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Also if is not yet clear the impact of the EMC acquisition by Dell, at least in the storage portfolio, seems clear that the Dell storage strategy for the next years will be Compellent centric, with the position of this type of product also as a future replacement for the PowerVault MD3 and EqualLogic.

Dell storage portfolio has slightly change with the introduction of the SC4020 (as a mid-size solution) and then the SC2000v as a entry level solution. And also the new SC9000 at a high level position.

Now with the announce of the new operating system for Compellent products (the SCOS7) will add new interesting features and functions:

SCOS7

  • The most comprehensive data reduction – SCOS 7 helps customers store more data on fewer drives. New, patented Intelligent Deduplication and enhanced Intelligent Block-Level Compression can provide more than 10:1 capacity savings,3 reducing the cost of both flash and disk tiers. SCOS 7 data reduction is fully-integrated with the SC Series’ innovative platform efficiency features, including auto-tiering. Deduplication and compression are each applied automatically and dynamically to optimize performance and cost savings throughout the data lifecycle.
  • Increased data center flexibility – SCOS 7 elevates the storage management control, helping customers respond to changing requirements rapidly and with minimal disruption. With Dell’s new Live Migrate feature, multi-array federation becomes a standard capability for SC9000, SC8000 and SC4020 arrays. Storage administrators can now move volumes quickly and seamlessly between arrays, optimizing and re-balancing the environment without interrupting workloads and without purchasing additional virtualization hardware or software.
  • New Quality of Service features help administrators automatically allocate resources to match their unique business priorities, ensuring top performance for mission-critical apps even in contentious multi-workload environments.
  • VMware VVOLs support allows provisioning, monitoring and management of storage at a virtual machine level.
  • Unified Dell Storage ecosystem – New Dell Storage Manager (DSM) software provides a common management platform with an HTML5-based interface for SC, PS and FS products.4 Building on the familiar capabilities of the previous SC Series Enterprise Manager, SCOS 7 adds bi-directional cross-platform replication between SC and PS arrays, and “single pane of glass” day-to-day management of both systems. Dell is the only storage vendor in the mid-range enterprise storage area to offer native cross-replication across product lines.5

The last one is probably the most interesting and will help existing PS Series customers to migrate to the Compellent product, but also to save their investments. Otherwise, they can have the option to purchase either array platform with the knowledge that the full value of previous investments will be preserved and extended, if and when they decide to add SC to their environment.

Dell Storage Manager

Data Reduction maybe is not the most innovative (several other storages has already similar functions, but will be interesting see how it will work. It will combined both deduplication (new for SCOS) and compression (already existing since SCOS 6.5 and improved in this version):

Compellent-DataReduction

Compression is based on the lowest tier (or the first one, if you have only one type of disks) and this is quite different compared to other solution that use it only for flash tier.

SCOS 7 will be delivered as a free firmware upgrade for SC Series customers with a current support contract.  Most SCOS 7 features are available immediately on SC9000, with general availability across the SC Series portfolio planned for Q3, 2016.  Dell PS Series customers who want to take advantage of the new PS and SC unified management and cross-platform replication capabilities can upgrade to the new PS 9.0 firmware, available this month at no charge with a current support contract. Licenses between PS and SC series do not transfer and a Replication license is needed for the SC Series.

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.