Dell Launches New Generation of Dell EqualLogic Storage Solutions

Dell today announced new Dell EqualLogic storage solutions and supporting software to help customers address the data management requirements of increasingly dynamic, virtualized data centers. The company also released details of new integration across its storage portfolio with the forthcoming VMware vSphere® 5 virtualization and cloud infrastructure platform.

Today’s announcements represent another milestone in the continued evolution of Dell Fluid Data solutions, designed to help customers more effectively manage valuable business information in virtualized data centers.

"Organizations of all sizes continue to place a priority on boosting IT asset efficiency while improving IT responsiveness to business pressures. Ever greater exploitation of virtualization is a key element in these efforts, and the deployment of flexible and intelligent storage systems is frequently the key to successful efforts," said Richard Villars, vice president of storage and IT Strategies at IDC. "Dell's continued investment in advanced yet cost effective storage solutions along with a continued expansion of its enterprise service and solutions organization, puts the company in a strong position to help IT organizations get the most from their data centers, today, and in the future."

New Dell EqualLogic Storage Platform Extends Fluid Data Architecture

In support of customers’ growing storage demands, Dell introduced the EqualLogic PS6100 and PS4100 family of virtualized, IP-based storage offerings. Together with new Dell EqualLogic firmware version 5.1, Dell offers customers its next generation of EqualLogic storage solutions that seamlessly integrate into existing environments without downtime or a major overhaul. This helps customers to focus on managing their storage and not the manual process of upgrading infrastructure.

This launch marks the introduction of 2.5-inch drive support for the EqualLogic product line, providing greater density that enables users to store more in less space. Additionally, customers can gain up to 60 percent performance improvement on typical workloads with the EqualLogic PS Series compared to the previous generation EqualLogic arrays.

“The new EqualLogic capabilities mark a significant next step in the evolution of the Dell Fluid Data architecture and extend Dell’s leadership in virtualized IP-based storage solutions that are easy to manage,” said Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager, Dell Enterprise Storage. “The new storage arrays and virtualization tools can help our customers run highly optimized and efficient data centers by automating configuration and improving performance without forcing forklift upgrades.”

“VMware and Dell have proven time and time again that the integration of storage infrastructures and virtual environments can have a dramatic impact on a customer’s ability to increase flexibility while streamlining IT management,” said Narayan Venkat, vice president, product management, storage, VMware. “Our joint engineering efforts to integrate Dell storage solutions with the VMware platform continue to help customers grow their environments, meet business needs, and more efficiently manage business requirements without adding complexity or cost.”

EqualLogic PS Series arrays, regardless of generation, work together to automatically manage data, load balance across all resources, and expand to meet growing storage needs. Dell provides these capabilities without requiring customers to “rip and replace” their storage environment during each upgrade cycle as they would with other vendors.