Dell moves Fluid Data forwards with updated enterprise storage portfolio

PARIS: Dell has expanded its enterprise storage portfolio with updates to the software platforms that drive both its Compellent and PowerVault MD3 storage array products, along with new data protection appliances and tools aimed at simplifying backup and recovery.

At its second EMEA Dell Storage Forum, the firm continued the momentum behind its Fluid Data strategy for enterprise storage, intended to meet changing business requirements by delivering a flexible end-to-end storage architecture.

"Market dynamics are changing and we are going to have to change to fit them, but our basic tenets remain the same, only now the theme is Fluid Forward as we're pushing the fast forward button," said Darren Thomas, vice president of Dell's storage business.

The firm unveiled its Compellent Storage Center 6.3 array software, which it said offers double the performance of previous releases when handling enterprise workloads on Compellent SC8000 controllers.

Dell also claimed it is the first vendor to support end-to-end 16Gbit/s Fibre Channel capability from server to switch with these Compellent storage arrays, boosting throughput for business-critical applications.

Storage Center 6.3 also adds support for Windows Server 2012, and more significantly, reduces end-to-end latency by 87 percent, according to Thomas.

"And for existing customers, you can download this code for free as long as you have a service licence with us, and you will get all of these benefits on existing hardware," he said.

The Storage Center 6.3 software will be available in beta from January 2013, with general availability set for March, Dell said.

Meanwhile, Dell has updated the software for its affordable PowerVault MD3 storage arrays, which launched in August.

The update adds capabilities such as thin provisioning and support for VMware's vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which enables the vSphere platform to offload operations such as cloning a virtual machine instance to the array.