At its Dell Storage Forum customer and partner event, Dell today announced new solutions built on its Fluid Data Architecture to optimize cost, performance and protection as storage scales with a growing organization. New solutions include its first unified Dell EqualLogic platform, updated Dell EqualLogic software capabilities, a Dell Compellent demonstration of 16Gbps Fibre Channel, and the introduction of Fibre Channel on its PowerVault product line.
These solutions represent a milestone in Dell’s vision for a Fluid Data Architecture designed to help customers efficiently and flexibly manage data. Dell is uniquely unencumbered by legacy storage technologies and rigid philosophies that do not support customer needs in the Virtual Era. Instead, Dell is focused on the development and acquisition of storage intellectual property that delivers productivity and efficiency gains for highly-virtualized data centers.
Dell EqualLogic FS7500
The EqualLogic FS7500 adds scalable network-attached storage (NAS) capability to the EqualLogic product line – making it the only high-performance, scale-out unified storage for midsize deployments. The EqualLogic FS7500 uses the Dell Scalable File System, a high-performance, clustered file system based on Dell intellectual property. The Dell Scalable File System architecture incorporates features formerly found only at the very high end including advanced caching, load balancing and multi-threading for fast I/O processing. This is the first step toward Dell’s long-term vision of a uniquely feature-rich, highly-scalable file system. As with all EqualLogic products, new features will be made available to customers at no additional charge.
File storage systems historically have been difficult to expand because of file system size limitations and the complexity of managing multiple file servers. Unlike other unified storage solutions, with the FS7500, there are no 8, 16 or 50TB maximum limits on file system size. A single EqualLogic FS7500 file share can scale up to 510TB (raw capacity).