you're looking for a Dell EqualLogic Reseller please get in touch or visit my EqualLogic Price List Download page.

Dell EqualLogic has added a 2TB drive option to their high density PS6500 series appliance otherwise known as the SUMO.

This provides a RAW capacity of 96TB on a single 4U appliance, scalable to a massive 1.5 PB (Petabytes) RAW in a single group. Further information on 2TB PS6500 formatted capacity will be added as it becomes available.

The P6500E SUMO appliance is currently available with (4 X) GBe connectivity, the PS6510E appliance offers 10GBe.

For further information visit the PS6500 Series Page

Capacity on the high speed EqualLogic PS6000S and PS6010S SSD arrays has effectively doubled following the addition of 100GB SSD drives to the portfolio.

Of course it's not all about capacity - EqualLogic SSD appliances are intended to add a low latency, high throughput tier to an existing storage pool to accomodate those high transactional workloads - however increased SSD drive capacity is sure to be well received.