Dell today announced a new addition to the EqualLogic storage line, the PS6210 series.
Comprised of six models, ranging from all-HDD (hard disk drive) to hybrid HDD-SSD (solid state drive) to full-on SSDs, the PS6210 series is meant to cater to the storage needs of a wide variety of businesses. Dell, however, is clearly gunning for enterprise-class, high-performance workloads.
In press remarks, the company boasted that the new systems are “highest-performing Dell EqualLogic storage solutions to date.” Further, they “extend Dell’s ability to deliver flash at the price of disk solutions for customers seeking both faster performance and higher cost efficiency for their data-intensive virtual environments,” claimed the IT systems maker.
In a blog post, Dell Storage vice president Peter Korce informed that “PS6210 arrays feature a re-engineered controller with higher-performance hardware including 4x the memory, 2x the 10GbE ports and enhanced software that optimizes flash performance.”
“The end result is ‘flash at the price of disk’ EqualLogic solutions that can meet capacity and high performance requirements more affordably than HDD solutions,” added Korce. Dell joins other vendors in leveraging SSDs across their product lines, including EMC and NetApp.
Compared to its predecessors, the flash-friendly EqualLogic PS6210 line can deliver twice “OLTP database workload performance with half the latency” and support 2.4 times the number of virtual desktops. When dropped into corporate SAN environments, the SSD-populated arrays surpass 1.2 million input-outputs operations per second (IOPS) with sub-two millisecond latency. Capacities can reach 96 TB per system (PS6210E), depending on the model.
EqualLogic’s underlying software foundation has also been updated. Now at version 7.0, the Dell EqualLogic Array Software storage management platform sports a new user interface and policy-based access controls to speed virtual machine configurations.
Similarly, Dell has upgraded EqualLogic SAN Headquarters to version 3.0. The new edition of the SAN monitoring software enables monitoring across multiple EqualLogic groups and more in-depth reporting, analysis and event monitoring. New automated support mechanism help Dell customer support track down issues more efficiently.
Finally, the company is giving its EqualLogic FS7610 and FS7600 storage systems some attention with the release of Fluid File System (FluidFS) version 3 software. FluidFS provides data deduplication and compression, and now offers support for more protocol third-party certifications, opening the door for more “industry-specific supported solutions, including leading healthcare picture archiving and communications system (PACS) vendors.”
Dell EqualLogic PS6210 series arrays and related software go on sale this month.
