New Dell EMC SC5020 Storage Array Offers Lowest $/GB

Today at Dell EMC World, we debuted the new Dell EMC SC5020, the latest offering in our economical and intelligent SC Series midrange storage line.

Now part of the Dell EMC storage portfolio, the SC Series revenue is growing in double digits for good reason[i]. Led in volume sales by the immensely popular SC4020, the portfolio continues to penetrate new markets. SC5020, the fully redesigned successor to the SC4020, doubles down on key SC values, making the outlook better and better for our entry- to midrange customers.

More for less, more than incremental

Our loyal SC4020 fans will be very happy with this release, because they understand what the product is about – i.e., enabling modern technology advantages at the lowest cost.[ii] And now there’s so much more for them to love…

  • Up to 45 percent more IOPS, 3x the bandwidth[iii]
  • 4x the system memoryii
  • 2x the max capacityii
  • Deeper integration with Dell EMC ecosystem (PowerPath, RecoverPoint, Data Domain, and more)
  • Convenient remote installation services option (lowers deployment cost)
  • Simplified software licensing

The SC5020 controller also sports a new 3U format, with 30 internal drive slots, dual controllers, plus Fibre Channel and iSCSI network I/O in a single compact chassis. But by far the most exciting aspect of the product is the flexible flash architecture that allows customers to set their own price/performance ratio – then easily modify that choice as requirements change.

dell emc sc5020

Dial in your savings

The vast majority of customers will take advantage of the innovative Storage Center Operation System (SCOS) design to create hybrid solutions blending the performance of SSDs with the cost-savings of less expensive 7200 rpm HDDs.

In our opinion, nothing auto-tiers better than SC, tracking the independent activity of very granular sub-LUN data chunks, then moving those chunks between SSDs, HDDs and RAID levels (yes, RAID is provisioned dynamically) according to customizable best-practice policies. Since all writes go to Tier 1 flash, you get great performance on every workload – and since that data is quickly converted to more efficient RAID levels and eventually moved to HDDs as it cools, customers will buy fewer SSDs overall. Best of all, they’ll never be locked into a particular mix.  Want more speed for a new workload? Add SSDs. Need “cheap and deep” capacity as cold data volumes grow?  Add HDDs.

The customer decides how much flash-power they need to succeed, per array, per volume, per application – and for most companies, the answer is surprisingly affordable.

How affordable are we talking?

Thanks to the SC tiering magic, plus intelligent deduplication and compression on both SSDs and HDDs, SC5020 now provides the lowest effective capacity prices of any major competitor in the midrange storage market.[iv]  Customers can choose between a wide range of drives, from the largest available SSDs to high capacity HDD as well.  Feel free to contact your Dell EMC representative to see how affordable the SC5020 is.

And the savings don’t stop with a single array. Multi-array federation is built in, so as storage arrays are added, the customer never has to pay to migrate data seamlessly or load balance their environment. There’s even a native business continuity solution with volume-level auto-failover to ensure zero workload downtime during unplanned outages and disasters – with no additional virtualization hardware or software required.

Strengthening our midrange portfolio

The release of newly designed SC5020 is a great example of the Dell EMC commitment to our midrange portfolio.  Some of our competitors or bloggers may have pontificated on the “eminent demise” of the SC Series once the merger was completed.  This product release should cast any lingering doubts aside.  We are fully committed to our midrange portfolio consisting of the SC Series and Dell EMC Unity.  Both products have a rock solid place in our combined portfolio as they each service different value propositions.

Dell EMC Unity is optimized for all-flash performance and simplicity, and SC Series is optimized for economics and efficiency. By committing to both Dell EMC Unity and SC Series products and offering our midrange customers a choice in flash, performance, price and features, Dell EMC offers a broader portfolio than other vendors.

The new SC5020 hardware demonstrates our investment in the platform.  We’re also extending the Dell EMC tools of RecoverPoint, PowerPath, VPLEX and ViPR to the SC Series, providing an ecosystem beyond most storage firms.

[i] From Dell EMC internal figures, April 2017

[ii] Dell internal analysis, April 2017.Estimated street price, net effective capacity after 5:1 data reduction including 5 years of 7x24x4-hour on-site support. Comparison vs. other midrange storage from major-vendors. Customer’s price may vary based on a variety of circumstances and data should be used for comparison purposes.

[iii] Based on April 2017 internal Dell EMC testing, compared to previous-generation SC4020.  Actual performance will vary depending upon application and configuration.

[iv] Dell internal analysis, April 2017.Estimated street price, net effective capacity after 5:1 data reduction including 5 years of 7x24x4-hour on-site support. Comparison vs. other midrange storage from major-vendors. Customer’s price may vary based on a variety of circumstances and data should be used for comparison purposes.

About the Author: Craig Bernero

Craig Bernero is the Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Midrange and Entry Storage Solutions Product Group responsible for delivering next generation, current generation, and legacy storage technologies. He manages a global organization of 2000+ strong globally accountable for Dell EMC’s Midrange and Entry Storage technologies that are the #1 in the market. These technologies and brands include Unity, Compellent (SC), VNX, VNXe, Equalogic, CloudIQ. DSM. Unisphere, and Cloud Tiering Appliance. Craig has over 20+ years of experience in high technology, the last 15+ with Dell EMC Corporation in a variety of leadership roles including pre-sales, operations, business development, services, and manufacturing. Craig has experience working in startups, small/medium rapid growth and Global 500 companies across a wide range of industries (Aerospace, Manufacturing, Services, Software, etc.). He also has global experience and is multi-lingual based on living in 10+ countries prior to settling in the US. Craig graduated with an MBA with dual specialization in International Management and Entrepreneurship & Innovation from Northeastern University, and a Bachelor in Science, in Manufacturing Engineering from Boston University.