Now that we’ve introduced the next generation of our PowerVault MD storage series, I asked Johh Mannix, Outbound Product Manager for that line, to chime in with his thoughts on the subject.
According to eWeek, Gartner estimates only 16% of current IT workloads are virtualized and expects the use of VMs by small and medium size businesses to increase significantly between now and 2012. Although sometimes overshadowed by other system components, next generation storage arrays with more capacity and improved price/performance are enabling virtualization at all levels and helping SMBs and similar organizations realize the related benefits and costs savings.
Earlier this week, Dell announced a family of next generation of iSCSI and 6 Gb SAS storage arrays for smaller scale virtualization and storage consolidation projects. The new MD32x0 and MD32x0i Series pack plenty of performance, capacity and functionality in a 2U footprint which makes them an excellent fit for SMBs, remote branch offices and departmental workgroups. They also come with MD Storage Manager, an intuitive object-based management application that speeds up deployment and streamlines management, data protection and troubleshooting tasks.
In addition to twice the performance, capacity and number of supported hosts compared to the previous MD3000 Series, the flexibility of these arrays is helping define the next generation of entry level storage systems. You can mix 3.5” and 2.5” drives, deploy SAS, NL SAS and Solid State Drives in the same array, protect your data with self-encrypting drives, and boost performance with an optional Turbo mode for workloads with higher data transfer needs.
The bottom line for IT teams? With a compelling value proposition, MD32x0 and MD32x0i arrays can help them store and manage rapidly increasing amounts of data with limited resources and budgets.
For a hands-on look at the MD32x0 and MD32x0i family as well as it’s Storage Manager interface, check out this write up from Dennis Smith in our TechCenter.